To make matters even more confusing, sometimes the mail box is on the opposite road of the house that is receiving the mail, and that makes it even more difficult to find someone’s house if you don’t already know where you are going! That is why I think that every rural house should have an address plaque at the end of their driveway with their entire house number clearly visible from both directions.

Properly placed address plaques are not just to make life easier for visitors coming for a social visit, they are important because in rural areas it can be difficult for rescue services to respond to an emergency if the location is not clearly marked. Every house should have clear identification, down by the road, and on the house itself. It could save a life!

Over the next several weeks a wonderful transformation was created. Brand new Pella windows were installed, new doors, new vinyl siding, and about a dozen solar panels on the roof appeared. Shortly after it appeared that someone was actually living in the place! Every day when I would drive past this now wonderful example of urban renewal at its finest I would think about how much I wished that I had the kind of money it would take to retrofit my own house with the newest technologies for climate control and energy conservation. But it wasn’t very long before the house was abandoned again and vandalized again, back to holes in the windows and the beautiful solar panels broken. Every single one of them was full of holes. I don’t know if it was a hail storm, or vandals, but every one was ruined. I never found out the story behind that poor house, but it is once again a very sad and lonely house. It’s a real shame.

So I called the heating company and told them what happened, and they told me to call their carpet cleaner Round Rock company to come out and clean up the mess and to send the bill to the heating company I was happy that some professionals were going to come in and disinfect and dry out the carpet with their huge fans that make me think of airplane propellers I was quite relieved.

Going to the Lost Dog Cafe with Sue and Jarod today was interesting. I’ve heard about the Lost Dog Cafe before, and have wanted to go there for the past few months, so I was really glad when they suggested that we go there today. We split a large Polynesian pizza, which was really good. It has been several years since I’ve had a Polynesian pizza that had bacon on it; most of the pizza places just puts ham and pineapple on it. This one had ham, pineapple, bacon, and shrimp on it. I asked for ginger ale to drink and was given a brand of ginger ale I’d never had before – I think it was called Dominion ginger ale. It was sweetened with honey, or maybe raw cane sugar – I can’t remember which, but it was very good.

After the pizza, we drove Jarod back to his apartment, and he invited us to come in and check out his new digs. I’ve been there before a couple of times, but Sue never had been there before, so we went in for the nickle tour. While Jarod was showing Sue around, I asked if I could use the bathroom, and Jarod told me to go ahead and use the one that was in the hallway outside of his room.

I was rather surprised to see that there was a new vessel sink in the bathroom; it looked a little bit out of place in the house. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the look of vessel sinks! The house is an old brick cape cod style that was built probably in the 1940′s in an older neighborhood. Seeing the clear vessel sink and an oriental-inspired faucet that looked like a stick of bamboo just seemed a little bit out of place in that house. I know that I’m not an interior decorator, but I would have expected a more traditional pedestal sink in a house like that. I wondered what prompted the building owner to choose that style of sink.

My kids were just not loving it in the city – they weren’t really making any friends and I didn’t necessarily feel safe with them walking long distances and things like that. I thought about it for a long time and I finally made the decision last year that it’s time for us to all move out here to the country for a different life. We’ve been here for about 6 months now and the kids are adjusting really well. We got a dog and http://internet.hughesnet.com internet so they could still get on Facebook and all that and I generally just feel more rested and less stressed being out here. My boss is allowing me to work from the farm most of the time which is great since it’s about an hour commute and I just feel good about the changes my family is making. My kids are great kids but they needed more room to thrive and I feel like now that we’re out here in the country they can really be who they were meant to be.

Last night I was watching a repeat television show of My name is Earl. I’ve only ever watched that particular show two or three times in my life before because normally I am busy doing something else when it is on the air. But last night I was having trouble falling asleep and turned on the television just as that show came on. The show was about how tornadoes kept hitting the trailer park where the show’s characters were living, and that everyone’s possessions were strewn around. When the tornado subsided everyone was going crazy trying to take possession of the items that were strewn around.

In a way it made me think of a treasure hunt, people looking for the “best” find. They had a “finders keepers” rule – whoever gets it in their hands first gets to keep it. What was particularly humorous about this was that people were valuing some items that would hold the interest of most people. The adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” was demonstrated throughout the show. The next time I’m channel surfing and see that My name is Earl in on, I think I’ll watch it again. It was a little bit slapstick, but funny just the same.

We’ve been thinking about putting some patio pavers on the ground right outside of the sliding glass doors in the basement to make the area look like an outdoor living room/lounging area. I am even thinking about turning the area out there under the deck into a screen room, but first we want to take care of the yard. We’d like to make a path with paving stone that winds down to the platform at the pond’s edge from the back deck.

For now we need to come to a decision about whether to set the stones in gravel, concrete, or go the more natural route and simply have them set in mulch. I’m inclined to go with gravel or mulch because concrete does not fare well in this area. I’d like to do something in the back yard that will reduce the amount of mowing that I have to do back there; there are several steep hillsides that need to be terraced. I think that with a little bit of elbow grease that we could have this yard ship-shape in no time at all!

So anyway I’ve decided to try to dig up some of the plants to space them further apart, giving them a little bit more room to let the air circulate, and then I will try a drip irrigation system of leaving the perforated hose in the garden winding around and through the plants. I think that will minimize the amount of work I need to do, and hopefully will solve the problem. Have you had any experience with this problem? How did you fix it?

I guess we should be grateful that they came and picked us up! We never would have found them if they had just moved away and left us there! Wouldn’t that have been a nightmare for the camp owners and/or family friends! Anyway, the point being we never saw the work involved in moving, all of the packing and unpacking, none of the negotiations with removal companies, none of the headaches.

Since I’ve grown up and been on my own I have had to move five times. And they were a pain. Especially the first four – prior to the invention of the Internet. I found it very difficult to locate the services that I needed to make the move go smoothly. Thank goodness for the Internet and all of the resources that I’ve been able to use to find the right companies and services that I needed to make the last move as easy as possible. It even helped me find the house that I wanted to buy!

The list of things that need to get done before moving is seriously getting longer and longer. I know that I sort of take on that responsibility since I am a homemaker and my husband works out of the home, but he is going to have to help me with some of this list or it just isn’t going to get done in time. The things at the top of my list today are to research New york energy rates and find a list of day-cares that I am going to check out when we go for our house hunting trip. I really am excited about this move, but I do wish that I could crawl in my bed and just wake up when all of this work is done! I just want to wake up and be in my new home with everything unpacked and my children in their new schools. This is not my first rodeo, I have done this plenty of times. I know in my heart that it will all get done and work out, I just need to start my to-do list!