Friday, April 24, 2015
Country House
Yesterday I woke up at 3:55 a.m., and did not go back to sleep. I was too excited to sleep, and had a lot to do!
The first thing I did was lie about in bed for an hour with Diesel. He loves cuddling up in the bed, lying next to me with his front legs draped over my arm. It would be the last of this shared morning ritual, at least for now, so I wanted it to be a good one.
At 4:55 a.m. I was up, wandering around, coffee cup in hand, making sure all the last minute things were tossed into boxes and lined up at the door. By 5:10 a.m. I had finished my coffee, eaten my breakfast, and started to load the car. By 5:38 a.m. I was setting off out of the driveway. Light was just beginning to filter into the sky. I drove for four hours, with one stop for fuel, two hours into the journey. At 9:38 a.m. I wheeled into the town near our country house, with the list of things Attila needed from town. By 11:00 a.m. I was home!
It started snowing as I headed north near the beginning of the trip. Sometimes it snowed hard, and sometimes it snowed wet, and sometimes it cleared up a bit. The road was wet and clear despite the snow, except for one stretch where it had accumulated on the road into a slushy mess. It was snowing when I got to the country house, it snowed last night, and it is snowing again today. Yikes!
I am too busy to notice the weather right now. The stack of backed up administrative paperwork is, well, it is staggering, it is a mountain. Yesterday I worked to organize it, I sorted it into piles. I also did things like activate my credit card, which had to be done from the telephone here at the country house. There were several missives in the mail that required that I go online to fill in forms, which I could not do from the little house because all the required reference documents are here at the country house.
Now to the good part of the day yesterday. Attila! He managed to come home for lunch, so that we didn’t have to wait until evening to see each other. I spent some time in the morning yesterday, cooking a rice and bean casserole for our lunch. So, at last, we were sitting across the table from one another eating beans! What can I tell you, it was one of life’s special moments.
Today I am at it again! Two of my clients had issues with their web sites, so I resolved the problems. I had to spend an hour or so on the line with their web hosts to get it sorted, it helps so much that they have authorized me to work on their accounts, I can accomplish a lot more when I don’t keep having to seek permission to do things with their accounts. Sometimes these little issues seem like a big deal to people if they are not familiar with how the sites work. Luckily the fixes were simple, quick and easy. Everyone is happy!
Yesterday I sorted the paperwork that was here at the country house. Today I was hoping to sort the paperwork I brought back with me, but it doesn’t look like I am going to get that far, at least not today!
Laundry! Over the last two weeks I saved my dirty laundry for the country house, where we have a washer and dryer of our own. I have been doing laundry since yesterday afternoon, and I am not done yet! The drying rack is at the little house in the city, as I needed it down there. I washed my laundry at the laundromat all winter, and hung it up to dry in the house. I waited with these last loads though, to come home to the country house. I don’t like laundromats. I have met some lovely people there, but then I have also had to spend time around people I didn’t want to make eye contact with. Attila compares laundromats to sleazy bars, full of unhappy people. He has a point. But only to a point, because after all, I was there!
Today was bill paying day, and Attila and I are very happy that the financial crunch came, and the financial crunch went. We paid back the money we robbed from Peter to pay Paul. Now Peter and Paul are both happy. It works for everyone!
As I am sorting paperwork, cooking, doing laundry, sitting and talking to Mist, I am also getting distracted by computer work that needs to be done. I just realized that Google hits my old site files first, and has decided not index this site because the original journal was hand coded html, created long before cell phone use was common. I’ll have to change that, I have a few ideas, but I won’t be trying implement anything until after the country house goes on the market.
I also found a better program to handle the book I am currently writing, and have purchased it and downloaded it. I want to play with it now! But the paperwork and the cleaning have claimed my time, for now at least.
The house is not ready to go on the market. It is a lot closer than it was when I left to stay at the little house for the winter. Attila replaced the baseboards in the family room, and it is a big improvement. Other than the bathroom floor replacement, and a few little maintenance jobs, we are down to cleaning. Heating with wood is a messy business, we have a lot of cleaning to do!
We hope that by the end of next week we will have progressed far enough to bring in the realtors for evaluations. Then we will need to chose a realtor, pick a price, and get the sign up at the end of the driveway.
Worldly Distractions
Weather
2°C
Date: 2:00 PM EDT Friday 24 April 2015
Condition: Cloudy
Pressure: 101.5 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: 1.7°C
Dewpoint: -7.9°C
Humidity: 49%
Wind: WNW 26 km/h
Quote
“There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.”
