This morning, when I went out to feed the Emergency Backup Horse, Monty, I saw three deer keeping him company in the big pasture. Iggy was accompanying me until she saw them and identified them as potential cat eaters. She then assured me she had my back and took off. The deer split casually. Monty slept through the whole thing.
Later today, I was looking out my office window trying to figure out why a test was failing when I saw a redtail hawk swoop down on our pond and grab one of the fish. He hung out on the bank for a little while then took off with his brunch. Very cool :-)
Well, the move went ok in the end. A big shout out to the folks who helped us out: Elie "Big Gun" Bitton, Jesse "I'm too sexy for my pants" Savage, Chris "I'll move the beer" Chu Lin, Ben and Carmella "Team Vong" Vong, Mike "Tetris" Ying, Ed "Mr. Ed" Smith, and, of course, Bill and Constace. The team moved all my crap down to the parking lot in under two hours. Then they loaded it into the truck, no, wait, they didn't. Not yet. Because THE TRUCK WASN'T THERE!
Here comes a load of hate for those fsckers from UHaul. We reserved a 23ft truck in May. The way their system "works", from as best as I can tell is...well, it doesn't work. But, the way it's supposed to work is entirely JIT optimized for equipment in use, rather than service. They know they have a 23ft truck being dropped off somewhere in the Bay Area some time on Saturday. When the truck comes in, they call you. It may be ready at 9am or it may be ready at 5pm. I can't prove this now, but I believe they kinda imply that it's closer to 9 than 5. If they explicitly stated the flexible time thing, we certainly wouldn't have gone with them. I can guarantee, though, that they mention it when you call to complain about NOT HAVING A TRUCK! They say (imagine whiney voice), "We never told you what time you'll get your truck."
So, ok. Now if you suppose that it's more or less acceptable to get your 23ft truck at 5pm instead of 9am, just wait. There's more. Susan and I took turns calling them. Finally, around 11am, with all my possessions piled up on the curb like I'd just been evicted from a crack house, I called UHaul again. By the way, if you ever meet someone named Penny who says she works for the UHaul call center, look her square in the eye and kick her in the shin. As she hops around on one foot say, "That's for hanging up on my man, Colin, twice!" Yeah, how do you like me now, Penny?
When I wasn't being hung up on by Penny, I was trying to get her to give me two trucks, or a truck with a trailer, or anything bigger than a minivan. To be fair, she did offer me a 10ft truck in San Francisco. Who knows, maybe I would have been better off. I could have chucked almost all of my stuff and started over. Since that didn't occur to me, I decided to pass on Penny's offer. We ended up discussing the merits of her proposal and debating the exact drive time (round trip) to San Francisco. Penny seemed to possess rather anemic math skills, which led her to suggest 30 minutes. I was sticking closer to 2 hours. Anyway, as Penny soon hung up on me again, I decided that UHaul wasn't in our future.
Mike suggested I call a local truck rental place. The first one I called didn't have any trucks, but did recommend calling a San Jose outfit called Monarch. They had a 26ft truck they could let us have for about the same as it would have cost us with UHaul. We took the truck. The only downside is that we had to get the truck back by the same time the next day.
We drove the truck back, loaded up all our stuff (it turns out the 26ft was just about right). Off we went, leaving about 4pm. I wish I had pictures of the truck or all my stuff in the parking lot.
More to come...
This is the end of the first week on the farm. So far, I really like it! I like working at home and look forward to completing the setup of my office. One of the things I've struggled with in the first week is the lack of a routine with respect to work. With the broadband downtime and various other infrastructure problems relating to the move, it's been very difficult getting more than a few hours of productive work in at a time. Coupled with a particularly hard assignment at work, it's just been bad luck that's caused me a fair bit of stress. Luckily, Susie has been very patient with me so far, and I think I'm starting to get some traction.
I hope this isn't too boring to read. I will include some more pictures soon. I've just been absolutely slammed.
Anyway, I love getting back to the rural life. I spent most of my childhood in a rural setting and realize I have been missing things in my life like these:
- dark skies at night with lots of stars
- quiet
- no crowds
- fewer traffic jams
- pretty views
- critters
Susan has been working very hard getting the outdoors part of the farm in shape. She's been poo-shoveling like a woman possessed with a desire to shovel poo. The main pasture already looks a lot better. She'll be happier, I suspect, using the tractor. She's also worked very hard inside, cleaning and scrubbing and organizing.
I plan on working on her tackroom next and putting together an irrigation plan.
Hooray, broadband is functional. A real pain in the ass to set up. I was worried about having enough bandwidth to do my magic, so I planned for two ISDN lines (4 channels) and bought an appropriate router. Ended up choosing the Lucent Superpipe 95, acquired from ebay for 1/10 retail, allegedly new. Heh. I got the box, and the unit showed no wear, everything was included, doc, cords, etc. I hooked it up and R'd the FM's. First danger sign was that their easy setup utility runs only on windoze. No m$ stuff in the house, so I'll have to telnet in. Second danger sign was that the unit didn't respond to the default ip according to the doc. I fired up a packet sniffer and found its ip. Third danger sign was that the unit had been configured for use as a T1 router.
