Renter's Insurance

You know what will prompt one to get renter's insurance real fast? Standing in your driveway and seeing two huge plumes of smoke billowing over the nearest ridgeline. Seriously. When I saw them I called my mom to make sure she hadn't let her homeowner's policy lapse, and then I ran into the house and called GEICO to finally get rental insurance. When I mentioned all the fires in Idaho right now, the nice insurance agent man double-checked to make sure this area hadn't been closed down to new policies, because apparently they do that when forest fires happen. My zipcode wasn't blocked, but if I lived in Cascade, 15 miles away, I wouldn't have been able to get insurance tonight. And that's a mistake. Because the fires are a hell of a lot closer to me then they are to Cascade. Sugar's crate is by the door and I'm putting my passport in my purse. Just in case. Think rain. And winds from the west.

Update: The smoke has turned the nearly full moon the color of a ripe mango and my eyes (a much less attractive) red. But it's dark, and there is no glow to the east, so I don't think the house will be burning down tonight.

Freckles the Hussy

I wrote a little while ago about the pregnant cat, Freckles, who showed up abandoned on my doorstep as soon as I moved in. Well, Freckles had her litter a week or two ago (I'm not sure exactly when because she disappeared for awhile) and I've been waiting for her to bring the kittens out into the open. Today she started behaving really strangely. She was meowing a lot, for one thing, and seemed to want more company than usual. Eventually she started walking down the driveway, pausing every few feet to roll in the dirt and let me scratch her chin. I thought that maybe she wanted me to follow her, that she was finally ready to show me her babies! So we slowly walked down my driveway, where she turned right, toward my neighbor Mike's house, so I figured OK, maybe she had her kittens in one of his outbuildings. Nope, she walked right past Mike's sheds. And then, on our left, we came to the cemetery and Freckles strolled right in under the fence. This is when I started thinking she might be possessed and I started wondering what the hell I was doing. But I'd been following her for five minutes already, I was committed, so I opened the gate and started stepping over graves. Then she wandered back out of the cemetery and I was relieved that I wouldn't have to start searching tombs for week-old kittens. Maybe they're in one of the little maintenance sheds? No. A car pulled up to the cemetery while I was chatting to Freckles, asking her where her babies were, generally looking and sounding like a crazy person, and a very nice old lady got out of the car and asked if I thought it was going to rain as she started to pull out flowers for graves. I ignored Freckles, and tried to sound vaguely civilized for a moment until the lady disappeared into the cemetery. It was at this point Freckles took me over the edge of a cliff. Sort of. She started climbing down a very steep hill, at the bottom of which is an old log cabin where my friend Abe, and his trapper father and Native American mother, (seriously I have to tell you about them sometime) used to live. OK, so maybe the kittens are in there? I looked at the slope dubiously. I was wearing my most comfortable, my most floppy flip flops, not exactly designed for off-trail adventures, but the thought of poor Freckles' kittens spurred me on, and I gingerly started following her over the loose dirt covered in thick layers of very slippery pine needles. And she stopped. And she rolled around some more. And she meowed pathetically. And she started BACK UP the hill. And it finally occurred to me (I can be slow sometimes), this cat isn't trying to show me her kittens. This cat is psychotic and in heat again. Hussy. So after I stumbled amid much cursing back up to the top of the hill I left the little brat, who'd led me on a wild kitten chase, lying in the dirt beside the graveyard and tramped back home. UGH!

World on Fire

So remember when I was all panicked about the potential forest fire that my neighbor started? Well, now there are real forest fires everywhere. It seems like the entire state of Idaho is burning. My aunt and one of my uncles had to retreat back to the Washington coast because of the poor air quality, but my Uncle George and I are still holding down the fort, putting up siding, and hoping that the fire that just closed a road 6 miles away doesn't get any closer. It's horrible. My view no longer exists. I can't see the mountain right across the valley because the air is too brown and thick with smoke. Before he left, my uncle Jim, a former firefighter, actually woke up one night convinced that the house was on fire because the smell of smoke was so strong. Everything cleared a little on Friday after a nice rain storm, but the smoke is back now, as bad as ever. I woke up with a sore throat again, and cursed lightning and careless humans, and felt, for the first time in my life, that I was ready for summer to end already, if only it meant that my world would stop burning.

