Deer Fishing

Deer Fishing is something Shaw & Papa invented.  We have an apple tree in the back yard that provided us with a surprise bumper crop of tiny, tender, sweet apples.  Shaw put an apple on a long stick, prop it up against the fence and wait.  Soon a deer would come and eat the apple off of the stick.  Then more deer would come.  Then we gave up on the sticks and just rolled the apples to them.  Aubrey would toss apples and even hit a buck in the head.  He just stared at her for a moment, then bent down and ate the apple.  Now they just wait at the back deck for us to come out and feed them.  They won’t eat out of our hand, but get pretty close.  The other day Shaw was feeding them from a bucket of apples that was in the kitchen.  He would take a bite of each apple before he rolled it to the deer.

Shaw has named them, all of them.  There is Sweet Mama & Sweet Baby.  Sweet Little Mama and twin fawns, both called Sweet Little Baby.  Cute Daddy, Big Cute Daddy and Sweet Daddy.  Do you sense a pattern?  There are more that hang around, but these make up the little group that stays around our house the most.  Of them all, Big Cute Daddy is the one most coveted by the hunters in the family.  He’s off limits though.  After surviving Aubrey’s apple thumping and still coming around, he’s part of the family.

Cute Daddy in the side yard.

Sweet Daddy under the pines.  His coat is turning for winter.

Of course deer are not the only wild animals that come around, there are squirrels, chipmunks, mink, bears & mountain lions.  Thankfully, we've yet to encounter a bear or mountain lion, but we've seen the evidence that they've been here.  

There are about a zillion different birds.  Ducks, geese, hawks, eagles, robins, finches, woodpeckers, hummingbirds and magpies to name a few.  A lot of them have left for warmer climates, but a surprising number remain.

There are about 12-14 wild turkeys that come around every few days.  They watch Jim climb up and down the ladder, fascinated by his amazing human trick.  The Tom turkey will fan out his tail & puff up occasionally, and that is as impressive as Jim’s ladder antics.  They don’t stay very long, Shaw or Bandit will keep them stirred up until they’ve had enough and sashay on down the road, chirping and fussing along the way.  Sometimes they are in the trees on the property behind us.  I had never seen turkeys sitting in trees before, and they are almost invisible against the foliage and tree bark.  Oh, and never, ever walk under trees with turkeys in them. 

They've had enough of Bandit & Shaw.

Turkey in a tree.  You don't see that every day, unless you live here!

I was going to paint, but I heard thunder and decided to blog instead

  

Well, it’s been a long time!  The little tar-paper house underwent quite a transformation while I was gone.  We finished putting up siding before I had to go out of town for a few weeks.  Covering up the tar-paper changed the whole look of the place.  I think the property value went up 70% with that alone. 

While I was away Jim started painting the main part of the house.  We hadn’t bought the paint before I left, so he could have gotten any color, but he stuck with our plan and got the blue.  What a change!  The windows are or will be red and the main trim will be gray.  But what yall don’t know is Jim hates to paint.   It’s absolutely his least favorite DIY project.  I feared I would have to paint the entire house with a brush.  Covering the stucco would be the worst!   But when I got back  the main part of the house was nearly finished.  Jim’s super-power?  Ryobi airless paint sprayer. 

Jim & his secret weapon.  Oh, and that is the gas regulator installed at the snow line!

No more tar-paper!

The blue is called ‘windy seas’, appropriate for an old sailor like Jim.  The gray is ‘quartz stone’ and the red is ‘oops’ paint, $15.00 for 5 gallons.  The red had been really bright, almost hot pink, but we had them add some tint to darken it up.  It is still a little brighter than I would have liked, but at 90% off retail, it looks pretty good!

Our pellet stove should be here in about a week.  We are in a race against time to get ready for the Wyoming winter.  There are still some places up in the eaves that have insulation poking out of them, they need to be covered and sealed.  The furnace in the shop needs to be repaired.  There is no heat in the cabin or the little house in front.  We need to make a decision about a generator.  All the neighbors have told us that the power will go out for a few days several times during the winter.  And I still need a job & a vehicle.  On the positive side, all the plumbing is in good shape for winter.  The electrical work is complete, all buildings have power and no wires are laying around for me to hit with the mower.  There is still a lot of junk in the yard, just piles of it.  As soon as we complete winterizing the house I hope to clean up the yard a bit more before the snow begins to fall.

I missed our little cottage in the pines.   But mostly I missed my sweetie.

Keeping Busy

It’s about 60 degrees this morning, after a few pretty warm days it is a nice change.  Granted, it is nowhere near the heat we are used to enduring every summer, but 90+ is still hot, and no air conditioning makes a huge difference. 

