Where to start? Hmmm.
So our house is physically put together, the walk-through was done on Friday, and I have house keys…four to be exact. Four separate house keys; a different one for each doorknob lock and each deadbolt. When a “model” house is built for a showroom, they just slap knobs and deadbolts on and don’t bother to re-key them to one of the keys. That is something, another thing, on my ever-growing list of “TO-DO’s”.
We didn’t move in this last weekend….because….we don’t have utilities yet. The weather has been so wet and rainy/stormy, that the electrician really doesn’t want to wire my A/C to the power box. The plumber is another one that doesn’t like to work in the rain…nor does the gasman. Bunch of friggin party-poopers! We’ve now, officially been 2 days dry…although I did get the truck stuck in the left over muck, today. I believe the utility guys will return tomorrow to finish what they have started. Lord willing and the weather stays nice, as forecasted, I may be able to move in this coming weekend! YEAH!
During the daytime hours yesterday and today, though, I was able to get the kitchen about 90% unpacked. That was FUN! Seriously, I’ve never had so much storage space in a kitchen, I LOVE IT!!! In fact, since I can post to Facebook from my phone, I’ve been updating there a little more frequently, just cuz it’s so easy. If you are on Facebook and want to add me as a friend…I would love it. Just comment that you read my blog.
I had to take crappy pictures with my cell phone and post them to Facebook with the heading…”Happiness is setting up my brand new kitchen”. Cheesy, I know…it’s the little, odd (weird!) things that give me such pleasure (I could make a really obnoxious comment about my husband, here, but won’t…ROFL).
I am so loving the layout of the house…still lots to do…build a deck off the front door as well as the back door, build a garage, get the carpet seamed (hard to do, I found out, without electricity!), put a doggie door in, fence an area for the dogs, find an internet provider for the house, make arrangement for satellite TV. Now Brian is dreaming of barns and arenas at night…and he bitches about the Percheron I want…what the hell is he going to do with an arena? Stare at it? Save it for “good”? OY!
Anyway…so much to do and all stuff that really needs to be done before the end of September…not sure when the first snow could fall and then we are screwed for the whole winter. But all that stuff costs money and well…while I am playing the lottery…my numbers have not all come up at the same time…YET! So that means the juggling we all have to do at some point…UGH! But everything always works out, just not always when we think it will.
So after getting stuck in the mud behind the house…wait, that’s kind of a funny one. So I had this bright idea that I would drive around to the back of the house and back up right to the back door. Since there are currently no steps out the back door, I thought I would open the door and stand in the bed of the truck just shoving boxes into the utility/mudroom. On the way to the back door was when David and I got stuck. Well, I rocked us out of that mess and we unloaded stuff the old-fashioned way…trudging up and down the front stairs.
So when I got home, I decided I was going to water my herb filled window boxes. I shifted one of the boxes and saw something flop between the box and the wall…there to my surprise, was a very small (2.5-3 inch long) BAT! That was a shock! I didn’t know there were any bat species that were indiginous to North Dakota…come to find out there are about 15! This little guy is called…are you ready for this…it’s pretty ingenious…the “Little Brown Bat”. By the time I got back outside with my cell phone to get a picture, he’d parked himself on the brick face of the building. After spending some time studying bats (and many other animals) during my high school years at the Los Angeles Zoo…I’ve come to love these little creatures, although my fave bat is called a “Flying Fox” and looks just how the name implies…don’t freak, he’s a fruit-only bat.
Anyway, this little guy is an insect eater…I wish he’d stuck around, he was cute. Someone on my Facebook commented that she had “bat houses”, like bird houses…I’m going to have to check into this. Although bat guano is nothing to mess with…maybe a bat house isn’t such a great idea?
Last, but certainly not least, we got David registered for school today. It starts a week from this Friday! He is excited, he’s already signed up for band as well as the basketball team. Basketball is to North Dakota what football is Texas.
I did spend some time reviewing the school year calendar and that was interesting. We have a lot of “Teacher In-Service” days…more than we did in Vegas…but what sucks is that Winter Break is only 8 school days long instead of 10 and Spring Break is 2 days at the beginning of Spring then we have the 2 days following Easter off…so it’s a total of 4 days instead of 5. And school is longer 8:30-3:30, but the kids get out of school for Summer almost a whole month sooner than Vegas kids. You can tell farming has a lot to do with the school schedule. Although, this year, with the long, wet Winter and longer, wetter Spring…they haven’t started the harvest here as yet. Wheat is still maturing in the fields and I have yet to see mature Sunflowers or Corn also. It’s been a really interesting Summer here.
Well that’s a long enough update on us here in the wheat fields! I will try to put the next batch of updates in their usual singular post style! LOL!
Love from the Heartland!
Filed under: All About Pam, North Dakota, Observations, School
