Three Months Later

Tomorrow is the three month anniversary of the day we moved into our new house (Yes, we’re still referring to it as a “new” house), so I figured that would be as good an excuse as any for me to post a bunch of photos of wind turbines. Well, everyone loves a good wind turbine, don’t they? I HOPE you do, anyway, because I photograph these bad boys at least three times per week (Disclaimer: Terry took the top three photos, because it was very early in the morning, and I don’t “do” early in the morning. Or just “morning” in general, really.), so you should probably prepare to see a lot of them from here on out.

So, three month you guys! That’s, like, ONE QUARTER OF A YEAR. And it’s strange, because on the one hand I feel like we’ve been here forever now, but on the other, it’s like we just moved in yesterday. It’s fair to say that we’re well and truly settled in at this point, but the house hasn’t quite lost its delicious “newness” for us yet: I still get up in the mornings and think, “Wow, I actually OWN this place!”, which is a nice feeling, especially after all of the near-misses we had when we were trying to buy it. (Speaking of which, I still check the property listings every so often, and the house of Nigel, International Man of Mystery is still on the market. That could so easily have been us, so we’re super-grateful to be sitting here right now, taking endless photos of wind turbines, rather than still trying to keep our old house in perfect, “ready-to-be-viewed” condition at all times…)

As for what we’ve done to the place, well, NOT MUCH would be the short answer to that one. Terry’s done a lot of work to the garden, most of which is of the “strictly temporary” variety, with the main aim of creating a non-muddy area for Rubin to use until we get round to properly developing it. Most of what he’s done so far has been achieved using the various bits of decking and concrete left behind by the previous owner, and what we could beg or borrow from friends… Like I say, it’s all temporary, but it definitely looks a whole lot better than it did when we moved in, which is particularly amazing when you consider the fact that this is basically just a glorified toilet for Rubin:

That muddy area you can see at the top right? Rubin is OBSESSED with getting into that area. Like, it’s his life’s work, seriously. You can’t see it in this photo, but that area is normally barricaded off, to keep him out of the mud. A couple of weeks ago, though, we kept finding muddy paw-prints leading from the back door all the way up the stairs, so Terry hid and watched him one morning, and it turned out Rubin was just jumping the barricade like a pony to get to the mud. There’s now a much higher barrier there, but it’s probably only a matter of time before he finds a way over/through that, too. Such is life with a cunning wolf, folks.

The house, on the other hand, doesn’t look all that different from how it did three months ago. I bought a few soft furnishings, and we picked up a new microwave and toaster (Our old ones were pretty busted, and we felt like the new house deserved some shiny new stuff), but other than that, not much has changed.We’re still battling over whether or not to knock that wall down, and the place is still pretty empty and bare, but we did turn one of my blog photos (from this post) into a massive print last week, so there’s that:

We hung it in the powder room. So that people can look at me while they… you know.

Oh yeah, and we also had a ladder installed to give us easy access to the attic. You know, so we can do exactly what we swore never to do, and cram it full of STUFF? We still don’t have a towel rail in the main bathroom, but by God, we have that ladder going into the attic now, and we WILL use it. It’s all about priorities, people.

I still don’t have my dressing room finished. Turns out you need A LOT of coathangers if you’re going to have a room full o’ clothes, and because I’d rather spend my money on ACTUAL clothes, rather than on 1,736 coathangers, I’ve been acquiring them a few (dozen) at a time. At this rate I’ll be done by Christmas. NEXT Christmas, I mean. In the meantime, I’m taking pleasure in the smaller things. Like the fact that my new coasters match my new coffee mug. And that they both have dots on them. It’s weird to think that I’m a home owner sometimes, it really is.

Rubin, meanwhile, is as happy as a clam in his new domain:

This is him in his “playroom”. We call it that as a way of trying to hide the fact that the room is empty purely because we don’t have any furniture to put in it. One day (a long time from now), it will be a guest room. Assuming any guests are willing to fight Rubin for the privilege, that is.

It actually took him a really long time to settle in (Well, about two weeks. Which is a long time in dog years, I guess.), which surprised me a bit, because he usually seems to adapt to things really easily, but he just COULD NOT get used to the fact that this was his “den” now, and that he had to climb three flights of stairs any time he wanted to fully explore it. Thankfully, once that passed, and he realised how many great walks there were in the vicinity, he got right on with the important business of enjoying himself, by which I mean “peeing on every single blade of grass he can find.” And there are a LOT of blades of grass around here…

Don’t be fooled, people: it might LOOK pretty, but these photos were taken a few weeks ago, and now it’s just a giant, muddy mess, which means I have to do a complete outfit change every time I decide to walk Rubin. I’m pretty sure the neighbours all think I’m actually a hobo or something, because any time they see me I’m in wellies, woolies, and a knit hat. Other than the times they see me in 5″ stilettos and a fancy dress, obviously. I think that might be why they all keep warning me about the coming winter, actually. They’re all, “Ya’ll from the city? You want to know what WINTER’S like, HIGH HEEL GIRL? Well, WE’LL tell you what winter’s like!”

I’m… not looking forward to winter, obviously. I never AM, though, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be any different from the winters we had in our last place, so, you know. And at least it’ll give me the opportunity to post photos of those wind turbines in the snow…