Quick Update

I've had family staying with me for almost a week helping me spruce the cabin up. All the orange is gone from the kitchen, and the living room only has one remaining yellow panel (behind the wood stove - the drywall needs to be replaced with something more fire-resistant so I'm holding off on painting for a bit, but it's KILLING ME). Everything is now a color called "driftstone," aka beige. It's so much cleaner and prettier. The family is also helping me seal the place up for winter. We've bought loads of caulk to seal all the window frames where I can see daylight (which, shockingly, is not supposed to come through the frames, only the glass). Of course, some things need more than caulk. In the last two days we've found two dead bats in the house so a new priority is sealing the big-ass holes that are letting the bats in. Most exciting of all however is that we're starting to put up siding on the west wall. Woohoo! SIDING! Don't get me wrong, the relatives aren't staying forever so it's not like the whole house will have siding, but it's a huge start.

Oh, and for any of you who were wondering, Freckles has had her kittens but she hasn't introduced them to us yet. Once I'm living on my own again, I'll post some photos and more tales of rural life. But for now I'm just too damned exhausted what with all the painting and staining and caulking. I even got to use a nail gun today!

Dry

There are clouds in the sky this evening, and it seems strange. I've clearly recovered from my stint in mildewy Oregon, because I find myself hoping it will rain. I can't remember the last time I felt that way. I guess three straight weeks of lovely dry sunshine and a small wildfire will change anyone's attitude about the desirability of moisture.

I put laundry out on the line today, and the first pillowcase was dry by the time I clothespinned the last sheet. They now smell like the mountains. Granite and ponderosa pine and heat.

Summer

I know that the ranting about Christmas coming to retailers earlier every year is a complete cliche, but can I just say how much worse it is to see, the first week of July, "End of Summer Sale" signs everywhere?!?! NO!!!!! Summer just started! It's nowhere near over! I know that it may be ending for retailers, but for god's sake, would it kill them to call it a "Summer Clearance Sale" or "Clothes for the Current Season Sale" or something else slightly less depressing?

D-Day

I’ve shared with most of you the extreme frustration I’ve felt with the complete and total ineptness of the company I hired to move my stuff from DC to Idaho, and I really, really don’t want to rehash it again here. I’ve bored you silly, and I’ve bored me silly, already. But I do want to share the fantastic awesomeness that was the day my movers (finally) arrived and, in order to get to the awesome part, I kind of need to share a tiny fraction of the bad stuff, so bear with me. Trust me, it has a happy ending. There may even be baby animals involved. (SPOILER!) And I apologize in advance for the length, but I’m avoiding unpacking

Before I tell the story, I need to give a very brief geography lesson. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this, but the county road that leads directly to my shared driveway is, to put it kindly, awful. It’s not long (maybe two tenths of a mile), but it’s very narrow (a single very rutted dirt lane) and very steep. At the top of this short hill is a cemetery, and when one reaches the cemetery one has to make a very sharp turn. After the cemetery corner of death, the road stops being a county road and becomes a driveway, perhaps another two tenths of a mile long, shared by the three houses on the hilltop. I’d never met the people in the first house, the second house is mine, and the third house, well, I hadn’t met them yet either.

I told my contact at the moving company back in May that there was no way a semi was going to be able to reach my house, so I paid for something called “shuttle” service. The cemetery corner of death is why, when I mentioned this shuttle service to Zach, my delivery driver, the day before the delivery and he had no idea what I was talking about, I got a little nervous. After some fulminating and ranting to people who knew the full and complete saga, I decided to put the rage aside, and adopt a mien of calm acceptance. Better for the blood pressure, better for the soul. I told myself it was their problem, they were professionals, and they would find a way to deal with it.

