The New Normal

The weather is still taking a bit to get used to - I'm not complaining about it by any means, but it is very different than the east coast. This time of year it snows a bit, a few storms here and there, temperatures are dropping so in my head it's winter. So far we stay in the 50's during the day, the 30's at night, sometimes there's frost in the morning. Sometimes. We've learned to turn the heat either off or at least down to 60 at night, there's nothing more fun than waking up at 1am gasping like a beached fish that sweats a lot. I'm still wearing what I consider my fall jacket, I washed my short winter coat but have not worn it once, the full length down parka remains packed. When  I ask about how the winters are here I get that everyone has heard it's going to "get really bad" but on closer inspection "really bad" is a  week or two of snow. A few inches. Maybe. 

We are stuck in the waiting for the other shoe to drop mode for now. Anyhooo, the floors came out great - we are beyond pleased with them, another thing to cross off the list. We are looking for kitchen cabinets now, carpeting for upstairs and I ordered a couple of 5 x 7 for the living room and entry. The house really looks like a house. We have been looking at the yard too, we've gotten most of the garbage gone - at least the larger piles and David's cleared so we can see the water from the back deck by the den now. The otters come back once in awhile but scare easily, I've also seen a white egret, a nutria, wood duck and a host of other wildlife behind the house. That the other thing - David is STILL mowing the lawn! 

We're meeting Kim and Steve in Astoria this afternoon, we're going to Rogue to drink beer and watch the sunset at dinner, I'm hoping we see some more sea lions this time as it's a little later in the year. We remember to bring out jackets now, it's warmest around 2 or 3 but as the sun dips, so does the temperature.  After Thanksgiving we're going to start getting the house ready for Christmas, I have to go through what we brought. We had cleaned out a lot of the old and broken stuff ( you know, you take it out, you say"this is broken!" and then you put it back) so I don't think we have too much stuff. I need to find more dishes as I can only have two guests at this point and we will be furnishing the guest room soon. We haunt the Facebook market  place and the estate sales - that I love! Here they have these estate sales where a company comes in and sells EVERYTHING, that's where I got my butcher block table so I try to keep an eye out for that. Well, I gotta get going, the sea lions are calling.