We’ve been putting siding on the outside of the house.  But we ran out, because Jim wasn’t sure he’d like the way it looked so we waited till he made up his mind.  I think it’s fine.  It’s not the same as the rest of the house, but there is already a mixture of lap siding, stucco, cedar & some sort of siding that looks like the paneling inside the living room and is painted black.  I just want the tar paper covered ASAP.  Then we can paint it all the same color and it will look great.  Or at least better.  There is a section of decorative (?) cedar on the front by the big window.  At first glance it looks similar to what other houses in the area have, but a closer look reveals large gaps in the pattern and it is held together with giant nails that rust.  It will probably stay, but will have to be coated with something.  As long as you can ride by on a galloping horse and not notice too much it will be fine.  There’s a lot of that spray foam insulation framing it like a brigade of lumpy mushrooms.  There will be surgery done soon to remove the mushroom border.

I’ve been working on the door that goes on the closet under the stairs.  This closet is next to the kitchen and has 2 large drawers built in, a light and an outlet that doesn’t work.  It’s a good size and I had the great idea that it could be a ‘coffee closet’.  There is precious little counter space in the kitchen and this would be a great place for Jim’s fancy pants coffee brewer and all of its’ accoutrements, the iced tea maker, cups, etc.  I have a cute little wall plaque that my daughter-in-law, Lisa, gave me and it will be the inspiration for the colors.  Back to the door…There was so much paint it looked like it was encased in a water balloon.  So it needed to be stripped down and relieved of so many layers.  There are some nice details appearing that were totally obliterated before.  All it needs now is some final sanding & stain.  There were 6 different colors that revealed themselves, some much thicker than others.  From the outside in, there was white, purple, gold, blue, white (again), beige and yellow.  It looks like it is original to the house, one of only 2 doors that survived from 1922.

The kitchen counter is wood.  I want to put tile on it.  Jim said no.  Jim will be out of town soon…It was coated with polyurethane but very uneven so I decided it had to be sanded no matter what we were going to do with it.  I don’t mind sanding.  It’s one of those jobs that gives me an opportunity to think about things.  And since I have the attention span of a goldfish, I think about a lot of different things.  I was thinking about the Kinsey Millhone mystery I was re-reading and how Sue Grafton and I were probably related because our names are just different by one letter and you could see how that could happen.  And I thought it was a little warm for someone to have a fire going.   I thought about our stuff in storage in Billings and when was it ever going to get here, and that I needed to go to the store to get some gum and that smoke smell is really strong.  I wondered what we’d do about the mini van broke down in Casper and OMG, the sander is on FIRE!  I managed not to panic until I’d thrown the blazing fireball into the rocks outside.  I guess it had been smoking for quite awhile before it finally burst into flames.  So the counter looks pretty good. I was almost done & finished up by hand.  It’s ready for what ever we decide to do (tile).

Unfinished Business

Nothing is complete in this house.  Nothing is finished.  Not one thing.  That’s okay; we’ll finish it, Lord willing.  We don’t know much about the former homeowner, the late Mr. Larry.  I found his obituary online, so we know some basic information.  But I think his house tells more of the story.  He didn’t plan on leaving this world quite so soon.  We can never know the number of our days.  So we just do the best we can, make our plans and carry on.  When the Lord calls us home we might leave some unfinished business behind, too.  I’d rather my house be unfinished than my salvation.  I hope that I will have completed some of the tasks our heavenly Father wants me to do rather than worry about temporary things.  You never know so be ready always.  Rejoice in the knowledge & peace that we, as believers have.  But I am going to try to finish a few things before I start some new ones…

Now back to the tasks at hand.  I like to paint, or at least I used to like to paint.  So I happily started in the living room.  It has paneling.  No big deal, I’ve painted paneling before, just some primer, then on to the real thing.  This paneling was a bear.  It had some nice flat parts, separated by wicked tiny grooves that looked like they were made with rows of needles.  It took days when I wanted it to take hours.  But that is the pattern we’ve discovered.  Everything takes 4 times longer & cost about 10 times more than it should.

 Primer Coat

The painting was done before we took out the pink carpet that was secured by large roofing nails in the tack strips and about a zillion staples of various sizes. There are hardwood floors underneath.  And a trap door made of scrap wood and a metal plate in one corner.

I have a good friend that I joke with about having a fear of ‘completeness’.  This house is an illustration of that theory.  The trim doesn’t reach the end of the porch.  The porch doesn’t reach the end of the house.

