Seven Months In.

We're now over half a year here, I've been at my job now for about 5 months. Everything has been quite a change, hasn't it? We had a Week Of Winter last week, this morning it's in the mid-50's and we have blue skies for the moment. We had beautiful weather yesterday - the predicted rain never showed so I had the dogs out about 20 times, taking advantage of the sunny skies and the not so mucky yard. I spent most of the day cleaning yesterday, the floor are a disaster with all this mud! Part of me thought this was useless but the house looks lovely for now. The kitchen continues to progress, I love it! David used butcher block for the counters which is so pretty but he's like an annoying mother hen with them - he reports every water drop and stain. We had a 4 minute lecture the other day about a coffee stain with a follow up discussion of how to Avoid These Disasters In The Future, he's been oiling them to death. I just ignore him and go about my business. The pets have settled in nicely, Molly and Reuben have plenty of things to annoy in the yard and continue to point the cows across the road. We have tons of geese in the field across the way, they like to meet there, hundreds of them, honking away like they're doing something. Then they all take off - I was outside with my camera waiting to catch that, all zoomed in and everything- they waited til I turned it off and went inside. Dammit.

I started that shawl I consider my Opus, but I may be canning it. It's lovely, intricate, challenging......and very annoying, way too many charts to keep track of. I got the middle bit done and the upper border, I might just sack it until I feel like working on it again, I can just stick it on stitch holders for now. I have plenty of other fish to fry. The thing with my knitting is it's a hobby and something I love to do to have fun and relax, especially since I have have enough annoying and stressful things that I  HAVE to deal with. Given the choice I would prefer not to - so I think I'll just put it away for now. We had our Overnight Guests over Christmas and it went well, we have faraway guests coming starting in March - by then we should have the shower done and a few other things sorted out. We have a big,claw foot tub with a shower but you have to step up into it and there really isn't anything to hold on to. The other thing that has been hard is getting used to having one bathroom. 

I can't believe we are already 2/3rds of the way through January! It's just crazy how fast this year has been flying. David has started working on the Astoria house, that has been different for us too. Foreclosures are more here than we've sold finished houses for back east, it's the same with materials. Wood is much cheaper because they produce it here, vinyl siding is very expensive because they don't. We continue to scour Facebook marketplace and the Restore for supplies to save money - but you need to have time to invest with that. David saw some beautiful kitchen cabinets and took the morning off - they must've photo shopped them because he said they actually looked like the stuff he pulls OUT of houses, not puts in! The woman got snotty with him too - they are still for sale if you're interested. I turned off the heat today, it is way too warm for it, who would have thought I would have ever been able to say that in the middle of January? Not me!

Winter Comes, Winter Goes

One of our biggest concerns about moving  here has been what the winter is like. I was born and raised on Eastern Long Island which turns into a Siberian landscape on occasion. We've had blizzards, Nor'easters, temperatures below freezing - we know winter. Then I spent over 20 years in WV and southwest PA which you get an alarming mix at time of springlike weather which can quickly turn to ice storms and snow. Living in the mountains is much different of course, different elevations get different degrees of weather. As a visit nurse I would sometimes leave Morgantown which didn't even have a light dusting and drive an hour to Terra Alta where I found myself slogging through a foot of the white stuff . When I lived in the Poconos and I worked at the hospital I was required to keep a fully packed overnight bag in my car at all times as the hospital would occasionally get so snowed in the staff could not get in or out - they kept rooms across the road to stay at if you got stuck there. But you figure it out - in WV if traffic is crawling it means black ice, when they say it's going to be  a white out you know to pay attention and stay home.....but we have not reached that point yet. 

I've asked a lot of people but have found that I needed to follow that up with asking WHAT they consider bad weather, because it does depend on what you're used to. They're version of a Very Bad Snowstorm here is 3 to 5 inches and temperatures in the 30's. Hmm. So up to this week the weather has been very rainy - every day all day rain. Rain. Rain. The mud is slippery like it is in WV so I have gone shooting across on occasion but nothing new. Then we got snow - and I've come to realize why even an inch or two can paralyze the  place. They got AN INCH of snow here and all the schools were cancelled - I thought that was hilarious until I ventured out myself. Because here's the problem - they don't do much in the way of treating or plowing the roads around here - including the main road that winds up and down with deep ditches on the sides.

I left on Monday morning early, my road is a gravel road so not a problem. Town - not a problem. The main road I take to work - problem. They had not plowed and since we had freezing rain prior to the snow I could feel the car slipping a little on the road and discovered quickly I had no brakes - the one thing about places where it frequently snows is they also keep the roads clear In PA the snow plows and trucks would run all night so when you headed out in the morning the roads were safe - they don't do that here. There are no street lights so the route is pitch dark, my car is slipping.......and just to add to the fun I have a tail gater about 4 inches from my bumper. I was not crawling along - I was actually going about 40 but apparently that was not fast enough for the asshat behind me, they were so close I couldn't even pull over to let them by. It was harrowing. The most infuriating thing was when we got to the passing zone she did not pass - that always drives me crazy. Why do tailgaters hang on your bumper but will not pass you because THAT they think is dangerous?? Anyhow as you can tell I did make it to work, as soon as I came near town the roads were much better and that was really the only day it was bad. We were supposed to have a week of snow......but we only got one day and we are now back to 

Rain. 

