Monumental Task

Selling a house is harder than one thinks. We look at our houses and think they are almost perfect. A few touch ups here and there, a quick call to the handyman to fix that leaky sink and the house would be perfect. Then the Realtors and potential buyers start coming. My little house has been on the market for a little over the month and there have been quite a few showings but no takers yet. The hardest part I am finding is getting feedback that my house isn’t as perfect as I think it is. No one has fallen in love with it as much as I did when I first saw it. I hope that whoever buys it will love it as much as I have.

There were two monumental tasks that I had to do before the house was officially sold. The first was to paint the house and the garage. I was so daunted by the task. I kept putting it off and off and off. I even cajoled W to come help me since all the scraping, priming and painting was not something I wanted to do alone. Lucky for W (but not me) every time he’d come down it would rain. That was not very conducive to painting a house. So I waited some more and then decided just to do it. I figured once I started, things would snowball and it would all get done. I started on the worst part, the north side, and started scraping. Then I primed all the exposed wood. Then I painted the whole house. Before I knew it, I was done and I did it all by myself. I actually did it. The house looks so bright in the sun now. All clean and white and ready for the new owners to enjoy.

Above is a picture of the scariest part of the job. It doesn't look like such a great height, but being up there by the tippity top of the house was a little scary. I didn't fall and no broken bones. Success!

The next big chore is to refinish the wood floors. Lucky for me, W is going to take care of that. He’s bringing down the trailer this week and we’re loading it up with my furniture and other odds and ends. He’s going to sand, stain and poly the floor all while I’m at work. I’d say he’s a keeper.

After these two big projects are finished the house will be ready to go. The cats are up in SuFu permanently. We’re leaving a bed and a nightstand at the house and all the rest of the furniture is going to SuFu. I am so ready to move I can hardly wait! 

Time Marches On

It feels as though April is already gone. It is such a busy month and it seems that something is added to my calendar daily. Procrastination beware this month for there is no place for you. It is times like these that really test my skills at planning and getting things done. The weather is warm and there is nothing I want to do more is garden or sit outside in the sun with a great book and a cool brew. However, I want to graduate at some point so I soldier on in the science world. There are papers to write, presentations to give, experiments to plan and do, etc. etc. etc.

There are stressful days when I wonder if all this education is worth it. I see friends on Facebook who have been employed all the time I’ve been in school. They have real salaries and are working off paying off their student loans, building up their 401Ks and going to grown-up, young professional thing called “happy hour”. All the while I’m stretching my dollars the best I can, taking out more loans, not contributing to my retirement, and what are these “happy hours”? Then I remember that I can make ordinary cells look like the stars. It is those small things that get me through the days.

Wicked Early Spring

It has been amazing weather this March in South Dakota. Today, on the Ides of March, it reached 80 degrees. It was beautiful out!

I went for a bike ride yesterday to get some fresh air and start working off the winter padding. I rode through town to the cemetery. The cemetery is probably not the first destination people pick while bike riding. Most whirl around town, go to the park, perhaps they go down to the trail by the river. The long distance riders may go down to Spirit Mound. I head to the cemetery.

I find the cemetery a quiet, natural place that is perfect for reflection. I like to walk around and see if I can find older gravestones. We have ones here in Vermillion from the 1800’s. There are some people who were old when they died. I hope they didn’t suffer. There are young people, as young as a few months, and I wonder what happened. I see husbands that have gone before their wives and vise versa and I wonder how they bear it. The cemetery is a place of reflection and a place to be thankful for what you have. You come out with wishes and hope that you don’t see underground before you’re ready.

With this warm weather, the garden is popping. I hope we don’t have a frost which kills everything. I would be very sad.

The Winds of Change

I realize that my last post was eons ago. 8 months ago in fact. I need to get better at this blogging thing. Time ticks away, sometimes it seems fast, sometimes it seems slow, but it keeps ticking.

The most life changing thing that happened was the “W” asked me to marry him (that was last August). It was a very romantic proposal. He took me to the Falls in Sioux Falls. Yes, there is an actual Falls in Sioux Falls. They were getting ready for their weekend laser show. Beautiful music flowed through the park with the background voices of falling water. The sun was setting giving the sky a beautiful orange glow. He took me over the bridge and to a nice spot away from everyone. He got down on one knee and took out the ring. I was so excited and happy that I think I interrupted his carefully thought out speech. I bent down and kissed him and said yes before he even got the question out. It was the loveliest moment of my life to date. The mood was perfect. We were on a island where only each other mattered. As I looked lovingly into his eyes and he into mine, our island vanishes due to a teenage kid in a golf cart telling us we had to move because that’s where the lasers are going to shine. *Sigh*, so much for savoring the romance. We left the park with the biggest smiles and love coming from us like rainbows and all the mushy stuff.

It’s been 7 months since that day. The wedding planning is going swimmingly and the only big thing we have left to do is find an officiant. I find that it is very easy to plan a wedding when there is a small budget. “W” and I believe that at 28, we’re a little old to be asking our parents’ to pay for our wedding and we’re splitting the cost between us. So far, we have been very good about staying on budget.

Now that we’re getting married, we have to live together. This means I have to start packing up things and make space for me in his house. No small feat, but I am winning small battles and will win the war. This also means that it’s time to sell the house. It will be going on the market next week and hopefully I’ll find a buyer soon. The listing price is less then I hoped, but I should break even if not make a little money. As long as I don’t have to pay, I’ll be happy.

I am ready to move on and start a new phase in life. I am almost done school and am starting to think about finding a job and a whole bunch of other adult things. I am eager as ever.

