The days are getting shorter and the weather is becoming increasingly unsettled, and both LC and I have spent the past couple of days painting and shelf building.
We bought a set of good used tires for our neighbor while living in Cody and she returned the favor when we were getting ready to relocate back to Tennessee by giving us a good deal of 2x4's and heavy duty press board to use for sideboards on the trailer.
We built a set of shelves over the past day out of some of that press board.
A set of shelves that will eventually become home to a pewter collection in the den.
We also bought some lumber to build a very big set of shelves for a stoneware crock collection.
One of these days I may start collecting stamps but I do not anticipate that happening anytime soon.
I seem to have a propensity for heavy things
Painting inside the house is coming along but truthfully I am quickly tiring of the whole thing.
The living room, both bathrooms, the kitchen, the office and the hallways have all been painted, which still
leaves touch ups in the den and fully painting both bedrooms remaining.
I will be glad when it is all done and paint cans will be gone and cleaning brushes and rollers and pans will become a thing of the past.
These are all just random pictures taken mostly over the past week or so.
The picture above was actually taken not far from M&M's home while we were staying in her cabin waiting for our renters to vacate.
He was standing near the side of the road and we stopped the truck right in the middle of this extremely quiet country road so that I could take a picture of him.
I expected him to run away at any moment but amazingly he stood very still, completely transfixed by us.
After I had taken a few pictures LC let off the brakes and the sudden movement of the truck sent the little furry guy running full speed back into the woods behind him..............
When I took these pictures the trees in our front and back yard were almost bare.
They are completely bare now.
The red bushes next to the privacy fence still have some leaves but not for too much longer.............
Jamie blending almost perfectly with the fallen leaves in the back yard.
She is a very happy puppy now that she is home.
She loves the back yard.
She loves to walk the perimeter which she does every time she heads outside.
Now that the trees are bare, squirrels can be seen roaming the ground more often in search of fallen nuts which makes them fair game for my dog.
James takes great joy in terrorizing the squirrels and birds in the yard.
It is fun to watch her stalk and chase and bark.
Fun to watch but in reality I do not want her to really get anything.
Even though she probably chases after squirrels and birds at least 20 times each day only about once a year does she actually succeed in catching and killing something.
She once a few years ago succeeded in killing a rabbit and without us noticing brought it into the house and buried it underneath the cushions of the couch.
Thankfully I never saw it.
I was taking a nap one afternoon, LC heard thumping noises in the living room quickly followed by footsteps, and went to investigate.
The cushions were lying on the floor and our assassin dog was tossing the rabbit around, chasing it across the room, picking it up and tossing it across the room again.............
In late Fall the weather is extremely variable.
Rain, wind, sunshine, moderate temperates, cold, incredibly blue sky, clouds.
Sometimes all of those things within the span of only an hour............
I talked LC into a bike ride the other day and we spent a few hours exploring some flat areas of the base across from the golf course.
Lots of fun and great to spend some time with LC doing this................
My Mountain Boy's new front licence plate...............
We bought this welcome sign at a yard sale while living in Cody and it has now found a home on the wall outside our front door...............
This well travelled moose is on the wall next to our side entrance.
I bought it not long after I moved to Juneau and before LC arrived.
I had spent four wonderful and very fun hours on a whale watching tour that morning and when it was done followed a yard sale sign that led me to the Student Center of the UAS campus in Auke Bay.
I bought the moose there.
It sat outside on the deck at the Unabomber Cabin and then on the wall outside the front door of our rental house in Cody Wyoming.
It is my great hope that maybe the moose will stay in one place and call this wall home for a while.
Maybe even a long while.............
One of my gargoyles.
He is sitting on the opposite side of the doorway...........
A naked tree in the front yard with long gnarly old limbs.............
Our press board shelf.
At this point it is covered with horrible looking pinkish brownish paint that we are using as a primer.
It will eventually be very dark green.
The laundry hamper in the picture went from white to this color.............
To this color.
It needs some more dark green paint and then I need to recover the top and it will be done..........
James watching LC and I work on the shelves and hamper in the driveway...........
About a year before we moved to Juneau LC and I were canoeing at Woods Reservoir.
We pulled off the water to eat lunch, docking the canoe on the sandy beach of a small island in the middle of the lake.
This stump had washed up onto the beach, we loaded it into the canoe after lunch and hauled it back across the lake to the truck.
It has been sitting in the front yard ever since.
As I was painting one of the bathrooms the other day it occurred to me for the first time that I was very glad that we had not been able to sell the house before we left for Juneau.
We had a couple of promising leads while I was up there and LC was still down in Tennessee but they eventually did not pan out.
Thank goodness.
We had very little equity in the house and at that time the market was already starting to bottom out and loans were becoming more difficult to get.
Our thinking at the time was to try and get out from under the house so we would not have to worry about finding decent renters while we were so far away and would not have to worry about making mortgage payments in addition to paying rent in Alaska.
If we had succeeded in selling the house we would not have had a home that belonged to us when we came back to Tennessee.
Would we have come back to Tennessee if our lousy renters had not forced the issue?
Truthfully I am not sure but I think the answer is yes.
My Mountain Boy and I were beginning to lean that way just for bottom line economic reasons if for no other reason - life is cheaper to pay for here than it is in Wyoming.
We had the house - our house - to come back to.
We had a home - our home - to come back to.
And recently my oldest son has faced challenges for which I am so glad to be home for.
Life really does seem to have a way of working itself out and eventually finding its own answers...................
Whimsical figures in the front yard............
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.........Douglas Adams
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