Lughnasa Lughnasa Moon
Quiet again. And the night has come. The dogs are all asleep and so is Kate. We have different chronotypes. I go to bed later and get up later; she’s the reverse.
We’re going to another KBEM jazz event, this one at Alexis Bailly Vineyards. Dinner and jazz. This is our outing for Kate’s birthday which comes on August 18th.
Lughnasa Lughnasa Moon
We had our business meeting this morning at Keys. Seated in the same booth where Mark Odegard and I ate breakfast yesterday. Odd, like a movie set where the scene remains the same, but the actors and the movie itself change.
We reviewed our finances as we always do. We’re still above water and likely to stay that way unless we get a real desire to cruise the world. (which, I admit, I have, but at a manageable level. For now.) We looked at the calendar, a blessedly uncluttered one which gives us time to pack, garden and patch that leaky chain link fence.
Now that the initial spike of house hunting fever has waned, we’re focused on the mundane. Get the boxes. Fill them. Decide on what work needs doing and getting it done.
There is an odd combination of anticipation and resistance, both of which make sense to me at this point. We anticipate the move as if it’s already happened and resist the work necessary to make it happen. But then, since we’re adults, we pick up the books, take them off the shelves and place them in the Jack Daniels box and the Sky Vodka box and and the Captain Morgan Rum box. We are moving the drinking habits of the Andover area to Colorado.
Lughnasa Lughnasa Moon
The whistle-pig incident continues to have reverberations. Her somewhat dormant 
hunting genes awakened Rigel has become more, well, dogged. Prior to the land-beaver and its remaining in place for almost 24 hours, Rigel had let our poor defenses contain her. Then, she squeezed under the chain link, taking her sister, Vega, with her. I wired it shut.
That afternoon I opened the front door on my way to the mailbox and there were Vega and Rigel, waiting to be let in from the front yard. Again with the wirecutters and my diminishing coil of wire. Again I found the new place and wired it shut. So. Good.
Then, late afternoon yesterday Vega could be seen standing near the driveway looking across at the neighbors. Where her much more adventuresome sister had gone to say hello. Once more along the fenceline. This time they had not slipped under the chain link, but pawed through a rotted branch, placed along this spot now long ago and gotten past its capacity to add security.
So, again with the wire and this time a cement block to plug up the hole, too. This was at 9
am today. At noon, after I fed them all lunch, I let everybody out. Gertie and Kepler, our two 75-pounders, came back in, as they always do. But the big girls did not. Uh-oh.
(Rigel on the left, Vega on the right, lounging after a sojourn in the neighborhood)
Once more outside I called for them. Nothing. There is about 600 feet or so of fence that runs along our property on the north side. It provides the most often used escape routes these days. Before I could get past the spot I sealed up this morning, Vega and Rigel came bounding along, tongues hanging out, wide smiles on their faces. On the other, wrong, side of the fence from where I stood.
They are now inside. Again, the coiled wire and the wire cutters will come out. Now you may think, why doesn’t he do something about this? Something preventative? I have. Rigel no longer goes over the fence because I ran an electric fence along the top. And, several years back I took badly warped 2×4’s and wired them to the bottom of the fence where I hadn’t wired in large branches from an earlier round of escapes by the whippets. This is around 2,500 feet of fence, roughly half a mile, and much of it formerly covered in dense underbrush.
(the Colorado fence I have in mind)
About five years ago I cut a path all around the fenceline and the dogs have used it, keeping it clear. At least now I can easily find and repair the breeches. This renewed hunting vigor will, I hope, pass soon.
Then, in Colorado, there will be bears and mountain lions. We’re gonna build a different kind of fence in Colorado.
Lughnasa Lughnasa Moon
We’ve set another SortTossPack date, September 18th. By this point my goal is to have all the books that will go to Halfprice Books ready. The remainder of the books-everything but those I need right now-will also be packed as well as all the art and smaller objects from the study. The garden study, which I plan to complete packing this weekend will be empty of books and files as will the main room in the basement.
At this point we’ll be down to shelving units, desks, file cabinets and cabinets, some of which will go to the consignment shop and some of which will go into storage. On the 18th we’ll probably put a good bit of our stuff into storage unless we decide to save that until later.
After the second SortTossPack day, we plan to have the garage floor epoxied and the basement floor if necessary. Sometime in that same period we’ll have the driveway seal coated, the remainder of the outdoor handyman work done and the lawn work contractor will complete the necessary pruning, leveling and mending.
We want to get most of this done before winter sets in so we don’t add to the confusion with water and mud.
Fortunately, we have the financial resources to do all this and the work inside, mostly painting and some minor repairs. This is all in service of getting the house and grounds in optimal shape for putting the place on the market.
Continuing my circus tent analogy, some stakes are up, some ropes are slack, but the canvas is still in place and the center poles still hold everything taut. Still, even a casual observer would know now that the circus was getting ready to leave town.