Another big change that happened just recently was that I lost my Cricket. Cricket was the most unique cat a person could have met. The summer after 8^th grade my mom took me to the local ASPCA. The previous year, we had lost both our big tom cats and she promised that come summer we could get a small, female kitty that would stay inside. The minute I got off the bus on the last day of school I asked if we could go the next day. (I probably demanded, but I’m a little fuzzy on that part). Off to the shelter we went. There were lots of cats but not many kittens. I remember looking around when this little grey paw reaches out and snags my shirt. I look and there are two kittens, one black and one silver tabby. I open the cage and play a bit with the tabby that was very personable. As I try to play with the black kitten, the tabby climbs up my arm and lays itself over my shoulder, purring like a diesel engine. I turn to my mom and say “I think I found the one”. The big issue, it’s a boy and his name is Crocket. Neither of us could resist though and we brought Crocket home as well as a lovely 2 year old Abyssinian mix. A week later we’re at the vet for the kitten check-up and the vet says “The first thing we have to do is an administrative sex change.” My mom and I just stare at each other, confused. Turns out, Crocket is a girl. The shelter misidentified her. Crocket was not a girl’s name but we’d been calling it that for a week. So I made a vowel change deciding Cricket was close enough. Cricket was my girl. She was loving and feisty all at the same time. In her old age, she was the quintessential cranky old lady. Cricket would have been 15 years old this coming April. Not bad for a shelter cat. I told her she had to live forever, but she didn’t listen. Just like the independent cat she was.

That’s it for this post. I will try to be more regular with writing. Perhaps a tidbit here and there supplemented with a few stories. Right now, a crock-pot chicken with fingerling potatoes is calling my name.

The Power of Electricity

The road from Sioux Falls to Vermillion can be a long one. The scenery never changes except there might or might not be cows in the fields and you can measure how tall the corn grows. It is a long road indeed. There is a grain elevator on the south bound side of the highway. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a grain elevator is, think of it as a distribution point for grains from the area farms. Instead of having to bring their grain to kingdom come around the country, they sell it to an elevator which is strategically placed in towns. The elevator then distributes the grain to the rest of the country. This is one case, I believe, that having a middle man can be a good thing.

In front of the grain elevator are huge loads of grain that cannot fit into the elevator’s storage bins. They looked as if they were on rail cars and covered in thick, white plastic. From the angle at I was passing, they looked remarkably like a covered wagon train resting up before the next leg of the journey west. (I should insert here that W says it goes against physics to have corn packed in such a way as to look like a covered wagon. I’m still sticking to the image).

This past week we were in an awful heat wave. The temperatures reached into the upper nineties with heat indexes in the 100’s. In other words, it was hot. It’s at times like these that I think about how the pioneers did it. How did they face, and win, against the elements? The same pioneers who traveled thousands of miles in covered wagons to build better lives for themselves and their children. First, a little history to set the stage.

South Dakota was first part of the Dakota Territory which was established in 1861. This territory also included North Dakota as well. In 1889, South Dakota and North Dakota became states. South Dakota did not have electricity until 1909, 30 years after the lightbulb was invented. To put it in perspective, that was 133 years after the Declaration of Independence. The first electric cooperative was not established until 1935. Electricity, it seems, would be a long time coming in South Dakota.

This brings me back to the pioneers and the covered wagons. How would they have handled the heat? Find a nearest creek I would imagine. Stay inside. All the things we do now when it gets too hot. So maybe the next time it gets hot, think of how things would be without electricity. Without air conditioners. Without running water. And forget about ice cubes.

Perhaps turning the AC up a few degrees to save energy and save your electric bill is not so hard after all.

Garden Report: The garden is loving this hot, humid weather. Especially the tomatoes. The cucumbers and other cold loving veggies not so much. My volunteer tomatillos and tomatoes are going crazy. I've made pesto with most of my basal and soon I'll have to make a second batch. 

Flight of the Concorde

This week I saw my first crop duster flying over the green fields as I was traveling home to Vermillion from W’s place. I have to admit, I was kind of excited. In my 5 years of living in the Midwest, I had never seen one. To the locals here I imagine it’s a common occurrence. Farmer John down the road possibly even flew one as a boy. But to me, I was in awe. At first, I thought it was a glider using the wind currents to master flight. However, as it neared the end of the field, the plane slowly banked upward making a wide loop with the wings at a beautiful angle. It settled down close to the field once again, flying toward the highway. It had a certain beauty about the way it moved and danced in the wind.

I was instantly transported back to the 1950’s era, where men where men and women stayed in the kitchen. I saw the plane as if it was in an old black and white movie, yellowed with time. I pictured the innocence of the time, the quintessential 1950’s life of sheets on the line, Moms at home taking care of the house, Fathers going to and from work. It was the view from the advertisement photos produced by companies to show their product would make a perfect life.

As we know, those advertisements had thick, rose colored glasses on. The families of the 1950’s had the same problems we have today. They had to worry about food on the table, cars breaking down, home repair. Out in the Midwest, it was worrying about the fields and grain prices. It was trying to predict whether it would rain enough or too much. 

In truth, not much has changed in the last 60 years.

It is the fourth of July this week. It is the birth of our country and of a set of ideals, a place of freedom. The country has come a long way since 1776. We face new challenges and new opportunities that we must conquer and embrace. This July 4^th, remember. Remember who we are as a country, where we came from, and what more we can do to make this a better country and a better world.

Garden report: Everything is growing great. The peas, beans and cucumbers are already producing fruit. The tomato plants are flowering. The peppers are very slow. I have a ton of tomatillo volunteer plants coming up as well. Half the garden needs to get weeded, and soon! I have a baby bunny that has been chewing on things. He’s adorable yet very annoying. I’ll need to find a nice way to deter him.