What's New?

Yesterday I was messaging with my sister-in-law about plans to spend some time with my nieces this upcoming week and she asked, "how long will you be up here?" and the answer is: I don't know. I just can't think of a reason to go back to Riverdale. I'm home. More than any time in the last eleven months, I feel like I'm at home here in the mountains. It's beautiful. The weather is perfect. We're comfortable and relaxed and have plenty of room to stretch out and... I just love it here.

In the absence of any drama to share... I thought I'd share a few photos showing what's new at the mountain house.

 We have curtains in the kitchen window. We didn't really miss them but Mama hung them up yesterday and it just makes it feel so much more like home.

TV + satellite means home to me. We love the house and we love this place and we got by ok for the first 8 months without satellite here but... you know what a couch potato I am... this makes it home.

HELLLLLOOOOO! Must be able to have clean clothes. It was a bit of a pain to haul our dirty clothes back to Riverdale after every weekend. Ironically, the dryer at the house in Riverdale started making this odd sound last week. New washer, new dryer, welcome home!

Ok... this is a bit rigged but it's effective. We have this beautiful screened in porch overlooking the lake. And we have this incredibly mild Spring weather where we could easily leave the windows open and the door to the screened porch open. Only we're still in the process of rehabbing this foreclosure and the screened door has a big enough hole in it for a curious little kitty to sneak out so we have it blocked. Aren't we fancy?

And so the curious Little Trouble Kitty is able to stretch out on the porch and enjoy the sounds of birds singing and frogs croaking and I swear I heard an old hoot owl last night. He's so happy out there! So happy that he doesn't know that cats and rocking chairs don't mix.

Little Kitty especially enjoys watching the adventures of the goose family that lives on our bank of the lake. If you look just by the water line you can see them. It's a mama and a daddy and three babies. Or maybe it's two mamas and three babies. I don't know. I just know they wander up into the yard and enjoy the sunshine and Little Kitty sits on the porch and swishes his tail.

I've been using the bathroom up on the third floor because it's big and spacious and nobody else uses it and it has a low tub so it's not as hard for me to step in and out (although I did manage to knock the heck out of my pinkie toe stepping into it the other day.). Austin has been using the basement bathroom and there's random Austin-things everywhere. Also, the shower in the basement is so small that you're always under the stream of water. Makes it hard to do a three minute conditioner on your hair. Plus, the upstairs bathroom has a huge closet where I can keep my clothes since we don't have dressers to keep my stuff downstairs. We still only have one bed here, my old bed, which is in mama and daddy's bedroom. We have two great air mattresses. We have two couches. Here's mine down in the basement with an ottoman beside it for Little Kitty to sleep on. Mama doesn't like the bed so she sleeps on an air mattress in the living room. Austin sleeps on a regular mattress on the floor in his bomb-shelter of a bedroom (no windows). As long as we leave the door to the basement open, we can leave the litter box in the basement...

This is what will be my bedroom in the basement eventually. It's handy keeping the litter box way down there... much better than having it where I'm sleeping as we do at the house in Riverdale. When I first got sick last weekend, I was woke up at about 3am when some cat made a deposit to the poop bank and the smell was horrendous. Basement litter box is awesome.

I've thought about making my bedroom on the top floor because the bedrooms there are huuuuuge but I very much love the view from the bottom floor and having my own exit and then there's this nifty porch swing looking at the lake...

*sigh*

No idea when we're going back to the Southside of town where there's traffic and crime and where you don't dare go out after dark.

Right now I'm pretty content right where I am.

Hope you're having a great weekend and enjoying a little patch of sunshine and a happy place.

Love and hugs, y'all!