Intro to Country Living

Dad lives on 120 acres halfway between Paso Robles and Cambria. If I told you 80 acres and Santa Rosa, I was mistaken, but 80 or 120, it is still big, and the road is Santa Rosa Road. It is for sale, if you want to see how beautiful it is, here's the link:

http://www.santarosacreek.com/gallery

The property has 4 buildings, the main house, a guest house over the garage, an art studio and shop, and a barn that houses the water tank. I set my cats up in the studio, since that is where I plan on spending most of my time and it has a futon bed, and my clothes and stuff in the guest house. It should be pretty easy for Dad and I to remain the bachelors we are used to being. Dad also has a dog, Sophie, who has the run of the main house, and a ferile cat, that goes in and out of the garage. Dad and I had a chance to visit when I got here and then he left for a two day golf trip, giving me a great opportunity to recover from a week of packing and moving and not enough sleep.

Spit immediately covered herself in cobwebs while trying to hide in the studio, so yesterday I cleaned. Dad's studio is full of his art, has a drafting table I dream about, and more art supplies than anyone could use in a lifetime. It was also full of cobwebs, spiders, and mouse droppings. I popped one mousetrap, before the cat could get to it, and I don't think Dad thought he had a mouse problem in the studio, but I found a great deal of evidence to the contrary. Just the presence of my cats should take care of mice, but living in the country requires tolerance of spiders. When cleaning in the country, wear shoes. I squished many, many spiders of all sizes while I was cleaning. I did not see any black widows, do not squish black widows, black widows are best suffocated using spray adhesive.

While packing, my to-do list became a to-do pile. One moving tip, keep a to-do bag. This is for your to-do list, bills to pay, the last days of mail, your internet passwords, moving estimate, the cell phone charger, all those last minute things that you can't put away and know you will need and do not want to look all over for wondering where you put them. Everything just goes in the bag. Yesterday I went through the bag and made a new current to-do list and balanced the checkbook. The only thing I forgot to do before I left is pick up the dry cleaning and I think I left my internet passwords at Mom's.

Yesterday late afternoon I watched Sophie stick her head in a ground squirrel hole and pull out a squirrel. There is a big ground squirrel problem on the property and Dad has been poisoning them. (Sorry, Colleen!) So, the squirrel wasn't moving and Sophie is chewing on it and I go after her and she eludes me for a while and I finally find her sitting on the grass gnawing on the dead squirrel. The idea was not to poison Sophie, so I get her away and in the house and give her some dog food and then I go to take care of the dead squirrel. What is Dad doing with the dead squirrels? I can't just put it in the trash, the trash man isn't exactly coming tomorrow to pick it up, do I bury it? No, too much effort and Sophie will just dig it up. Where do I put it where Sophie can't get it again or any other animal? So, Dad has a deer fence around the poisoning area that is rampant with squirrel activity and holes and I took a shovel and picked up the dead squirrel and threw it over the deer fence. It fell part way down one of the holes and is now a warning inside the deer fence of death. Country living is not a life for the squeamish.

My cats cleaned themselves up well, but have found their nocturnal nature and kept me up all night Wednesday night, probably after those mice or a lizard, so I slept in the guest house last night and had my first good night's sleep in weeks.