Then: Summer 2002 thru Winter 2003 & Now: June 2, 2011

Then: Summer 2002 thru Winter 2003

I have heard it said that if you want to make God laugh, make plans.  Well, She certainly had a chuckle on us from the beginning of our project.  We spent as much of the summer of 2002 as we could up on our property building an outhouse - a two-seater with two doors.  Knowing my husband, JB, would be retiring in 2008, we wanted to spend the next 6 years preparing the land and getting as much building done as possible.  Then that Fall, JB got transferred from Seattle to Chicago!

OK, change of  focus.  We would just be REALLY busy in 2008.  We looked at this move as our last fling with "civilization", plus JB grew up in Chicago so he knew the area.  Of course, when his brothers and parents visited us in Seattle, they all fell in love with Washington and moved here over the years.  So just a few cousins and aunts were left as far as family goes.

JB's company flew us back to Illinois in January 2003 so we could look for a place to live.  We found the perfect house very quickly in a small Mayberry-like suburb just south of Chicago.  So, after selling our house in one day, we packed up and headed east in late February.  Short sentence, very long hectic month!  Did I mention that we were moving from a 4000 sq ft home to a 2400 sq ft home?  We knew we really had to downsize for retirement, so we just got an early jump on it.  A garage sale, donations to family, friends and charities did the trick.  Even so, we filled up a full moving van (which included JB's Jeep Wrangler.)  Thank goodness the company was paying for it.

When we left, we had one week to get there, sign the papers for our new home, and meet the moving van.  We drove with our Greyhound (dog) in the back of our Jeep.  Prior to this, I had only driven as far as Montana and flown over everything east of there.  I had never experienced South Dakota in the winter, and never want to again.  But we made it, and settled into our new home.  For those five years, we made the most of exploring Chicago and the surrounding states, becoming good friends with our Neighbor, and planning for our mountain home.

Now: June 2, 2011

Yesterday, when we turned on the faucet, our water looked very murky.  We discovered a leak around the riser on our cistern where muddy water has been getting in.  We have had an usual amount of rain the last three days, with thunder storms and downpours.  So, today, we get to dig out around the riser and reseal there.  Of course we also have to put bleach in the water.  Drain the cistern (about 700 gallons right now).  Then refill the cistern.  The adventure continues. . .

Even as I am writing, my mind can't quite wrap itself around the fact that we've been "up here" while the rest of the world has been "down there" for three years.  (And that is usually how I refer to it - anything that is not Up Here, is Down There.)  Not only are we starting our fourth year , but we haven't killed each other.  One thing I hadn't really thought about before retiring is living together in a small cabin 24/7.  We've been married 41 years and with our 40 acres to be out on, how hard could it be?  Well, I can tell you right now, it was a very big adjustment.  Probably more for me than JB.  I kept remembering that saying: Retirement means less money and more husband.  The first winter was a bit hairy, but fortunately it helped that we had so much to do on the inside.  And unless it is terribly bad weather, we always get outside each day at least for a walk, and of course, in the winter, to use the snow blower and shovel.  We've become quite accomplished at getting around on snowshoes.

Right now our main project is a second story deck off the loft, underneath which will be JB's shop.  This will be on the west end of our house, where we had been stacking our firewood for the past two years.  We just finished building a wood shed and moving all the wood we had left over into it.  Last year we cut extra firewood as we figured from all of NOAA's weather predictions that we would have a long, cold winter.  We did, and we are still building a fire first thing in the morning and one in the evening as it is still unseasonably cold - and wet.  But we still have a full cord of wood left, along with a couple pallets of stick wood stacked 4 ft high.  Its great that we have such a good head start on next winter's wood. Having to move it all into the wood shed, not so great.

We had built a 20x20 ft dog pen in 2009, and fortunately sunk all the posts into cement.  We used the back 10x20 of the pen for the wood shed, so we just had to put in one post for the center front and add a roof.  Thank goodness we got our steel for the woodshed roof and shop sides ordered before steel prices jumped again this spring.  Before 2008 we had done absolutely no building of any kind except our outhouse in 2002.  Now it just seems like a natural thing to do.  If it has to be done, we do it.  I hadn't given it much thought until I was talking to my Neighbor in Illinois last week and telling her about the wood shed and deck.  She was absolutely amazed that we were doing all this ourselves! 

Mountain Mama with her Mountain Man!  We've come a long way, Baby!