We spent the next weeks in an American Picker mode, hunting for furniture in Pat’s basement and workshop, Jim’s Big House, the chicken shed storage areas, the barn, and around Pat’s house. Everything we found had to be thoroughly cleaned, as most of it had years of accumulated dust.

We gradually put together the kitchen, living room, bathroom, two offices, and the bedroom with enough systems to be workable and reasonably comfortable. It wasn’t a plush existence.

In fact it was weeks before we hauled a comfy (and heavy) recliner loveseat by ourselves from the mudroom up around the house and into the main living area so we could have someplace else to sit besides the hard wood kitchen chairs or the bed.

The house itself needed to be put back together after painting.

We painted and put up the heating and air conditioning vents; had to clamor a bit to get the plates and screws for the wall plates so we could put them up again; we found a shower rod and shower curtain and put them up; we put up the towel racks in the bathroom.

We swept and vacuumed the floors. I cleaned out the long-forgotten microwave.

Jimmy washed the inaccessible windows while Jim supervised. Jim told us at the time that the big window in the mudroom hadn’t been washed in its entirety in over fifteen years. Given the size of the ladder needed to wash it, that wasn’t a surprise.

Meow the outdoor cat, whose care and feeding we inherited along with the chickens and the house, has his meals on the ledge outside the huge window of the mudroom.

That window was so clear after its thorough cleaning that when I threw the door open around dusk a few days later, I was badly startled at the sight of the cat eating his meal on the ledge. I thought he’d gotten inside the house somehow!

We had to find a place to hang or stack our clothes (no closets anywhere). We found a dish drainer, soap dispenser, coffee pot, cooking pans, cookie tray, the whole nine yards.

I’d write out a list for you of all the furniture we collected, and from where, but it would take too long and there’s so much else to say. Maybe I’ll write it all out some lazy quiet day and impress you with its length.

Still working on the inside, we found and hung a beautiful crystal over the east-facing sliding glass door in our bedroom with an eye to catching some beautiful rainbows at sunrise.

Remember the gorgeous beads and our sparkly, festive baseball-style hats in Mardi Gras colors from Lafayette? We dug those out and hung them on the walls to provide some color and a sense of home.

The leaf accumulation around the house was impressive. Pat took an hour within the first few days and blew a reasonable pathway around the house. Jimmy climbed up and swept the leaves from the roof.

A few weeks later we realized that if we wanted the leaves gone, we’d have to do it ourselves. We’d seen wild turkeys wandering the woods, and had already seen deer through the trees.

The problem was that if we wanted photos, there was no sneaking out quietly. That thick two-year accumulation of crackling leaves announced our approach as effectively as a marching band.

We borrowed Pat’s semi-professional blower and tackled the job after a short lesson from Pat in how to run the gas-powered backpack blower.

Taking turns, Chelsea and I ran that heavy, noisy blower for nearly six hours over two days to achieve a decent leaf-free zone. Chelsea was thrilled about her new skills. She’s now comfortable that she can get a lawn-worker job in South Florida if it ever becomes necessary.

Though we started with wanting a sneak-up-on-birds advantage, we discovered that clearing out the leaves reduces the number of scorpions, spiders, mosquitoes, and snakes near the house. Sounded good to us!

Old Bus

During our early explorations I got up the courage at dusk one night, when Chelsea was dealing with the chickens, to go look closely at an old bus that is “buried” on the property in view of our house.

It is truly the oddest thing.

It’s very old, I’d guess from the 1940s, with rounded edges and small high windows. It’s clearly not in great shape. Someone, probably Jim, dug a trench out of the hillside and somehow got the bus down into that narrow trench in the middle of the woods almost to the level of its roof.

I tiptoed closer and closer, careful to avoid the proliferating spiders and mosquitoes and brambly bushes catching at my bare legs and flip flops. The door was stuck open so, with my heart pounding in my ears, I stuck my head around the edge and peeked in.

No dead bodies. No skeletons big enough that I could spot them in the dark corners. Nothing and no one to rush me and drag me inside. Just a dark, cool, rusted-out haven for creepy, crawly things.

I could be talked into going back and getting inside, but I’d be covered head to toe with protective gloves, clothing, shoes, and headgear before I’d even consider it.

I asked Jim about it later, but all I got in response was a sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle. He did say cryptically that he’d intended the earth to fill in over it and bury it. If I understood correctly, the idea was that it would be some kind of a bunker.

Certainly the idea of the earth-filling-in didn’t work, so for now it’s in the category of ideas that need work, though I must say I’m not sure what could persuade me to go in there to spend any amount of time whatsoever, bunker or no.

As the trees and underbrush filled in during spring’s happy outbreak, the bus disappeared behind the leafy shield, but it’ll be back again in winter.

Lighting Stories

Replacing the overhead lights in the main room took on a life its own. When we arrived the lights were dangling a bit, they hummed constantly when on, and they had the most startlingly bad habit of suddenly flashing off and on for intermittent, random, and sometimes lengthy periods of time.

We’d be settled in awkwardly at the counter or table on our wood chairs, reading under the lights, when suddenly one section of lights would go out. There was no bringing it back on demand. Chelsea would sigh deeply and roll her eyes, I’d shrug, and we’d get used to reading in half light.

Then sometime later, when we were well used to the dark, they’d suddenly flash on in all their fluorescent glory. It felt like a pick-up truck with its lights on high-beam suddenly barreling through the room.

We were thrilled when the guys got together and replaced them all with an updated style.

We must have jinxed ourselves by complaining about the lights because we headed into a thankfully short period of time marked by flashing-lights-in-the-middle-of-the-night stories.