OK, so it wasn't new after all. I will skip three days worth of agony and get to the point where I managed to get it working. It's a great box, but almost impossible to configure. Fscking hell. I figure the seller couldn't abide the stoopid thing. My benefit (in the long run).
Yay! Life on the farm is very very good. I love our house and our property. I bought us a pair of fm walkie-talkies so Susie can tell me when she wants a cool drink. Lots of work to do, to be sure. I put up a new mailbox; how weird is it that the last folks took theirs? Very weird.
We bought a tractor today. And a washer and dryer.
Back to work, my compile is done...
So here I sit, day three on the farm, and Colin
finally got the router to work so that we can be
online. Poor guy, he was hoping this would only take
one afternoon (Monday when we got here), and getting
us up and running in the computer department has taken
until just a few hours ago. Whew! Yesterday we
actually had to go to town (Grass Valley) to sit at a
cafe that has WiFi so that he could send email to
work.
In the meantime, I have certainly been keeping busy
myself. The seller, April, said that she would clean
the house over the weekend before we arrived. Well,
her idea of clean and my idea of clean are obviously
on two ends of the spectrum. The walls are filthy
dirty with fingerprints, pencil, crayon, and god knows
what else. I swear, sometimes I think there are even
boogers on the wall! I guess that's what happens when
you have a house full of kids. Which is another
reason I don't want them.
So after unloading the truck and trailer on Monday
afternoon, I spent the next couple of hours cleaning
the walls and cabinets and doors and door frames of
the kitchen and laundry room. Using just a sponge and
Pine-sol, I wan't too hopeful that I'd be successful.
Pine-sol doesn't entirely do the trick. We went to
town for dinner Monday night and then made our way to
Safeway for scrubby sponges, Soft Scrub, and general
starter groceries. I then unpacked most of the boxes
that we brought. Oh yeah, and we had the biggest
black beetle I've ever seen in the garage.
Surprisingly, my blood pressure didn't go up and I
didn't have a heart attack. Ah, life in the country.
Yesterday morning, I spent a few hours scrubbing the
walls - Soft Scrub and the scrubby sponges did the
trick! I worked on the living room and hallway. Man
those people were dirty!!! After the DirecTV guy
came, we went to town (for the previously mentioned
emailing trip) and I ran some errands while Colin
worked. Then we took the scenic route towards home (I
love finding my way around!), and went to the hardware
store. How fun!!! Really!
One funny thing to note is that the sellers took the
mailbox! It must have been some family heirloom or
something, because I mean geez, why would you take a
mailbox!? So we had to buy a mailbox and the numbers
and letters for our street because the mailman doesn't
actually come to our house, all the boxes are together
at the end of the road.
I forgot to mention that I went to the feedstore to
get hay. Monty, our retired, lame, pasture horse, had
just a bit of hay in the barn (the sellers will keep
feeding him as we ask until we get up here
permanently) so I needed to get stocked up. One ton
of hay is 16 bales, and each bale weighs about 125
lbs (thank you Colin, for doing the math in your head).
They couldn't deliver until Saturday, so I made
arrangements to return at the end of the day with my
trailer.
After Colin and I came back from the hardware store, I
hooked up my trailer and went to the feedstore. Man,
that feed store guy can move hay bales like nobody's
business. He is a master with the sharp, pointy,
hay-bale-moving-things! It took him less than 15
minutes to load up, then off I went for home. Colin
came out and we unloaded the hay and brought it up in
a wagon and a dolly to the barn. Colin stacked it on
the pallets and we were set! I decided to spend an
hour in the barn sweeping and getting rid of cobwebs.
I also decided to give our old friend Monty a
grooming.
Monty is the SWEETEST horse! He just stood in the
pasture, stopped eating, and enjoyed the scratching
and brushing. His feet are in bad shape, so I've got
to get the farrier out soon to see him (and obviously
not the same farrier who has been working on him so
far). While I was grooming, I heard a big kersplash!
and saw Colin in the pool, enjoying a cool dip after
unloading and stacking a ton of hay.
After the grooming, I parked my trailer and headed
inside for a shower of my own. Then we went out for
pizza and beer and called it a night.
Unfortunately, we didn't sleep well due to the kitten
pathetically mewing outside the bedroom door, so Colin
got up at 3:30 am to see if he could make progress on
the ISDN connection. I finally got back to sleep when
the sun was coming up.
I woke up at 7:30, brushed my teeth, ate some
breakfast, and went out to feed Monty. (Colin had
taken off for the cafe again because he had no luck
with the router) And looking at all the poop in the
pasture, I knew what today's project would be. I
spent four hours this morning shoveling manure out in
the field and carting it over to the manure pile. The
manure pile couldn't possibly be farther from the
barn, but I don't really see any other place to put it
just yet. Since we don't yet have a tractor, this was
all done by hand and a small wheelbarrow. I'd say it
took me 15 minutes a load to shovel and move and dump.
I worked for four hours. I'm too tired to do the
math, so if you figure it out, you can let me know.
