Better Things to Do

1930's remnants

In my last blog, I mentioned having better things to do than sanitize the casa. Like going to California. Going to California is better than house cleaning.

California has provided not one but two mini-vacations for us this fall, and they turned out to be perfectly timed, before and after this whole moving houses thing we keep doing. Eric had a lot of business in the Golden State this year, and I was able to meet up with him for weekend adventures, thanks to some great Southwest sales and the fact that its only a 2 hour flight from DEN to LAX!

Confession

I am a dirty, filthy pig.

Selectively.

If you came over to my house last night for our annual Christmas Vacation party (and braved the weather, because we ALWAYS seem to pick terrible weather days for our annual extravaganza) I hope what you saw was a clean house.

It wasn't necessarily that way until, oh say, an hour before you showed up.

Harvey

I'm behind on blogging, as it happens. There are so many things to catch up on, and a couple of blogs on current events that won't make it to daylight (go ahead and assume you know which events I'm talking about and what teeth-gnashing stand I'm making).

However, I feel there is one thing we need to discuss, right away, and that, my friends, is the current state of wildlife around the new place. I know, this is neither the most relevant or political of topics, but perhaps we just need a moment away from all of that to focus.

Focus on the animals.

The Long Winter

We might be living in successive Laura Ingalls Wilder novels.

Seriously! First, we moved into the House in the Big Woods. Then, we moved to the House on the Prairie. Now... well, darn it! We just stepped into the novel, The Long Winter!

House on the Prairie

We moved to Kansas... well, not really, but it feels like this new place is WAY out there on the prairie. Now, in reality, it only takes me about 5 minutes longer to get to work than it took me at the last place, but the difference in perception is staggering. As you go east of the major road on the east side of town, the world flattens out and opens up to large prairie spaces. This flat expanse makes everything seem much further away than it is. This landscape is about the direct opposite of the last house, with the mountains and the trees. Here, it is exceedingly flat, and while there are a number of trees on this 5-acre property, they are spread out and planted as landscaping instead of naturally occurring. It is the very essence of prairie, down to the open field of cows behind the property line.

Roid Rage

So, one little thing that I forgot to mention about our move week, and I share this with permission. As you may know, we are apparently incapable of just doing one thing at a time. So, while I was having my teeth ground away, poor Eric was in with the orthopedist, seeing about a long-standing pain he has had in his shoulder (most likely from the years and years of football). The orthopedist gave him a steroid shot in the area of the pain and told him to come back in two weeks if things didn't improve.

Well.

All's Well That Doesn't End

Phew. We made it.

On Thursday, October 29, 2015 we moved from the Not-So-Little House in the Big Woods to the Not-So-Little House on the Prairie. No kidding, I'm pretty sure you can see Kansas from the backyard, but more on that house in another post. Time to end this chapter.