Posts Tagged ‘Wintervale’
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!
Looping Loops
Cyndie and I are growing loopy over the topsy-turvy world of uncertainty we find ourselves trapped in lately.
None of our possessions have a known location, and we can’t keep straight where we have put anything down at any given moment.
Yesterday was supposed to be the day Cyndie started her new job, but we have been forced to push back our plans by two business days to finally accomplish the second step in our 3-step plan to transition from old house to new.
We have already finished the third step, which was to get our possessions moved into the new house. Now we need to go back and complete the second step: signing closing documents, finally making this all legal and proper.
Yesterday, we set out on our half-hour therapeutic walk, and just up the road, met our first neighbor as she was headed to put something in her mailbox. Her husband eventually wandered out and there we stood, on the side of the road, getting up to speed on all the neighborhood tales. It was one of those wonderful conversations that seems to have no end. A little bit like some of my posts… So, no sooner than we had shared one last parting ‘nice-to-meet-you’ to set off on our walk, we found ourselves back in the depths of neighborly gab. It was a treat!
We learned there had been a tornado that moved through the area two years ago, just behind our property, which took out one of their sheds from behind the barn. They said it was 30-years, to the day, after an earlier tornado took the same path.
Later in the day, Cyndie and I heard our first rumbles of thunder here. It sounded GREAT! I’m gonna love watching the weather from our new perch.
It took half the day to determine any signing of closing documents wasn’t going to happen until Tuesday (today!!), so by the time we knew we were free to run errands, it was getting late. We made it to our new bank to make some deposits and get cash, then made a run to hardware and home improvement stores for things piling up on our shopping list.
This really got me spinning. There is so much for us to do, it is hard to figure out where to start. Of course, I like to start at a beginning, (any beginning!) , and proceed in a sequence. Cyndie likes to start everything at once and proceed in every direction, simultaneously. Shopping with her is a real trip for me.
I ended up bringing home things I was considering should probably be on my ‘future wants’ list, but hadn’t even begun shopping for. At the same time, we knocked off a few valuable items that we can put into service immediately, like a set-back thermostat, new shower head, push brooms, boot mats for our entry ways, and anti-fatigue pads for the kitchen floor.
To Cyndie’s credit, I was able to forestall a couple other uncertain decisions until we are able to spend a bit more time to be sure what we want. I do wield some calming influence on the shopping front.
By the time we headed home, it was dark, and I almost got us stuck in a looping round-about. Then I entered a turn lane, one turn too soon, and quickly ran out of pavement, making a last minute correction with too much speed. It was past dinner hour and I was loopy from too much shopping and too many days of disorientation.
We hope to get the last (previously, second), most critical step, wrapped up today. That will give me a solid beginning to plot my next step(s) toward our new orientation on our “Wintervale Ranch.”