The upside of all this? I'm sure there is no way I
could consume as many calories as I'm burning off, so
I had Colin bring me a chocolate croissant from the
bakery. I must say, though, that the pasture looks
great. Even though I'm only halfway done. It gave me
a lot of time to think of a poo strategy, though. To
keep the horses stalled, or leave them out? If they
are stalled during the night, the poo will be
concentrated more so it will be easier to clean from
one place. The negative part, though, is that they'll
pee in there and it will smell like urine and the
shavings and urine won't compost as well as just poo
alone. So I'm thinking at least until wintertime
comes around that the horses can just stay out 24/7.
Once I get a handle on the current load of manure
(which has just been piling up all over the pasture
for the past week at least), I'm hoping it will be
easier to keep up with. I'm going to get a
harrow-type thing and I can just drag that over the
poo in the pasture to break it up.
So, is that more than you ever wanted to know about
manure? I could share more...I learned a lot in four
hours!
While I was out in the pasture, Colin radioed me to
say he got the router to work - hooray! He is a hero
and a brilliant man, indeed!
So after lunch I went to our bedroom to clean more
walls and doors and window-sills, and now here I am.
The rest of the day will be spent cleaning more walls
and doors and window-sills, putting our mailbox up,
cleaning a stall out and putting mats down, finding
the organic grocery store, finding a tack store, and
then sleep I guess.
I haven't worked so hard in my entire life.
Oh yeah, and I drilled holes and put up water buckets
yesterday, and Colin helped me put up crossties in the
grooming stall.
Is that it? I think so for now.
Well, time for another update, I suppose. We've been so busy working on finalizing details - electrician's estimate, paper signing, final walkthrough, packing, trips to Goodwill and Auction Drop, setting up utilities, blah, blah, blah - that we haven't posted in a while.
Turns out the electrician says that, believe it or not, it is OK to have extension cords running from the house to power the pool equipment and the arena sprinklers. He says that golf courses do it all the time, and, well, if golf courses do it then that's good enough for me. While he was there, though, he did check the pond pump which the sellers fixed, and said that THAT work was not up to code so gave us an estimate for fixing it. So we asked the sellers for a credit in that amount and they agreed. For some reason, this creates a problem for the lender, because the house is not being purchased for what we said it was. I don't get it. Common sense doesn't seem to be very common, even if you are a financial institution.
I am starting to freak out on a larger scale. Am I really going to be able to drive a tractor and drag the arena? Is the footing in the arena ok, or will I have to add Fibar or sand or some other mixture to it? How much will that cost, and how on earth do I do that? I guess that's where using the tractor comes into play. Where am I going to get jumps? Do I get wood or PVC? There are pros and cons to both. How much will they cost? How long will establishing my ring take me? Will Miles and Monty get along ok? What will my daily routine be? What time will I feed the horses? Do I keep the stall doors closed while I'm feeding so they can't bother each other? Then what time do I turn them out? And for how long? Do I need new stall mats for the stalls? And what about the aisle? And under the water troughs? And how much will that cost me? Do I put Miles and Monty in the stalls that are next to each other, or do I put one on each side of the aisle? Where do I store the hay? In the extra stall, or in the "open" space which could be a grooming stall. And that's just the tip of the iceberg...I have many more worries than that for the barn, let alone for the house.
Last Monday was my first Monday as a non-employed woman. It hit me then that being non-employed means that I'm not getting any more paychecks. I know that technically I'll be ok - I've got most of my bills paid and I only have 1/2 month of rent to pay before we move, and I've got enough savings - but that sends me into a panic also. What IF? What IF something bad happens??!! It felt weird to not go to work on that first Monday. I kind of felt like I was on vacation and would be returning to work this week. But this week has rolled around and I'm still not going to work. I like being able to arrange my day the way I want, not around being at work, which sometimes just gets in the way. I get to ride in the morning and let Miles have the rest of the day to eat, nap, and play. That leaves me with the rest of the day to eat, nap, and play. I mean pack, pack, and pack.
Speaking of packing, it is a Good Thing that Colin kept his boxes. His box collection is coming in handy sooner than he expected, I presume. I am making Good Progress on my packing, and I try to do a little bit every day. I am organizing my garage into a section of things we'll need to take up on our first trip, and everything else. Of course, all the barn stuff goes up first. I'd like to have my barn set up before I bring Miles home and before we bring all the other house stuff up. That way when we bring the U-Haul up, I can focus my attention on getting the house settled. Which will bring me closer to being employed again. I must admit that I have feelings of guilt right now about not working. Colin works so hard and I'm...NOT. I want to feel like I am contributing to our new life together, even if it is just a little bit.
I can't believe J. Lo married Marc Anthony (is that his name?) over the weekend. Clearly that woman cannot be alone and is afraid of it for some reason.
Well, I need to go take a shower because I did yoga and went riding this morning. I have a lunch date with some friends from my work...or the place I used to work...and I don't think they'd appreciate my barn smell. Colin doesn't know how I can stand to be so stinky. I didn't get the nickname "Smelly" in college for nothing.
