Friday, June 21, 2013

Local Wildlife

On Sunday, as I was getting the house ready for Sarah's bridal shower, I opened the front window and heard a lady yelling.  That's weird, we can't usually hear people up here.  Then I see my neighbor's cow from across the street go wandering up the road...

I have a feeling the phrase "my neighbor's cow" is going to be a much-used part of my vocabulary up here.

Today, I drove up to the post office at lunch, and when I came back, somebody ELSE was trying to cross the road...

Not a cow.

He was right smack in the middle of the lane, so I pulled in my driveway and ran out to the road to move him to the side.  That sucker was UNHAPPY about the help.  As soon as I picked him up, he started thrashing me with his tail, and trying to kick me with his back leg (flipper?).  I set him down n the side of the road, and he turned around really fast (seriously, why couldn't you just crawl that fast?) and just glared at me.  So I'm standing on the side of the road yelling "Go on, get!  The stream is right over there, stupid turtle!" and pointing.  Because turtles can totally understand yelling and pointing.  Since he didn't move, I went inside, but I've been checking every few minutes to make sure the stupid thing didn't try to go BACK across the road.

On the plus side, if he becomes a problem, I can always try to call the cute Game Wardens on "North Woods Law" on Animal Planet.  My husband never reads this blog, so I can say that here.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Sarah's Bridal Shower

This weekend we had our first official party!  We hosted Matt's sister's bridal shower at our house, and I think I can say it was a success.

food and decorations set up in the sunroom

the sunroom

gorgeous cupcake wedding dress



Sarah, the beautiful bride-to-be

As you can see, we had a mad rush to get the sunroom painted.  I think it's my favorite room in the house right now.  The guys had a pretty hard time getting the old woodstove out of the sunroom and down the steps to the basement.

It took three of them to do it, and I had to go to another part of the house because I was so afraid they were going to drop it and I was going to have to do a hospital run.

But now that the party is over, I was able to pull some furniture from other parts of the house and set it up a bit.

Next week (fingers crossed): the deck unveiling!

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

We've been married for a year!


No, that's not Matt, that's Milo the Alpaca that we met on our Memorial Day Weekend trip to Martha's Vineyard.


This is us on Monday, our first wedding anniversary, in our pretty kitchen.  We did a little anniversary trip to Brunswick, ME and got to walk around and look in the antique shops and little boutiques.  It was nice and relaxing.

Here at the house, we've been prepping to have the deck built.  We saved a bunch of money by Matt and a friend digging the enormous holes for the deck footings (seriously, 3' wide by 4' deep!).  Then this guy showed up to drop the first delivery off:


And this morning the contractor and his guys started framing the deck.


Then it started POURING so they left to eat lunch.

We have some tenants on the front porch.

Mama and the chicks aren't so bad.  Papa is annoying and keeps trying to peck his way into the house through every window on the first floor.  It also took him 3 weeks and multiple tries to build their nest - it kept blowing off that ledge because he didn't do it right.  Onyx can't wait for the front door to be left open.

And now for some magic!

Messy nook in the loft:
*poof*

No more mess!

Amazing what you can do with a tension rod, a twin sheet, and some curtain clips.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Small-town living...

Small-town living at its finest.

I went to town hall to pick up the permit for our deck, and found out they have my name as "Christine" in all the systems so I had to go to 3 different departments (and wander around the basement) to get it fixed.

Then the lady behind me says "You just moved here?  Let me tell you about everyone who's running in the elections next week" (for road commissioner and school committee) and then the town clerk had to tell her to go away and yelled at her (twice) for attempting to influence the election (again, this is the election for road commissioner).  I'm pretty sure she had spiked her Diet Coke, because she followed me to the parking lot, told me her life story, interrupted herself at least 8 times to switch topics, and then turned around and left walked to her car in the middle of a sentence.

The town clerk also introduced me as "Mrs. Gardner" to the 107-year-old woman who finally fixed my name in the system.  I think that's the first time I've been called that seriously, and not like "Hey Mrs. Gardner!" by one of my friends.

I also discovered that even though I registered to vote when I applied for my driver's license on March 15, because no one moves to Acton (like ever) the DMV only sends new voter registrations to town hall every three months.  So they didn't have me enrolled as a voter.  How am I supposed to vote for the next road commissioner if I'm not registered?

Then when I got home, I opened the free regional daily paper that comes in the mail, and there were THREE ADVERTISEMENTS for the Acton road commissioner election!  Guys, this is probably the hottest election since Bush v. Gore.

I might have to start hanging around at town hall more often on my lunch break, but they're only open like 3 days a week.