Where Has The Curmudgeon Been?

I know many of you have been asking why I haven’t written anything lately. Well you know that old saying about life getting in the way? Life didn’t just get in the way, it took a hard left turn and then hit me in the face.

The old compound is no more. We have moved to a new base of operations which we call the Homestead. You may have occasionally heard of it in previous stories since its the home of Mother-of-Snowball. Snowball and I have moved in to help her in her advancing age. And except for a couple on the back deck, there are no stairs here so our aging knees are also much relieved.

The challenges of moving here have been many. The biggest was combining our collection of stuff from twenty years on the Compound with Mother-of-Snowball’s fifty of stuff collected from living on the Homestead. What we do have no shortage of is garden. The homestead is on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood. M-o-S spends most of the day planting and weeding in her garden. I try to keep an eye on her and make sure she is drinking plenty of water and wearing a hat. The water is no problem but she doesn’t like wearing a hat. She “likes to feel the breeze in her hair”. Direct quote.

We did luck out with a few things. After interviewing several real estate agents to sell the compound we singled out a gentleman who not only had sold many properties in the neighborhood, but owned half a dozen in the same area. We settled on a starting price and decided to place the property on the market the next Monday. The Sunday before placing it on the market, he called Snowball and asked if she would feel OK if he bought it? The next day he met with us and several other members of the family. We all agreed we would be crazy not to jump on the offer.

The move was a serious pain in the butt though. Normally when you move you are entering an empty dwelling. No Problem! But as I mentioned before we were combining two longtime households. The process of finding where to put everything has resulted several times in having no room for cars in the driveway because all of stuff is there waiting to find a home. And this was all after filling four trucks of a haul-away company called 1-800-got-junk. I guess this was the fates way of telling us to downsize.

We bring catnip into the sun room so Griffin stays contented.

The cats are adjusting well. It didn’t hurt that they were already resigned to being inside only cats. It’s not so bad though since there is a large sun room where plants are grown year around. They even get their own catnip plants and grass brought in. It is kinda sad to watch them in the morning as they hang out by the windows and watch the birds in the garden. I took the video above a couple of days ago when the birds were splashing the water on a hot day.

A nice place to hang out and talk with the cats.

On the other paw, they spend their nights in the cat cage. Occasionally they have visitors stop by. I haven’t been able yet to tell who or what the visitors are but the motion sensor lights come on quite often all night.

Snowball still has the studio here where she has expanded her jewelry making practice and a small shop where among other things, we hope to begin using a hot press to put our photography on more items of apparel and accessories. She is also putting together a larger shop on the Homestead grounds where she will be using her artistic skills in various forms of welding and carpentry projects.

And way in the back of the acreage we planted some fruit trees in an attempt to start an orchard. So I’m sure the future holds many adventures for us here on the Homestead. I’ll try to write about as many of them as I can here on the Idle Thoughts blog.