There are squares of sheetrock missing.  Outlet holes without outlets.  Outlets without electricity. Holes cut in walls and doors whose purpose will remain a mystery.  Wires that lead to nothing.  Floors just end.  Tile is laid but only partially grouted.  The furnace was just setting in the kitchen, without ducting, blowing all the air through a hole cut in the wall to the living room.  The hot tub is in its own addition, but the exterior is left unfinished with insulation exposed.  And you have to go out the back door and across the deck to the door of the hot tub room.  We have no idea if the thing works or not, and frankly we’re a little scared by the size of the thing.  It is not too high on the list of things to get running right now.

Oh, there was a 6 inch cast iron pipe sticking up out of the master bedroom floor about 4 inches.  It was stuffed with newspapers and the carpet was laid around it.  It took about a dozen sawsall blades and several days with both Jim and the HVAC guy taking turns to get it cut out.

The ceiling in the living room is made from plywood cut into squares nailed with about 6 nails into the sheetrock, then stained dark brown.  Except where there’s something else nailed to the sheetrock.

Every window was nailed shut.  Some are nailed and caulked shut.  Were they keeping something in or keeping something out?  Since there is no air conditioner, well there actually is an ancient swamp box mounted in a living room window, but there’s no telling what would come blowing out of it, if it would blow at all. Open windows are a necessary thing even in Wyoming’s mild summer.  That window is nailed and duct taped shut.  We do the best we can to keep breezes blowing through. 

The list goes on and on.  We are still discovering strange wiring & plumbing.  It took 6 different screwdrivers to get the front gate apart.  I told Jim these could be some of the happiest days of his life, fussing and messing, tearing down and building up.  Working side by side after so much time spent apart.  Tying up loose ends and finishing some unfinished business.

Yardwork

The first time I saw the house we didn’t have a key, so we just walked around the outside and peeked in the windows.  The yard seemed to be the best feature.  There was still snow on the ground and it hid many secrets.  I guess a lot of people ‘hoard’ things, but I’ve only seen (on tv) those who hoard things on the inside of the house.  Someone that had lived here hoarded things on the outside of the house.  But we didn’t know that at the time.  When I got moved up here and we started work on the house the yard needed immediate attention.  The grass was really high so it needed mowing. 

Our mower is tiny. Our weedeater is tiny. Our yard in Tennessee was tiny.  This yard is huge and crazy.  And it has been neglected for a long time.  The previous owner passed away a year ago last April & the house & yard have been on their own ever since.  So Jim started mowing and I started picking stuff up.  I had no idea what  a task that would be.  There were the usual sticks and limbs.  But hidden among the tall grass were car parts, rocks, all types of plastic containers, garbage, lumber and broken glass.  Lots of broken glass.  Good thing I had bought some leather gloves!  The broken glass in the front and along the side of the house was in big shards, hazardous & plentiful.   I thought I had it all picked up (the glass that is) until I ventured to the back of the yard by the little cabin.  Tiny pieces of glass sparkled in the sunshine.  It looked like a pack of jewel thieves had dumped their haul of diamonds by the cabin door and in the flowerbed and yard nearby.  I scooped up what I could with my hands and a dust pan, but resorted to using a shovel to remove dirt and all in order to get the stuff picked up.  It took a long time.  Finally I went and walked in front of Jim and the mower and tried to get everything out of the way. 

There is a deep hole in the backyard, about 6 feet long, 3 feet wide, covered with two big sheets of metal (must be where the bodies are buried).  I’m not looking in there! There is a big hole about 4 feet wide and I don’t know how deep right in front of the door of the other little house on the property. I’m not looking in there either. There is a large collection of railroad ties and pieces of metal between the shop and the little house we haven’t begun to clean up.  There are big piles of big rocks scattered throughout the property.  Many of the trees have large rocks piled high against their trunks.  There are lines of big rocks half buried across the front yard.  And sharp pointy rocks along the edge of the deck.  Our plan is to get the rocks in one location, sorted according to type and then use them next spring when we can get some flowerbeds planned, etc.  That’s the plan, anyway…

Last night we worked in the yard again.  Jim fussed because I had raised the mower.  I was tired of scraping rocks and the engine choking out.  It made it a lot easier, something that is a foreign concept to my dear husband.  So he took over the mowing, lowered the mower and had to restart it a lot.  Whatever makes you happy, Dear.  I tackled the giant Mountain Lilac in the front yard.  It had a lot of dead branches and many were tangled in the pine tree growing above it.  It had finished blooming, so I thought this was as good a time as ever.  Now Mountain Lilac looks just like regular lilac, just bigger.  This one is probably 12 – 15 feet tall. They have several defense mechanisms that enable them to thrive in the wilderness (and my front yard).  First they hold all of the rainwater that has fallen this year and dump it on whomever dares to invade its’ tangled mass.  That would be me.  They also harbor all sorts of creatures that are icky, yukky and scary.  And they probably afford a nice habitat for rattlesnakes.  Don’t tell me there aren’t snakes this high, I’ve seen them.  Higher even than here.  At the end of the day I dominated that Mountain Lilac and the dead and mostly dead branches are now in the brush pile.

