I did a similar blog entry a few months ago, but my life is a lot different now.
Time is less rigid these days. I’m not getting up at first light, nor do I need to commute through traffic to get to a full-time job. I can stay up pretty late writing my novella or chatting with my gaming friends. We’re still on Pacific time. Due to my husband working remotely with his team on the west coast, our schedule adjusts around that, and while I think sunrise is beautiful, I’ve always been a late-night person, so this schedule suits me well.
Since I’m not working, other than writing and curating the Dragonfly.eco site, I am doing most of the cooking these days. In the old days, we would go out to eat often, due to working so much and being too tired or just not having time to cook when we got home if we wanted to eat at a decent time. I’m really enjoying cooking and am being able to incorporate fresh garden herbs into dishes. Since I got here, I’ve been making some old southern recipes that my mammaw, mom, and aunt made through the years. Some of them have a midwestern bent, like a hybrid. Everything from green beans with bacon, wilted lettuce, southern fried chicken, southern cornbread, various white gravies over toast or biscuits, and so forth, has hit our table.
These days, I get up and do a variety of chores, depending on the day and what needs to be done. I water trees every other day, water the garden every day, and find little projects around that need to be done. I have a huge list of things to be finished in the future, but some require further planning and purchases. Our goal was to buy mostly used but cool/rustic furniture after moving, and those types of places aren’t open yet.
My latest projects have been to build a DIY firepit that cost less than $15.00, deep-clean the water jets in our tub, help Morgan with putting branches and leaves through the woodchipper, mulch the gardens, make solar-light pathways both in the front and back yards, and draw up the plans for our future projects: rearrange the living room to include a book case and woodstove and repaint several rooms. I’ve also taken some of our backyard bounty to make jar-vase wildflowers, for the house. And I’ve made friends with Charlie the seagull, who was the previous owner’s friend; he’d come by for a chicken hotdog occasionally, but now he gets healthier seeds and snacks, which he does not seem to appreciate–but there’s a new crow friend, whom I’ve named Anna, who will always come by when Charlie does–and she appreciates the snacks.
We’ve been impressed by the bonfire pit, how it turned out, and by the wood we got from Barrett Firewood. It’s soft wood, nice and dry. We’ve had two bonfires, and it’s like a dream come true, sitting out there at night. We never could have bonfires back on the west coast, but here we can. The day I built the fire pit, however, we had not had rain for a while so were in a fire ban. Since then, we’ve had some rain, though most days are hot, humid, and sunny. At least the ban has been lifted. I love sitting out there at night, for nights are cool and feel so much like autumn, yet we can see lightning bugs, stars, and the moon. The various flowers around the property scent the air. Last night we built another fire, this time taking from the two bigger hard wood logs from the old fire pit, and they finally caught fire and burned down all the way. The only thing missing is hanging out with friends around the fire–but, honestly, it doesn’t look like the virus is really letting up. In the states it might have begun to, but then people just got dumb and decided no masks were needed or they could join crowds again. Now the numbers are spiking again. Here in Nova Scotia it’s not been too bad, comparably. Some restrictions have been lifted, but not all. Still, I am glad my husband and I just have a good time together and this locking down of social life hasn’t made us crazy. We still have wonderful talks and dreams–and it’s nice sitting by the bonfire, listening to some tunes, drinking wine or coffee, and being part of the night around us.
I mentioned that at night it’s pretty cool here, and it really does feel like fall, my favorite season. I don’t even want to get into “I can’t wait for fall!” yet. I love summer. I don’t like long winters, really, so we’re going to have to stay creative and busy when it turns to winter. I’ve always thought we just have to enjoy the now and treat one day at a time, finding the pleasures in it. But it is nice to enjoy the deep summer as well as autumn-like nights at the same time.
I mentioned about our projects we’re getting ready to start doing. Here’s our living room:
I haven’t done a darn thing with this room except get a sofabed for it, put some doohickies on the corner wall things, and hang some geraniums in the bay window. I also took up an old rug and cleaned the tape off the floor. Last week we went to a woodstove place in Halifax, and they are coming out tomorrow morning to figure out the installation of the stove. It’ll go in the left corner of the living room, and the sofabed will have to be moved down away from it. I don’t particularly like the corner wall things or the lamps, and I don’t like the lime green color on the wall, so before the stove gets installed I will need to get some painting supplies and a more neutral color and paint that wall and remove the hanging things. The left wall is more of an off-white. This room extends into the dining room, which you cannot see here.
You can see, that although the lighting is different, the previous owners used the same green paint on the opposite wall of the dining room, and I want to repaint this to a more neutral color. I love green, but not on walls particularly!
Back to the living room–the couch is covered right now by a knit blanket my mom made years and years ago. I just put it on there for now because of the summer cat hair that’s being shed, and the blanket is at least washable. I will also take down the corner wall hangings and put in a coffee table. Right now we just have two tv trays serving as end-tables, but we’ll move those eventually somewhere else, or just store them for when we have company. The footstool served me well when I first got here, but that’ll go to the basement. The books in the corner are the only ones I brought with me. It hurt the most to leave a lot of books behind, but once things start opening up again, I’ll rebuild my library. I did bring most of the books people had personally signed or given to me, as well as some older classics. Anyway, I’m still looking for a bookshelf. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I had ordered one with a gift card, but it came with parts missing and I had to send it back.
Once we get the walls painted and the woodstove installed, I’ll get some frames and add more pics to the walls. The horse in the living room is one my husband’s aunt painted a few years ago.
The next project is our bedroom. We decided to sleep in the basement since it’s cool down there in the summertime. But the walls need to be painted as well. I’m going out tomorrow morning to get some TSP so I can start preparing the walls for painting.
Having written all this, I guess there is no typical day in the life. It all varies, but it seems wonderful to me.