The stories started with Chelsea’s new USB front bike light that I’d set to charge in our room. We’d completely forgotten that it was there until it apparently finished charging about three in the morning, celebrating its first full charge with a spectacular flashing light show.

It scared the bejeesus out of us.

Chelsea stumbled out of bed, rescuing our sleepy retinas from further damage, and moved it to the front room, hiding it under a hat.

Meanwhile we had a funky fluorescent light fixture under the kitchen cabinet. It had a nasty habit of going on and off randomly, especially when the kitchen cupboard above it was closed sharply.

A few days after the bike light incident, we’d forgotten to turn the kitchen light switch off when the light had given up the ghost earlier in the day. We needn’t have worried about forgetting it. It clicked on again arbitrarily about two in the morning, flooding the kitchen with light.

We weren’t done yet. After behaving itself for quite some time, Chelsea’s front bike light again became active, like a simmering volcano lying in wait. This time it suddenly erupted about midnight. All I can say is, at least it was in the living room.

Adding insult to injury, but thankfully the last of our flashing-lights-in-the-night stories, our Galaxy Tab, merrily charging its little heart out late one night, happily finished charging and let us know it was done by flashing a brilliant green light throughout the room.

Did we learn anything? You bet. We always check the kitchen counter light before heading to bed; the Galaxy is turned over and hidden under a blanket when charging overnight; and Chelsea’s front bike light has been banished across the house. We’re hiding our lights under bushels these days.

Upsides

The upsides of being here are quite strong. The silence is deafening. Birds awaken us at sunrise. Sunrise also brings a bevy of rainbows decorating our bedroom walls for several hours.

The fresh air is heavenly; the air quality is amazing. It’s so private that if we hear a car the likelihood is it’s coming to our house. The nights are so dark we can’t see our hands in front of our faces.

Though chilly at first, the weather has been heavenly. The locals have been delighted that the weather has been so mild. The leaves and flowers have blossomed with the arrival of spring; the locals are amazed at the beauty of this particular spring.

We’ve had few mosquitoes, and the water is incredible. The flannels sheets and down comforter on the bed are positively snuggle-worthy, comforting us on cold nights.

We began sleeping through the night for the first time in many months.

It’s been wonderful having a pleasant house to ourselves, with room for separate offices and beautiful views out the windows and an efficient kitchen.

More About The House

I can’t finish without telling you about the house a bit more.

The main room is a dark cave, with only indirect light from other rooms and two high, small shaded windows. It does have glass in the front door.

The mudroom downstairs is set up so that it can be used as a drive-through garage, though it’s used strictly as a TV room and laundry room now. It’s far colder than the rest of the house, so we have the connecting door open only when we need cooler air.

Both bedrooms connect directly to the main living room/dining room/kitchen area.

The smaller bedroom had a bad leak at some point and still smells strongly of mold. It’s got a small window facing north and has two sliding glass doors on adjoining walls, one looking up to the east and one overlooking the south-facing porch and the old hot tub.

The screens on the sliders are worn and ill fitting, allowing free access to flying and crawling insects. The sliders are double-paned, but the panes have permanent condensation and have become stained inside over the years, greatly reducing clarity of view.

The larger bedroom is in much better repair. It also has two sliding glass doors, one facing east and one facing north towards the chicken shed. Again, the screens are ill fitting, but the sliders do shut tightly.

The main bedroom door connecting to the living room area is all glass.

With three walls covered in glass, so to speak, the bedroom is like living outside. We awaken to the sun in our eyes, and see nature all day every day.

There are no drapes, no blinds, and no curtains in the entire house. The only private, glass-free room is the bathroom off the entry area.

Privacy Fishbowl Again

Having extensive windows and sliding glass doors with no curtains or blinds on any of them, with a circular driveway around the house, brings a new level of lack of privacy.

Our host, if he so chooses, can drive his diesel Ford F350 high-suspension pickup truck slowly around the house and past the bedrooms to check and see what we’re up to and see if we’re out of bed yet, all without leaving the comfort of his truck cab.

It’s definitely unnerving.

Nights are unnerving, too. We have acres of black windows reflecting us back at ourselves, hiding anything or anyone who may be out there.

Granted it’s isolated enough that no one is ever out there.

Jim, our host, loves being outside. You could say he has issues about being outside. He’s horrified that we make our living on the computer, requiring time inside hooked up to electricity.

Along with his issues about being outside, he has issues about being up and around early. It doesn’t matter to him if you’re exhausted from travel, or if you worked until midnight on your website and writing. If you’re not up and about by eight, you’re slacking.

Since he feels so strongly about it, he feels absolutely no compunction about rousting anyone out of bed when he deems you should be up.

That frequently led to us being up far earlier than was comfortable during those early weeks.

Since it’s so isolated, and since Jim has a bad startle reaction (worse than mine, if that’s possible) it’s essential to announce yourself by yelling “whoop, whoop” loudly when arriving by foot, or honking if arriving by car.

Many a morning we’d hear the rumble of the diesel engine up on the hill at the Big House followed shortly by the honk-honk, announcing Jim’s arrival.

More than once we stumbled out of bed in our pajamas at seven thirty or eight only to have our house filled by men and activity before we’d gotten dressed or brushed our teeth or had breakfast.

In our traveler’s privacy fishbowl, we have to be ready for people to drop in anytime. We don’t have as much control over our day. We can’t have any personal effects out in any room. We have to be tidy at all times.

We are either dressed and ready for guests, or we can’t care if we’re in our pajamas with no contacts in and our hair not brushed.

On the other hand, there’s a big possibility of unexpected fun. We never know when we’re about to get invited out to see or do something interesting or exciting.

One thing is for sure, life is not dull. Perhaps it’s often overwhelming, but it’s not dull.