Saturday, March 12, 2011

Crazy Kind of Joy

We're in our third month of living here on Ellsworth and we love it here!  Even one of Bennett's friends commented he likes this house better "because the other one was all broken up." Yes, well, that comes with singlehandedly renovating a 100-year-old house on a tight budget.

At any rate, I've suffered the first carpet stain and neither the kids or the dog caused it--simply a leak where the printer sat until I installed it.  Oxi-Clean is good but not quite good enough for printer ink.

We enjoyed Christmas immensely--the long central hallway along with the swords and shields set the kids got from Santa inspired many jousting tournaments along with guttural yells and screams of delights.  Bennett plastered himself at the back door while Evelyn grinned like a goofball at the front door and on some signal, they charged straight at each other from either end of the house.  I was laughing too hard to take pictures!

Atticus has settled in well to town living, making friends with the black dog next door--Shadow.  I discovered something interesting about him since we don't have grass and the spring rains are making a lovely muddy mess of our yard.  He does not like to get his feet muddy!  He loves snow and he tolerates rain, but mud--uh-uh.  We've had to go two lots over and let him use the back drop-off area at the butcher shop to do his morning routine!

One special challenge has been the driveway.  The next-door neighbor has a connection with a guy who has been plowing our driveway--what a Godsend!  Then there's just the little bit around the truck and the walkways to finish up.  We used sand to de-ice the drive but I'll tell ya--until you get the sand down, it's dang slippery!  I have fallen so many times this winter!  No wonder I'm having knee trouble!

We are looking forward to having the yard done--sometime this summer by the local Master Gardeners!  It'll be a contest between my yard and the gal next door.  We both want easy-care and we both would like to have lilies line the driveway--that could look pretty cool!  I just got my first plant for outdoors--a friend bought me a pot of jonquils for my birthday!  They're even my birth flower!  It was a pleasant surprise . . . .

This is it for today--I'll try to plan regular posts to keep people updated on Habitat living.  I am so thankful and so happy to be here.  I wrote an article for The Post & Mail on the progress of our little Habitat neighborhood over here and, to quote myself, said that paying my mortgage has "crazy kind of joy" attached to it.  Who would've thought, huh?

For today, love and cheers--

Laura