Category - Home Sweet Home

I really was going to write this over the weekend, but Saturday morning I was pulling on my socks and I managed to rip my right index fingernail off, halfway down.  It bled and hurt.  Alot.  So much I cried when I had to get a new bandaid.  Hello?  Band-Aid brand?  Whatever happened to the no-stick pad?  Cuz it stuck and naked nail bed hurts. Really badly!!

So I really can’t use that finger much, which makes it hard to type and really interferes with my computer games household chores.  But I’m here now, hurty finger and all, making about 12 typing errors per sentence, but here it goes…

One of the most striking things about our new home was the view.  All the people that traipsed in and out of our since we moved in, the locksmith, carpet cleaner, movers, furniture repair guys…all of them commented about the view.  Of all the windows that face the back yard, only the bathroom and bedroom had window treatments.  It was just too beautiful to block.

Well, the city, in its infinite wisdom decided that the dry creek behind us needed to be cleared of the trees.  Something about improving drainage and delaying erosion.  I’m thinking that tree roots help with erosion, but then again, I’m not in the Army Corps of Engineers.

Now our backyard view is pitiful.  It’s like mighty Samson, shorned, betrayed, weakened and blind.  It hurts to look at.  It hurts to know that this view, this one thing was our home’s crowning glory.  It hurts that it will never, ever look the same again.

Here is the view from the deck, looking to the right of our house, as it was the day we bought the house.

Here it is now. Make sure you click to make the picture bigger so you can truly appreciate the horror.
I know, I know.  I think the drainage pipe is a nice touch, don’t you?  Reminds me of the L.A. River.

Here is the old view, looking to the left.

And now…
Oh look – neighbors I never knew I had.

We were spared one single aspen and one other tree behind our house.

I know they are just trees.  I know that in the grand scheme of life, this isn’t that important.  But I loved those trees.  Looking out our windows brought me such joy.  Sitting on the deck, listening to the wind through the aspens, spying the deer walk along our fence, getting a snack – this is exactly what I thought of when I thought of Colorado.  Even though we were moving to a big city, being surrounded by such Coloradoness was the unspoken dream of my heart.  And I wanted aspens. Imagine my joy at finding all that I wanted.

So my heart broke last week, listening to the chain saws and mulcher turning my trees into wood chips.  I’ll admit it, I cried.  As I sat in the office window one night and could see my across the creek neighbors, I realized we would need curtains.  I’ll never be able to sit outside with my coffee and enjoy the beauty of nature.

It’s tough, accepting the things you can’t change, losing the things you love so much.  I’m sure there is a lesson here, but I don’t really want to know what it is right now.  I’m such an Eeyore anyway, always sad about something and now I’m mourning my trees.

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We woke up to snow this morning.

This is from my front porch, looking across to the park.

It’s not a lot of snow, but still…it’s October! And it stuck around til lunch time.

Of course, this was the scene, back in September:
(I know it’s hard to see, but trust me, that’s snow.)

So if we wanted snow, I guess we picked the right place to live.

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We started school three weeks ago.  I knew we’d be feeling sad that our house guests had left and Philip was gone, too.  Our Nomad friends had to be moving on to their own brand, new home.  I don’t blame them and even though their visit was a short one, it was a great one!  Unfortunately, their leaving coincided with Philip’s return for Washington, DC.  In a great feat of government efficiency, his employer wanted him to return for an all expense paid (by the taxpayers) trip to undergo a polygraph and psychological evaluation.  Even though he is going to be working the exact same  job that he’s held for the last 4 years, it was important to determine whether or not he is the type of person that would sell our nation’s secrets and then lie about it.  We’re assuming he passed.

So anyhoo, left alone for the first time in a new city, I thought it best to dive into school.  The children were predictably excited to be starting American history with Sonlight’s Core 3.  Their new school books had been waiting for them for about 3 weeks, just taunting them.

Our first day back took forever.  We’ve never taken the summer off  before and I was astounded at how much math knowledge was lost and how much hand holding was needed.  However, Boo and Pumpkin Girl were very supportive and assured me that in a few days, it would all come back to me.

After a late afternoon nap with Bip, I herded everyone in the car to go register Pumpkin for ballet.  It took longer than I’d anticipated because I missed my turn and had to backtrack, and it was rush hour.  Actually, rush hour had nothing to do with it because rush hour traffic here is like normal DC traffic.  In fact, I didn’t even realize it was “rush hour” until after we’d finished with the dance studio and someone piped up that they were hungry.

So we headed off to the McDonald’s near our house 1)because kids can never get enough of McD’s, 2)Bip had been trying to get a beany baby Grimace in his happy meal since we moved here and 3) they have a play area.  Sadly, they were out of beany babies, but we ate there anyway.

After we ate, I let the children play.  I heard a crack of thunder and wondered if I’d remembered to close the upstairs windows at home.  It wasn’t worth worrying about or dragging the children home for, so I turned my attention back to watching people go through the drive through.  Then it started to rain.  Actually, it started to pour.  And you know what – this particular McDonald’s has a skylight-type roof over the play yard and the rain was really loud.  And it got louder and then I noticed the hail bouncing off ground outside.  Just pea size hail, no big deal.  Hail storms don’t really last that long, right?

Right.

All hell broke loose and the hail kept coming and grew bigger and bigger.  At some point the noise in the play yard was deafening, so I gathered up the children and took them into the restaurant, which had a normal, quieter roof.  There we watched the hail pound the parking lot and cover both it and the cars with ice.  It was really quite impressive, except for the fact that our car was out there, getting pounded by hail that was now the size of peach pits.

After the storm passed, the  children kept playing while we waited for the ice to melt.  I wasn’t too anxious to see what sort of damage was done to the car.  I skipped my usual iced vanilla latte out of guilt for going out for fast food and getting the car all dinged up.  Turns out, it wasn’t that bad.  A couple of spots may or may not be hail damage, but nothing to get fixed right away.  We’ll probably wait until the car looks more like a golf ball before heading to a body shop.

Upon our return home, we found our upstairs windows open and hail on the (brand new) roof, in the grass and on the back deck.  We wiped up the water on the window sills and went out to play in the ice.  We took some pictures for the blog.

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