Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Many Preparations
There is a very strong sense of preparation around here. The trees are all fully undressed for winter. The squirrels are working like mad to do everything it is they do to get ready. Cyndie arrived home last night with a car full of holiday-looking groceries, bulking up our food stores in feastly proportions. The neighbors have been firing their weapons and probing the darkness with spot-lights on scouting missions for the big hunt. There are new food bowls, litter boxes, and various feline devices showing up in advance of the scheduled arrival of two (hopefully) mousers coming this weekend.
I don’t have any idea how to prepare for what it is I am in for here. Most of my being is struggling against succumbing to the belief that we have bitten off more than I can chew. I have moments of calm acceptance of the challenges ahead, and then I have the rest of the time, wherein it seems each issue I begin to consider appears involved enough to command all of my attention, all of the time. And for each issue, there are ten more beside it, and ten more again, beside each of those.
Time to take some breaths, and not in the bedroom, where it smells like the mouse poison has claimed a hidden victim.
I need to prepare myself for the many successes we will experience in our endeavors here. It’s only been barely a month since we arrived. It will take a while for me to get over the initial shock I am experiencing. Luckily, I have Cyndie to carry me along. She helps me re-focus away from my concerns of failing, to look toward the goals we intend to achieve.
I’m going to visualize how great it will be when our bedroom doesn’t smell like a dead mouse anymore.
Carrying On
Someone I know was expressing distress over the fact that stores are going to open for Christmas shoppers on Thanksgiving day. I understand why she is bothered by it. I glanced at the daily paper and noticed there was an article on the front page, covering the same topic. My goodness, this was Front Page NEWS!
My response was, “You don’t have to go shopping.” And, “You don’t have to listen to their advertisements.”
She said, “They were talking about it on the news!”
Do you know me well enough to anticipate what I offered next?
“You don’t have to watch the news.”
For the record, I LOVE hardly noticing the (in my opinion) non-news that is presented as news. I have seen reports that stores will be open on Thanksgiving day and the information rolls off of my mind like water from a duck’s back. In one ear, and out the other. I don’t care if a store is open on Thanksgiving. Oh, look! Something shiny! Move along, nothing deserving attention here. Keep calm, and carry on.
*****
We had a fire in the fireplace last night. It was wonderful. We can see the fire from so many vantage points. There is a great view from the kitchen. We carried our dinner plates over and sat in front of the fireplace to eat our evening meal. It felt unjustifiably luxurious to be living in this space for our everyday lives. We live in a home that could be a northwoods resort!
Every day!
We have begun calling the loft space “our fort,” as in: “I’m going up into the fort.” It feels like the cool place you would make as a kid, and it draws you to want to hang out there.
We now have new mission-style recliners in the front sunroom. Hanging out in the sunroom is even better than up in ‘the fort.’ The view is all birds and squirrels and wooded wonder, with a sunrise visible down the driveway.
The roomy garage is a joy, the master bedroom is lovely, the room we are making into a den will work nicely, when we finally get it organized, the bathroom is now set up the way we like, and the basement has plenty of potential.
We are doing what we can to keep calm and carry on, …like this is just normal life.
I don’t think our lives will feel ‘just normal’ ever again.
Spinning Around
Some days it seems easy, some days it’s as if everything is in front of my brain declaring a need for attention all at the same time. My computer and iPad at home, and my computer at the day-job all have searches and files saved with research, manuals and instructions, …buying information. Maintenance recommendations for the water softener. A log splitter. Air compressors. The Wisconsin Department of Forestry. We should have a different vehicle. I want a Jeep, but we could sure use the hauling ability of a pickup truck. Too bad I really could use a high mileage vehicle right now. It’s got my head spinning. So much for my list of items sorted by priority.
One trick I use to counter the spin is creating images like this one. It’s a different kind of spin. One that works for me.
I haven’t had a chance yet to tell our friends who visited us recently, and who exhausted every option troubleshooting an outdoor light that wasn’t working for us, that I found the switch that controls it. I had researched the cost of buying a replacement fixture and was moments short of contacting the folks who sold us this property, to confirm I wasn’t missing something, when I decided to make one more effort to look for a switch. I don’t know why we missed it that other night. Maybe it was a little farther from the side of the door than we expected it would be. But when I stepped up and peeked behind the dresser that we had placed beside the door, I immediately saw the switch, right in the middle of the back of it.