Of course, early this morning, just to test my new “whatever” attitude, my very nice neighbor Pauletta (who lives in the third house) knocked on my door, introduced herself, and pointed out that a simple half-ton truck pulling a backhoe on a little tiny flatbed trailer went off the road right at the confluence of the shared driveway and my personal driveway. This isn’t a particularly bad corner at all, not compared to the cemetery corner of death, the driver just got a wheel onto the slick grass and the whole damn trailer slid off the edge of the road and, of course, blocked me in. No big deal really, but, well, it added an air of excitement and signaled to me that today was not going to go smoothly. Of course. None of the move had gone well thus far, why NOT start delivery day with a traffic accident? It was not a good sign is what I’m saying.

But I’d worried myself out the day before and with my new air of detached bemusement, once that little mess was cleaned up I met Zach the Romanian/Israeli driver, and Dimitri, his Russian helper, at the rendezvous point where Zach was going to leave the ENORMOUS semi with Dimitri while he and I drove up to see the cemetery corner of death so Zach could assess the situation. He quickly said “yeah, not going to happen.” Instead of calling around to local rental places to find a smaller truck, which is what I assumed was the next step, he decided that the best thing to do was to drive the semi to the cemetery corner of death and park it there without rounding the corner and WALK all of my furnishings and boxes and assorted worldly possessions down the additional two tenths of a mile or so of shared driveway to my house. He’d then back the semi down to the much better county road at the bottom and go back to the highway the back way. Rather than fighting this seemingly absurd decision, I decided to go with the flow. He’s a professional, right? If he and Dimitri want to walk all my worldly possessions down the road in the middle of a heat wave (I mentioned that it was in the 90s right?), who am I to stop them?

This plan of course blocked the entire road (which never has any traffic to speak of - barring a funeral), so I decided to return Pauletta’s kindness of the morning and walked up to her house to tell her what was going on. It turned out that Pauletta was out, so instead I told her equally nice husband Dennis (again, let me reiterate this point, I hadn’t met any of my neighbors before D-Day. Dennis decided to walk down to the truck with me and see what was going on. He brought the keys to the cemetery gate so Zach could pull up far enough to let Pauletta get back home. The next thing I knew Dennis was offering to loan the delivery men his truck and little flatbed trailer! Now this was nice enough, really above and beyond the neighborly call of duty, but a while after I’d disappeared into the house to let Zach and Dimitri get on with things, I realized Dennis hadn’t reappeared. Oh no, Dennis hadn’t gone back to his house to sip a cold one while the men who were being paid to work worked, Dennis was HELPING the delivery men load my worldly possessions onto his truck and trailer. What the hell? The next thing I know, Dennis is walking down to the first house on the hill, and he’s followed back to the delivery truck by a man on one of those 4 wheel ATV contraptions pulling ANOTHER flat bed trailer. WHAT THE HELL? I walk down to the truck to see what’s going on, and am introduced to my neighbor Mike, who is now helping the delivery men load stuff onto his trailer. I thank them all profusely, but really I’m in shock. These people I’d never met are moving my crap in the noonday heat because I’m their neighbor and “That’s what we do up here.” So we all caravan back to the house and I have to physically restrain Mike from picking up a box to carry it into the house. I whisper “that’s what I paid them for!” and I have to wonder if he now thinks I’m a bitch. But he puts the box down, and everyone, including Pauletta who’s returned from her errand, and Tucker, Mike’s adorable dog, settles in for a little neighborly gossip session. My movers occasionally take a break and join in, both of them keep saying how beautiful it is here, and how wonderfully nice everyone is, and how much they like my house (which is, as I’ve already told you, basically a tarpaper shack without the tarpaper, but to be fair, it does have some charming features and loads of potential).