 An example of the lovely Lilac found here in Wyoming.

As a rule, I like working in the yard.  Unfortunately now it is a chore that takes away from what we really need to be focusing on inside the house.  Soon (I hope) we will be at the point that we can focus a little more energy on the outside, beginning with siding for the tar paper parts.  Then paint.  Blue, I think.  With light gray trim (I am a Rebel at heart, after all.  Or maybe a Dallas Cowboys fan) and red accents around the windows and some new red shutters.  If we can get this done before the snow starts falling it will be a great thing.

Learning My Way Around

 I'm no stranger to the West. After all I'm Texas Born, Texas Proud, and spent about 25 years of my life in the Lone Star State. My parents relocated to Oklahoma after I got married & I love going to Claremore to visit. Out here it's a bit different. Maybe because it's so remote and there are not many people. There are probably more people in jail in West Tennessee than live in the state of Wyoming. People are really friendly here and they are proud of their town. When folks learn that I'm not from around here (as soon as I open my mouth!) they give me a warm 'welcome to Sheridan', or 'welcome to Story'.

As I've been learning my way around (found the Walmart right away) I've noticed the names on businesses are a bit different too. There are the usual Soandso & Sons or Whatever Bros. But sprinkled in amongst them are some real gems. Need to get your hair done? The 'Curl Up & Dye' is right on Main Street. Need a place to stay? How about the 'Come On Inn'. Are the in-laws coming to visit and you need to rent a port-a-potty? Call 'Squatters'. The plumber that is meeting us in Story Friday works for 'Rub-a-Dub Tub'. Want some local honey? 'Stingers' is right there on the shelf. My favorite is 'Crazy Woman'...looks like Jim brought me to the right place!

Main Street looks much the same today.

Starting Over

I didn't cry Saturday.  By 'cry' I mean those gut wrenching sobs that take your breath away and leave you bleary-eyed and snubbing for hours. Tear up? Oh yeah, I can tear up anytime. Change has always been hard for me, I like things to be predictable, repetitive, even boring.  The last year has been none of those things.  Lots of changes. Lots.  Loosing Mom in October was the hardest thing I've ever faced. Jim's campaign for State office. Leaving behind my kids, grandkids & a home I lived in longer than any other in my life was pretty hard too.  Watching the love of my life leave for Iraq, then come home a different person, though it was back in 2007-2008, still has profound effects on our lives. But, when an opportunity comes, seemingly, out of thin air, bringing with it all the security and promise you've been waiting for, you shouldn't turn it down. Be careful what you pray for!

So here we are, 1400 miles away from Covington, Tennessee; friends, family & all things familiar.

Sheridan, Wyoming. Steeped in the history of the old West, Buffalo Bill, Indian wars and Rodeo. Set at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains. It is beautiful here.   Named for a Yankee General. Bless their hearts. Jim bought a mobile home here in Sheridan, it was more economical than motels & is working out to be a good investment. Our furniture won't be here till the end of June so while the accommodations are a bit sparse, they are comfortable. The décor is sort of rustic Mary Englebriet. There are hosts of baby angels cut from wallpaper arrayed in various formations throughout the house. The master bathroom has picket fence wallpaper replete with flowers and butterflies enhanced with a billion painted on tiny black and white polka dots. A platoon of baby angels hovers on the wall between pickets and polka dots. The living room/kitchen has brownish faux painting and wall paper with branding iron designs. Baby angels hover watchfully nearby. The main bathroom has a lodge theme, with faux finish walls, bear & pine tree stenciling, and it's own company of baby angels guarding the washer and dryer. ( I hear the winters are crazy long up here so I can see myself cutting motifs out of wallpaper and pasting them about or painting dots on everything that can't run away) Add the carpet and laminate wood floor Jim put down and you have a pretty good idea of our little trailer house. In fact it is the first house I've ever lived in with a white picket fence. But the story just begins here...Our real adventure is the house Jim bought in Story, Wy. It is about 15 miles south of Sheridan, a little village of old hippies, artists, craftsmen and now a couple of Southern Conservatives with a splash of redneck. Here we go

!