The whole time Ryan was trying to discover why it wouldn’t light, it was the simple reason of the switch behind my dresser being in the ‘off’ position.
No wonder I find my head spinning sometimes.
First Snow!
Yesterday was the first accumulating snowfall of the season, although most of it evaporated when the sun made a couple of appearances between flurries.
Since Monday is the day I don’t have to drive to the day-job, (I changed to a 4-day work week to counter-balance the loooonnng commute), I had time to go for a walk with Cyndie, before she needed to leave. It was chilly, but wonderful to be out walking in the falling snow.
Monday becomes the day we try to schedule service calls, and as Cyndie pulled out of the garage, the chimney sweep drove up to meet her. It didn’t take him long to check out the fireplace on the main floor, and then the stove in the basement. He cleaned the chimney and removed the rodent nest from the fresh air intake, and got out of here in about an hour.
My first priority after he left was to get a wire mesh installed over that intake port and then I started a fire burning. It was a perfect day to heat up those stones around the fireplace.
Now I really need to get the rest of that wood pile moved before the snow begins to start piling up!
Settling In
We got Cyndie’s new iPhone activated on my account, so she should now experience more stable coverage at our new home. It only took an hour and a half on my phone with a technician to make hers work properly. Ain’t technology grand? I’m hoping to convince her we don’t need a land line, so I’m hoping this new phone and provider will work flawlessly for her.
Instead of being frustrated by the difficulty with the activation, we are focusing on the progress that resulted. It is one more thing accomplished.
We also delivered all the pies Cyndie baked, and met all of our immediate neighbors. That was very rewarding. We are definitely outsiders. There are family connections and grade school relationships for most of our neighbors. They must be wondering what the heck we are doing here. Of course, it didn’t help us blend in at all when we pulled into their driveways in Cyndie’s bright red Audi convertible. It is so NOT a farm vehicle. Not that mine is much better, but mine isn’t a convertible, and it’s not bright red.
I was pleased when one neighbor asked me what I was doing for internet connection out here, expressing his dissatisfaction with the slow speed of their DSL connection. I was thinking I would need to learn from them, but it seems the solution we chose, of going with a mobile hotspot through our cell phone provider, is a pretty good, if not best option to go with.
We also heard a good bit more on the hunting plans for next Saturday. It is definitely a pivotal activity in these parts.
The weekend produced progress of mostly small accomplishments for us, but each little step is one that helps us to feel a bit more settled every day.
Having now talked initially with each of our neighbors is a big part of being able to feel just that much more settled.
I think surviving/getting past the deer hunting season here will allow us to take ‘settling in’ to yet another level of settled.
Neighborly Visit
Yesterday we were planning to get out and introduce ourselves to the rest of the neighbors that border our property. Cyndie baked apple pies with a crumble of oatmeal and brown sugar for top crust to go along with our greetings.
As so many of our projects go lately, before we could start that effort, we needed to clear the counter space of the pile of electronic cables and mini devices that needed to be dealt with. Among them was Cyndie’s Sirius Satellite Radio device, which I offered to get set up so she could enjoy music from it while she was baking. Cyndie headed into the basement to search though boxes to find her apple peeler.
Once I became engaged in the challenge of locating and orienting the antenna, I began to sense that level of insanity where I found myself trying the same thing, over and over, expecting different results. How long do you wait for it to connect, before you determine you have waited too long? After that indeterminate amount of time, adjust the antenna again, a fraction over, and wait some more.
Meanwhile, Cyndie was coming upstairs with bundles of things discovered in the basement, which she wanted for use upstairs, but none of which were the apple peeler she originally set out to find. Both of us eventually gave up trying, and moved on. She cut apples with a knife, and I put up an outdoor thermometer that could be read from inside the sunroom.