Finally it’s all over. My stuff is in the house, and you’d think that that would be the end of neighborliness for the day. Oh no. Hell no. Dennis and Pauletta tell me to call them if I need any help rearranging furniture once I’ve settled in a little. Mike says he’s planning a neighborhood barbeque. Mike gives me and the moving men a ride on the back of the trailer, piled high with moving blankets and cardboard, back to the truck, and I get another rhapsody from Zach about how beautiful it is in the country, and how friendly and kind everyone is. Mike even lets Dimitri drive the ATV most of the way, like Dimitri is a favored grandson or something. We unload the blankets, I sign the contracts and try to give Zach a tip. Customary, right? I tipped the guys who put my stuff in a semi in DC. But as if the day wasn’t weird enough, so full of the milk of human kindness and this strange camaraderie among strangers, he REFUSES MY TIP (which wasn’t enormous, but would have paid for dinner, with wine, at one of Boise’s nicest restaurants). He doesn’t even give it a thought. He hugs me and says that no matter how much I’ve saved, I’ll need everything I can get to enjoy my time off from life. And then we all go coo over puppies together. No, seriously. The day ended with Mike driving us all up to Pauletta and Dennis’s house to see their new German Shepherd puppies (they breed service dogs). My day began with a traffic accident in my driveway and ended with me cuddling puppies with my neighbors and my moving men. PUPPIES! Forget the view, the best thing about living here? Neighbors. So, the question of the hour, how the hell can I possibly thank them adequately without offending them terribly?

Postscript: Pauletta just came down to give me her card, and offered (a) to take any trash I've got to the landfill when she goes tomorrow; (b) loan me Dennis's painting supplies; (c) help me tear down all the unsightly oubuildings when I'm ready.

Happy 4th of July

The air in my house smells like charcoal briquettes - but not because of a festive holiday barbecue. I just had my first close call with what was almost, what could have easily turned into, a wildfire. There was a fire so close to my house, my home, the one my parents built together before our family fell apart - so close - 100 yards? 200? - I’m really bad with distance – let’s just say it was really fucking close - and I had no idea it was happening until it was almost over. I was in the living room, reading a lovely Gladys Mitchell mystery, when I looked out the window and thought, “man, it sure is getting hazy today.” And then I smelled the smoke. I ran to the window and saw flames. And billowing clouds of smoke. I saw flames. Not on my property, but really fucking close. I think the only time I’ve been that scared is when a bus almost ran Jennifer and me off the side of a mountain in Italy. But that fright lasted two seconds. This lasted longer. I ran out the front door and saw a fire engine careering up our shared driveway to my neighbor’s house, then I ran back to the window and saw another one pulling up to the smoke. My mind was almost empty. All the time I spend living in my head, now my only thoughts were “But I just moved here. Where am I going to have my furniture delivered if this house doesn’t exist anymore?” I started shoving things into bags and loading them into the car. For the first time I can remember Sugar was hiding from me and didn’t come when she heard the rattle of her treats. She must have sensed my panic because she did not want me to touch her. Luckily she hasn’t had much practice avoiding me and I threw her, with love but some fear manifesting as aggression into her travel crate. Then I went back to the window. The smoke was lessening. I sat in the window (for what, ten minutes? maybe 15?) watching the firefighters move busily back and forth as the smoke slowly dissipated and finally disappeared altogether. The trucks are gone now. There’s no more activity in the neighbors’ trees. I’ve let Sugar out of her crate. But I’m still staring out the window. My hands are still shaking. Living in the mountains doesn’t feel quite so appealing today. My view, of the meadows that are gradually turning brown in the summer heat, doesn’t seem as lovely. I’m still scared.

Color combos

I think it's time to start painting, but before I do, I want to share a few "before" photos of the current color combinations in this cabin. (I did mention why I called it a cabin instead of a house right? "Cabin" gives a far more accurate impression of rusticity than "house". If I slip up and call it a house, read cabin in your mind.) Here's the living room. Imagine the yellow both darker and brighter, and the green carpet much greener:

And here's the kitchen walls and cabinet. Now, the kitchen is open to the living room, so to get the full effect, you really need to imagine all four colors together, living in harmony.

Who needs a gym?

I certainly don't. Here's a little tip for those of you who don't like sweating in front of other people: Move to a house with cobwebs in places that require you to lift a vacuum over your head in order to remove them and a bathtub with at least 4 years of hard water accumulation encrusted on the enameled cast iron. I've been here exactly one week and already my arms look a little different. These are arms which I'd thought were not going to recover from turning 30. Arms which haven't stopped aching since I started scrubbing that tub a WEEK ago.