Musing on the New Location

Woke up this morning, around 7 AM, and went to the back door for a look-see. There is a big mountain out there, and this morning it was encased in clouds...I guess it might rain today. Being from the flat state of Florida, any mountain amuses me, and this one is no different. It was cool, temp-wise, too, around 65-70ºF. And as I looked out the back door, a small rodent crawled up on the deck railing...oh, it's a chipmunk! Never saw one of those in Florida. I think it was looking for a hand-out. In Florida, I used to feed the local squirrels, so Sasha would have something to chase. Now I don't know about chipmunks. Are they supposed to be reviled or should I try and hand-feed the critters? Some in Florida called squirrels "bushy-tailed rats," but I loved to feed them and watch them play with the dog. So I might end up making friends with the 'munks in our back yard, at least until someone comes along and tells me they are no-good vermin. This little guy was so cute that I cannot imagine anyone disliking them.

It poured last evening! A real gully-washer, with thunder and lightning and what might have been some hail. Our dog Sasha is having incontinence problems (she was just diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and is now on antibiotics), so we have her on a timer - every 90 minutes we take her outside for a short walk. In Florida, all four fur-kids had 24/7 access to our large fenced-in back yard, through two pet doors. Now that we have no back yard to speak of, and the neighborhood is fairly yard-less, it's down the sidewalk with plastic bags to collect any foul stuff the dogs might deposit. Don't want to be bad neighbors, do we? Anyway, as I took Sasha out at 10 PM in a fairly heavy rain, it occurred to me that this might be a preview of what is going to happen when the white stuff starts falling. Here I am, trying to find our umbrella, leashed dog in one hand and a baggie in the other, all the while trying to keep Sasha out of everyone's yard and on the very small grassy strip between the sidewalk and the street. Jugglers have it easier, and they have a huge tent to work under. We finally have results and make it back to the front "stoop," where I now have to dry off the dog before letting her back into the house. I can almost deal with the rain - how will I deal with snow and ice? Matter of fact, how will the dogs deal with it? Come winter, I'll bet they'll want to trade places with the cats.

The landlord has been over doing repairs. When we moved in, there was this big ugly home-built bookcase on one wall in the living room. It had to go. At least Jen thought so. And when we asked the landlord about removing it, he concurred. I guess he wasn't too crazy about it in the first place. I told him I'd be very careful in breaking it down, and he didn't seem to care one way or the other, so I ended up pulling it to pieces trying to get it off the wall. And I cannot believe what I found! Picture something about 8' across by 4' tall, with two vertical dividers, all built with 3/4'x12" shelving. Now this thing was mounted on a paneled wall, but for some obscene reason, the builder actually scored the paneling to fit the shelving boards - when I pulled down the shelf, an outline of it was left exposing the wall. It had been toe-nailed and LIquid-Nailed to the wall. When I pulled the paneling off, there were at least two layers of wallpaper under it. Now we have to remove the paneling and the wallpaper from the entire wall to prepare it for painting. Oh, and the builder also cut out the carpeting to fit the base, so now we also have an exposed wood floor where the bookcase was. How do you fix that? Turns out, he won't - at least with carpeting. Looks like we will get some linoleum to cover the wood, and that's it.

In any event, Evan (the landlord) has been over for several days now, steaming off the wallpaper, scraping the wall smooth and spackling all of the holes (nail and otherwise), then hand-sanding the wall, and this morning putting a base coat of paint on it. There is now  a layer of fine dust all over the living room and kitchen - Jen has spent a lot of time cleaning things up and now she has to go over everything again. Will this never end? Probably not, in a house that has been vacant for 5 years. I have a thought that we'll be cleaning until the day we move.

Here's a few shots of the neighborhood - the mountain behind the place, and a shot down the street toward the east: