A visitor from Alaska

When I went downstairs in the middle of the night, I thought it was a full moon, except (even without glasses) something seemed wrong. Sure enough, we woke up to





. . . in the middle of April!

It's not a record, but I can't remember snow after Valentine's Day. Out in the raised beds, the baby spinach, lettuce and chard are snug beneath their row cover and should be fine, but I'm not so sanguine about the pears and cherries; it's supposed to freeze again the next two nights.

The boys were delighted by snow when they were half-grown kittens, but they've decided, after a couple of early forays today, to pile up inside and wait for better weather. They'll be evicted soon, but we're not letting on.

We're keeping extra warm burning the scrap wood left over from the flooring. It's amazing how much heat you can get from kiln-dried oak tidbits - and how little ash it produces! Maybe we should start toasting our firewood in the oven. We'd only have to do a few sticks a day, and we could bake bread or do a roast at the same time . . .

I'm not grousing . . . really!

It's just that I was supposed to go to class this morning and a volunteer gig this afternoon, but stayed home because Corey & Kevin came a day early to start sanding and puttying the floors. That wouldn't have been a big deal, except that:

• they needed two 220v hookups, so I couldn't dry the last load of clothes for our trip tomorrow;
• then, it turned out that our flight was cancelled (yeah, American Airlines), so I didn't need those clothes, after all;
• Corey & Kevin ran floor sanders (LOUDLY), filling the entire house with very, very, very fine sawdust, including the clothes I had managed to dry before they started;
• so, I set up a table in the woodshed with my laptop, a cell phone & a giant latte;
  
• after four hours on the phone, I got a delightful American agent who got us booked for Friday instead of Thursday - disappointing, but not tragic;
• she suggested we could move our return a day, without charge, to make up for leaving a day late;
• I spent another three hours on the phone trying to make that happen;
• at 6 PM, I snapped and went out to Burgerville (you've got to try their Yukon Gold fries!);
  
• I got an automated phone message that my flight had been cancelled (the new one), and would I like this lovely one on Saturday? I said, "No!";
• Richard came on the line (by now it's 7:30 PM), and asked would I rather fly tomorrow?
• the new flight is actually better than the original one, for us and for our family;
  
• I said, "Yes, please!", opened a beer & started packing.
  

Where did you say we're sleeping tonight?

Once again, the queen-size bed is in the attic, and we're "sleeping" in the double in the spare bedroom/living room/den. I say "sleeping" because one of us is longer than the bed, and wakes us every time his feet encounter the foot rail - umpteen times a night - and the other needs an astonishing amount of space to throw off all covers, lie on her back and radiate excess heat (which apparently emanates from either the core of the earth or our wireless modem).

To go to bed, we move two easy chairs & an end table as far from the bed as they'll go (three whole feet!), and try to clear a path to avoid wee-hour collisions or stubbed toes. Then, to get dressed, the bed and chairs have to huddle together so we can get to the "dresser". (I hereby apologize abjectly for pretending that piece of furniture could have ever been adequate storage for a teenage girl's clothes! We're paying for that now.)

Our real dressers are in the attic - such a treat first thing in the morning when I really have to have that wool sweater. Bill's office is stuffed with furniture, filing cabinets, a piano, the houseplants, and a cat who thinks it's a perfect refuge. My office is the kitchen counter, which means a constant mess of bits of paper and magazines that Bill straightens up when it gets too overwhelming. We've moved so much, so many times, that we have to think where we are when we wake up, and can't DO anything without asking, "Where did we put the ...?"

I'm not even going to talk about last month when I shut myself in the laundry room while guys stomped in and out, banging and crashing for a week. (Well, I'll only talk about it a little...) It's all going to be worth it, and in a few weeks, we'll post the results of all this dislocation.

No more grousing

A long time ago, we had a fellow put in a new door and some windows and a few other odd bits. Generally, it was fine, sound work, but the trim he did just looked completely wrong to me. Since it didn't bother Bill, and there was plenty of other stuff going on, I've just groused about it all this time.

Today, in preparation for repainting the living room, we bought the trim that had to be replaced after the flooring went down. Bill put up it up around the door this afternoon, and suddenly, I'm at peace! Oh, the floor still needs sanding and sealing and the room has to be painted . . . but it looks right to me now. I know it was really a little thing, but it sure makes a big difference to me.

I wonder what I'll start grumbling about next?