I'm fine with that. 

Things Are Moving Along

We went to the Buoy for lunch with Kim and Steve on Friday, that is my favorite place! They brew their own beer, the food is good but the best part is the glass inserts in the floor. You can see sea lions lounging on the decks they've installed under the floor, they're huge! I was going to take one home with me, but not sure where it will sit - I doubt Molly will be on board with sharing the couch. The geese have been flying back and forth all morning, we think maybe the leader is not sure where "south" is, because hundreds of them flap over to the mountain honking. Then 20 minutes later here they come again, flapping and honking back over the house - it will be spring before they figure it out! There are wood ducks, otters, nutria (water rats) in the sluice behind the house, horses across the way and a pack of cows across the road. There are raccoons sneaking about, stupid moles!, mallards, geese, coyotes.....you name it we got it. Molly and Reuben race around each morning since there's been foot traffic in the yard overnight, the garage still has no doors so that's a source of excitement every day. We're trying to get them to stop pointing the cows though.

And the weather. It rains constantly now - pretty much for the past two or three weeks. You get used to it. This coming week we're supposed to be getting inclement weather so that should be interesting. As I've talked about that before it's difficult to get an idea of how bad it gets as every one's idea of "bad weather" is very different. I hear it snows, then it's not the snow, it's the ice, it's the freezing rain, we get 2 inches at the most, then 5, it stays for a day, a week. Over all I'll just have to live through it I suppose and let you know. I found my winter coat and it's been hanging in the laundry room since November, I haven't had a chance to wear it yet. I don't know where my hat, gloves and scarf are, I have no boots. I do need some rain boots though I suppose. The yard continues to be a quagmire, it just never dries up. 

David continues to work on the house, the kitchen is about 80% done, he's installed most of the cabinets and the counters will be butcher block. He pried the floor tiles off the wall last week - they matched the backsplash to the floor down to the  oak inserts and all. It would have been fine since the floor is Spanish tile but they used the same size tiles instead of smaller ones - they're a foot across! It was like a backsplash the Flintstones would've had and been proud of. David got them all off in one piece so we now have replacement tiles for the ones that are broken so it all works out. I rearranged most of the stuff in the kitchen and got just about everything off the counter so I'm not shifting a load of stuff every time I need to cut up an onion and I can get to stuff. I hate that they make cabinets so deep, don't you? Half the time I don't even know what I have because I can't see it or if I need to use an appliance I have to pull out half the kitchen to get to it. Annoying! 

So, It Begins Again.

Well, here we are again looking at another new decade. I am cautiously optimistic, I'm pretty superstitious and tend to be afraid of jinxing things but weirdly enough - so far, so good. We did nothing for New Years which is pretty much how I like it, I am not a fan. If I'm out I wish I was home, if I'm home I feel like I should be out. What I end up doing is what I want to do - watched old movies and then went to bed. It was raining a bit on New Year's day but then the sun came out and the biggest rainbow stretched across the horse pasture - if we are going with Omens and Other Sundry Things I'll take it!! And if you're wondering - yes, it does rain all the time. We ask Alexa for the weekly forecast and then start laughing when she hits Wednesday -rain, Thursday - rain, Friday - rain.......sometimes she uses "showers" to break up the monotony, but a lot of the time it's not all day so it's not all bad. The yard is very squelchy,  Bob the cat walks taking very big steps and shaking her feet all the time, it's fascinating to watch. 

We closed on the foreclosure we were waiting for the other day, the bank wanted to wait until after the first of the year for tax purposes and that was fine with us, with everything going on last month that would have put us over the top. The bank that holds the mortgage on the foreclosure is based amusingly - in New Jersey.  If you want to be stressed out WIRE a huge amount of borrowed money across the country and the emails all have these FRAUD ALERTS and SCAMS all over them. Can you imagine? I could! What a puker! And then you have to add in the 3 hour time zone difference....but David managed to get the cash from Point A to Point B and we are now in possession of another fixer upper which thankfully does NOT stink of cat pee. Since I'm the Chief Cat-De-Pee-er that makes me very happy. I'll be posting pictures later today but we already know walls will be moving. For some reason they decided to renovate at some point and made the master bedroom HUGE, like you can roller skate in it and it's not a big house. Instead of moving a load-bearing wall they just sort of kept half of it and then there's the toilet that overlooks the driveway...... we'll figure it out.

And other than that, we are just busy. I got my Christmas present the other day, I refused to buy anything until we closed on the house we sold, you know, so I wouldn't jinx it. And it worked, didn't it? I bought myself two Namaste knitting bags (if you knit you know what I'm talking about , if you don't Namaste is like The Coach or Michael Kors of knitting). David and I buy our own gifts, we've been married forever and it cuts down on the returning things or the outright disappointment.  I have to get the house swamped out, Kim and Steve are coming for dinner tomorrow, David has been adding cabinets to the kitchen so I can move stuff around. Right now everything - food, plates, pots, pans, etc are crammed into about 3 cabinets - and you have to stand on the counter to reach the top ones so that's pretty useless -  it will be nice to be able to take something out without having to pile everything in front of it on the floor. I'm still working on my super complicated shawl, I ended up doing the first 3 charts and then had to throw it out, 2nd attempt is well, so far so good! I think that will hopefully sum up the coming year.