Once the pies were in the oven, we headed out in attempt to document, on paper, the location of our buried utility routes. An extension of that effort was to get some measurements of the existing fence lines. We wandered about with paper and pencil and drew maps of the trails and paddocks as they are now. We dragged a 25′ tape measure around, flip-flopping past each other to determine a variety of distances.
After that, we were ready to head out to deliver some pies and meet our neighbors. The house smelled fantastic, filled with the enticing aroma of fresh-baked deliciousness. Cyndie was off hunting for something to use for a greeting card to provide our contact information on each pie when I heard a knock on the back door.
Our next door neighbor to the south had beat us to the punch. He saw us out wandering the property and decided to seize the opportunity to come meet us, with the added incentive of needing to check in on our opinions about the impending deer hunt season, due to begin next Saturday.
He let us know that he had previously owned this land, and had been hunting here for a long time. He made it clear there would be plenty of people staged on all sides, engaged in the hunt, and he didn’t want it to be a surprise to us.
He was clear to let us know, as owners, we had the option to “post” our 20 acres as ‘no hunting.’
Neither Cyndie nor I felt that was the best choice at this time.
Similar to the time we met our neighbors to the east, across the road, we ended up spending most of the remaining daylight swapping stories and telling tales. The moment when he finally said that he had better get going because people would be wondering where he was, happened about midway through the duration of his visit.
The remaining pies will need to be delivered today. We know to start early, and leave plenty of time for long goodbyes.
We also know that next weekend, and the following, we will need to be wearing blaze orange any time we are wandering around our property!
Chore List
It’s Saturday! And we’re burnin’ daylight! The day is almost half-over and we have so many chores on our list, we are overwhelmed with figuring out a logical priority.
Of course, Cyndie wants to tackle all of them at once. I prefer a more sequential order.
After a good, long night’s sleep, I want to be able to enjoy a leisurely morning in our precious new space, but I struggle to frame this time in a positive perspective, when the activities we have been engaged in are revealing more and more things that need tending to.
One hassle this morning arose from the act of activating Cyndie’s new iPhone and initiating a port request to transfer her old number to the new phone. The unique challenge of following computer and robot commands, mistake-free, when the instructions don’t jibe with the situation as you see it.
“Which number is it asking for?”
You can take a stab, but heaven help you if you chose wrong.
We experienced a brief thunder and lightning display in the early morning hours; just early enough that we were able to fall back asleep and appreciate the fact it was a weekend and we didn’t need to bound out of bed to hit the road in a race to beat traffic.
Now it is an interesting combination of windy, yet foggy. We need to get out and walk the property to map the location of buried utilities that we had marked this week. We have designs on getting some new fencing defined and installed, and noting where things are buried was a first step toward that.
I’m thinking about building a wood shed, although it may be something we bundle with a job Cyndie was hoping to request quotes for, toward building a hay shed down by the barn.
Before we had even roused from the warmth of our bed covers, Cyndie had her computer out and was compiling a list of things we have in mind to do, or purchase. I convinced her to convert it to a table, so we could add columns defining costs and priority, among other details.
As blissful as this place is, the number of things that deserve attention, as well as the things I would like to direct my attention toward (they are not always the same; no surprise!), conspire to interrupt my ability to dwell in the present moment and breathe deep of the wonder and beauty that surrounds us.
I am a patient man. I will learn how to master the art.
I will practice, and practice, and practice, over and over, again and again, starting with the first item of priority on our chore list that fits in our current budget.
Smiling, and breathing in the beauty and wonder all around me!
Yikes! It’s almost lunch time! I gotta go!
Happy Saturday!
Feeling Strain
I found myself quoting and re-quoting from a favorite old song of ours, by the Roches, yesterday: “I am trying not to have a bad day.” And, “everybody knows what kind of day that is.”
As absolutely beautiful and enchanting as this place we are calling Wintervale is, it doesn’t come without a cost. I am aware of that, and aware that some aspects of the costs will eventually bother me, like the long commute to my current day-job. But yesterday, in addition to the long drive, little nitpicky things that I have been living with sans complaint thus far, and blissfully ignoring, began to nip at me with increasing annoyance.
