Winter Mix

Whether I grant my consent or not, winter has a date with the hills of eastern Nebraska. And this tryst is fast approaching. This weekend McKibbin and I winterized the house. Not exactly a glamorous nor a romantic venture. It also requires no small amount of energy to get ready for winter in a house that is nearly one-hundred years old. But it was the week-end-long task we took up and accomplished the following:

*Flip the mattresses

*Plastic insulate the windows

*Clean out bathroom and kitchen drain traps
*Seal small cracks in the foundation

*Pack up summer clothes into attic boxes

*Change the filters in our dryer and furnace

*Set up ultrasonic repellers to dissuade mice from becoming tenants

*Turn the compost pile

*Plug in the space heater in Naomi’s room

*Set up the sunlamp fresh herb garden in the basement

*Stash two ice scrapers in the console of my car

*Mate mittens and warm socks

*Change the oil, check the battery and rotate my car tires

*Re-locate the shovel and ice-melt to the front porch box

It sounds like a lot, and it was. But with the proper amount of joking around, several trips to Home Depot, the gratuitous over-use of gadgets and power-tools (because, hey, if you've got a delux-ious tool box why not use it?), and a soundtrack of funk music blaring from every available stereo speaker...it actually wasn’t a bad time.

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Currently Watching: The Frontier House

Listening To: Nelly Furtado (Woah, Nelly!, Forca, and Folklore) and Angelique Kidjo (everything I own; thanks, M@!)

Currently Trying to Memorize: Winter Conversation by Joyce Wakefield (poem)