Almost Home
in Giggles on July 10, 2022
Happy Sunday Morning to y’all!
I thought this would be a nice way to start our week. This is my first blog post sitting in my new office, at my new desk, in my new house!
I gotta say, it feels great—weird, but great!
The sun is barely starting to wake up, the pond is quiet and still, there are no discernible critters moving around, except my nosy dogs (and they’re here in the house with me), and somehow or another—my coffee just tastes better in here.
We’ve started hanging pictures on the walls…my kitchen is all put together and functional, and I’ve made so many trips to Hobby Lobby, the workers in three different stores know me by name and help me out to my car, saying: “See you in a day or two, Mrs. Louis!”
Mastercard and VISA are going to LOVE me this month…Jeff is not.
I’ll add (try to…y’all know my limitations with technology) some pictures toward the end of this post of a few of the finished rooms. This place is really beginning to feel like our home—not just a house.
Lest I deceive y’all into thinking that I have moved into a Norman Rockwell painting, please allow me to fill you in on just a few of the activities of our new “Country Life”.
Let me first begin with the dust. We’ve been in our new house for roughly seven weeks. For the first four of those weeks, we had no grass…no grass anywhere. We bought seven acres of land…three of those acres were cleared and trenched to dig a pond. Two and a half more, were cleared, leveled and raised (with MORE dirt) to build the house. Which means, once my house was completed, and on move-in day, my brand-new clean house had enough dust blow through the open doors to change the color of the paint on my walls.
I could, and unfortunately still can, write my name on many of the surfaces inside.
As we do live on land with a large pond, we thought it prudent to fence the property. Our neighbors to the left have Littles (precious little boys and a darling baby girl), and a nice body of water might prove to be too tempting to resist. The fencing process is definitely something worthy of its own post; however, I’ll condense it down…
Our neighbors directly across the street also deserve their own post; however, I’ll give them fair warning before I do! They were the first people we met on the street, and like it or not, we’re gonna be friends with them FOREVER!! Solid people. So blessed to have met them.
Our neighbors to the right seem to be having a bit of trouble playing well with others, and understanding property lines and county surveys.
In short, after only a few short weeks of moving in, we’ve got ourselves a good old-fashioned property-line feud.
I would be upset about this, if it wasn’t so funny and completely CUT AND DRY. We’ve had our land surveyed three times, to be SURE of the lines and the corners…our south side border extends a bit further than our neighbors care to admit…about twenty feet further.
So naturally, when our fence guys showed up to stake the fence, they were met with some extreme resistance from our neighbors who had some issues with where exactly our new fence was to be placed—-as they had taken it upon themselves to grass and sprinkler system roughly twenty feet of our land. Suffice to say, the ensuing conversations and interactions with them have been nothing short of raging dumpster fires and bedlam, ending with them digging up their installed sprinkler heads and grass.
Insert eye roll.
We most likely will NOT be invited over to their house for dinner any time soon.
After the fence went in, our sprinkler system guys came out to tackle the messy, difficult, and LONG process of digging ALLLLL of the ditches so they could install the sprinkler system. I am beyond grateful for their hard work…but…ditch-digging machinery, combined with the Texas wind created a permanent cloud of dust and dirt worthy of Pig Pen from Charley Brown.
I gave up trying to clean anything until they were finished. Even my dust rags said, “No.”
Three weeks ago, the grass arrived!!
Pallets and pallets and truckloads of grass.
I’ve never been accused of having a green thumb. Plants usually just give up and die as soon as they see me…this is a known fact, so needless to say, I was a bit nervous about my two acres of fresh sod. Thankfully the sprinkler system DOES work, and most of the baby grass is surviving this uncommonly early and brutal Texas summer.
We have had weeks with multiple days of TRIPLE DIGIT HEAT, and to make matters worse, we have not had rain at my house in EIGHT WEEKS. I live on the outskirts of HOUSTON—it usually rains more here than in SEATTLE!! SMH.
But, as I said, the sprinkler system is working…perhaps a little too well…or at least we haven’t quite figured out all of the tweaks about timing and direction of all of the zones.
With growing grass, eventually it will need to be mowed. Jeff and I spent twenty years in a subdivision with a yard service. I know that sounds incredibly boujee, but it is what it is.
We do not have such a service out here. We are in the country.
The more I think about this, and the further I get into this post, the louder and more clear the theme song from Green Acres plays in my head!!
Jeff bought lawn equipment.
Not just a lawn mower…but equipment.
A riding mower (obviously—who wants to PUSH mow acres?)
A weed eater.
A blower.
A machete. Let that sink in for a minute.
And…a CHAIN SAW.
Twenty years. We spent twenty years in a house, on a cul-de-sac, with neighbors close enough that I could reach out my kitchen window to their kitchen window to borrow a cup of sugar, grass I never once thought about, NO trees whatsoever that needed maintenance of ANY kind…and now…now…
Now, I’m married to Old MacDonald.
Well…sorta.
Remember the slight issues we’re having with the sprinkler system? Last night, Jeff got the mower stuck…twice…in particularly mucky areas. He managed to free it himself the first time. The second time…well…let’s say we’re waiting on Emma’s boyfriend to come over later for some manual labor.
Apparently there’s a slight learning curve with land ownership.
The fence guys aren’t yet finished either. We still have the entire back of the property to go…not really because of privacy (we don’t have any neighbors to speak of behind us) but because…drum roll please…
Jeff wants a donkey.
A. DONKEY.
And goats.
Miniature FAINTING GOATS.
Whatttt??!!
Praise Jesus the HOA does not allow chickens, and we don’t have enough land for a cow.
Can you even imagine ME milking a damn cow??
So, for those faithful readers who may have been wondering why I’m a little sporadic in my postings…this…THIS is why. I am managing extreme chaos, still unpacking mountains of boxes (WHY I have so much crap is beyond me) and trying to keep my own crazy tucked far enough in so as not to unleash my own inner redneck on my cranky neighbors…I don’t want to scare off the other sets of neighbors, who incidentally, are completely FABULOUS.
Have a great week…and STAY TUNED!!