I miss being able to take a regular morning walk, followed by exercising. I think my loss of exercise time is the first piece of a compounding problem. By the end of my very long days, especially as they drag on into time I am supposed to be sleeping in preparation for the VERY early start the following morning, my tolerance is thin, and I succumb to a lowly negative perspective about every little thing.
I’m short sleep, short exercise, short healthy regular diet, and short on patience. I’m tired, frustrated, …and as happy as can be to be living here in this amazing place.
My voting experience on Tuesday was a blast. I needed to register at the poll, and got to spend some extended time with the local election officials who are my new community. They were wonderfully friendly, and quaintly down home country in nature. I will be very comfortable here.
Now if I can just figure out a way to get back some of my health regimen that has escaped me since we moved, all will be good. Maybe I should look into a car with pedal-power assist.
Cardinal Clash
The bird is nothing, if not persistent. His relentless pursuit of his own reflection in our windows is downright comical, and even a little annoying. We try not to be bugged by so much attention from a member of the wildlife that surrounds us here, but the repeated sound of him bonking into windows around our house triggers a signal in our minds that something is amiss. It creates a feeling that some sort of action is called for. We feel as if we should do something to help him get over his obsession.
The message that we received about him from the sellers, described the fact that nothing they had tried, proved to suppress his repeated acts of banging the glass. That has tended to diminish our level of effort toward devising drastic action to deter him.
Cyndie tried a couple different minor things, but they didn’t seem to make a difference. I have caught him smacking into at least 3 different windows, on opposite sides of the house. If she blocks his view in one window, he will just move on to the next one.
Her next plan is to see if she can simply talk some sense into him, and also give him an opportunity to send a message to her. I look forward to hearing how that plays out. After all that head banging, I wonder if he could have anything coherent to convey.
Tractor Time
I was up and ready, well ahead of time, for the appointment with the tractor service person yesterday. As the time drew close, my phone rang with the message that he would be late. That was good for me, as I discovered I didn’t have any diesel fuel in the 5 gallon containers the seller left for us, and that allowed time to make a trip to town and get them filled.
The guy that arrived was wonderfully congenial, but moving at top speed. He barely got out of his flat-bed tow truck, and was already talking three steps ahead about how he was going to get the tractor loaded. It was hard to change his focus, but I asked if he couldn’t look at the starter right where the tractor was parked. His answer was, “No” as he walked around his truck another time. Then, after he already had a chain connected, and the loader propped up off the ground, he asks me if I had tried to start it this morning. He went on to describe how it had happened on another call for him once, when the machine just started right up for him when he tried it for the customer.
Hoping this was my chance to get a word in edgewise, I explained that I hadn’t tried it yet that day, and that ‘not starting’ was my only problem, and since I had NEVER done it successfully, I was not the best one to test it. He hopped up and went through the steps and, …Vroooom! It started right up. I was shocked, but not surprised. Just as I suspected, there must have been some interlock that wasn’t being satisfied. Unfortunately, he didn’t know what it could have been.
I asked, “Could it be the position of the PTO?”
“No, no.” as he monkeyed with everything else. Oddly enough, he was still dead set on getting the tractor loaded up on the flat-bed. I felt we just needed to try a few different starts, to see if we could replicate my problem. He agreed, but explained that if it didn’t start again, he wanted it already loaded and ready to go, and since it was now running, this gave him the opportunity to easily drive it up on there.
I could see his point.
In the end, we confirmed that I was guessing right, it was the PTO that needed to be just right, to engage the interlock that allowed the starter to crank. It was possible to move it too far in the direction of “off.” I had no previous reference to judge from. Unfortunately, when the seller stopped by to check on it for me, he missed that the PTO lever was not in that sweet spot, and was too quick to focus on the starter as being the problem.
By the end of the day, both Cyndie and I had taken turns driving our new tractor, and we even got some real work done. I was moving firewood and discovered that there was a concrete slab under a mound of dirt and grass. My first inclination was to get a shovel. Then I realized I was standing next to the biggest shovel I have ever owned.
It worked like a charm. Now we have a great place to put a picnic table by our fire pit out back.