Booker T. Washington
1856 – 1915
[It seems to me that big business and politicians believe in talking up while pushing down.]
Hi Maggie,
Yay!!!! You are home with your hubby and sound so happy and contented despite the work load. Love!
I am half way out the door so will come back later to answer in full. I just wanted to touch bases and welcome you back. I’m off to go look at the bird again and nervous as all get out.
x0x0x0x0x
Nora, that is so exciting!!! I know you will choose the perfect companion!
Thank you for your good wishes.
What an adventure… living in two places… and all that goes with that. How is Mist? Glad you are home again… country home that is…
Mist is a happy cat Bex. She looks very old, very, very old. She likes her food, and her various water bowls. She has her main water bowl by the heater, a comfortable watering place when it is chilly in the house. She has her water bowl in the kitchen, so she can stay close to Attila when he is puttering. She has her water bowl under the hoya and ivy plants, her “jungle bowl”, she likes to drink there when she is feeling wild, making her way to the bowl through the hanging branches of the plants, which hold no interest for her.
I just received a report from Terra, Diesel is as happy as clam apparently. No dogs! Apparently Diesel is willing to put up with all sorts of inconveniences, as long as there are no dogs!
I’m glad you are happily reunited and that the cats are happy, too. I hope the country house sells quickly.
Thanks Joan! We are hopeful this year! We have decided to leave it on the market until it does sell, so if it hasn’t sold by next winter it will be on the market through the winter. That is extra work for Attila, but needs must!
Maggie, I think it was wonderful you made cuddle time with Diesel before you left. You were up early! Home by 11:00 and even having to battle some nasty weather. Is it still snowing there?
You mentioned clients and I wondered what it is that you do?
I don’t like laundromats because they usually feel dirty to me and I have seen roaches in them as well. Ugh. Luckily this apt. came with a washer and dryer.
Again, congrats on your safe arrival home to Attila and Mist.
So glad to hear you’re happily at home! And how wonderful of Attila to make it home for lunch! I’m sure he was excited to see you and you were to see him. He couldn’t wait. 🙂
Glad to hear that both Mist and Diesel are happy.
Sounds like you have a lot of work going on with your websites. You remind me that I need to go and check mine now, to see if there’s anything else I can do for SEO. I really would like to get my site getting some good hits. If it did I’d see about adding a shopping cart to it – but it’s got to be getting some good traffic before I’m going to do that as it would cost more.
It needs to pay for itself if it’s going to have a shopping cart.
Good luck with getting the work done on the house as soon as possible. You definitely want to get it done soon as spring to summer is the prime buying season.
We had snow yesterday. Actually, it snowed basically all day long, yesterday. When snowing heavily, we actually had almost 2 inches of snow on the ground – but as soon as the snow got lighter it all melted. There was no snow out there, today.
It all sounds so wonderful – a storybook tale.
For me, it hardly seems possible that winter has come and gone. Weather doesn’t affect my routine so I’m rather oblivious.
I’ve enjoyed watching spring arrive on my patch of property. I never realized that it unfurls from the bottom to the top of my forest. The undergrowth acts as a foundation – must unfurl before the top restricts sunlight?
Happy reunion!
Nora, Diesel enjoyed the cuddle, and Terra reported that when she checked on him on Saturday he was as content as ever. She just sent me a message to tell me his has gone home now, and has settled in nicely… good news!
It snowed during the night Friday night, and stopped on Saturday morning, all that fell melted away yesterday, I am happy to say.
The laundromat may have been where I picked up influenza, it was the only place other than my Yoga class that I went that week. No one was sick at the Yoga class, although they did tell me later that one of the staff at the other end of the building had a bad case of influenza, and recovered slowly. Who knows.
Thanks for your good wishes!
Oh yes Nora, forgot to say that my clients are people for whom I have created web sites, and/or provided technical support to for their computers. I was on the tech support team at a university for a few years, so a few clients stayed on with me when I moved away.
Teri, good luck with your web site SEO activities. It is getting tougher to get anything useful out of search engines, as they sell the prime listing positions to the highest bidder, which to my mind puts a damper on the efforts of the small scale entrepreneur.
You are right of course about the getting the house out there as soon as we can, we will be hard at this week and next!
Reenie, not even the snow could put a damper on my enthusiasm to head north!
That is interesting, that the vegetation begins to unfurl on the forest floor, then moves skyward. Your suggestion, that the young plants are vying for sunlight before the canopy develops fully, is a very good one!
Attila still thinks it is winter, but he would, because it is below freezing here at night, and he still has to chop firewood!