A log home for sale / Sweetums and Dante in their new pasture.
May 23, 2009
Are you one of those people whose house is always camera ready?
Are you one of those people whose house is always camera ready?
I’m convinced that the house magazines where everything is beautiful, clean, in place, and perfectly staged is to frustrate us.
You probably guessed I’m not one of those people, but yesterday I was getting our home camera ready. We’re putting it on the market, and the Realtors were coming at 3 o’clock to film a virtual tour. Wow, they did a thorough job, were here for two hours. We even hiked up the hill to find a property boundary. A giant seed-baring Douglas fir marked the corner. The Realtor said it was against the law to cut that tree, so I can rest assured that one Grandmother tree is safe. I began at 7:30 in the morning, meant to shower eventually, but figured they were filming the house not me, so I just changed my clothes and stayed down-wind.
Fifteen minutes before they arrived I was praying frantically, “Please God let me fix this railing before they come.”
If you are thinking of buying this house, don’t worry, the railing boards will be replaced. They were gnawed on by Sierra my mustang. I filled the chew marks with wood filler, but it didn’t stain as the package said it would, and I was sure that in a photo they would look as though a Pterodactyl had pooped on them. So I applied make-up. Isn’t that what they do for a photo shoot?
I used some of Daughter D’s craft paint and covered my boo boos.
Now I say, “Don’t walk on the floor, don’t touch anything, just levitate through the house."
We moved Daughter D’s horses a couple of days ago and left the horse trailer in my horse corral, and now Sierra is dismantling that. That horse loves to chew on whatever she can wrap her teeth around—she isn’t a cribber though--just likes to chew on the truck, the railing, the horse trailer. She also loves a cardboard box filled with empty Pepsi bottles. The rattling scares Velvet, but Sierra takes to it like a toddler at the seashore throwing sand.
As I said, we moved Daughter D’s horses out of their soggy bog and down the hill to the neighbor’s pasture. They had been there before until that ground transformed into a bog, so we moved them up here beside our horses. Now that pasture is wonderful, filled with green grass, and not soggy. Moving the horses, however, was like taking an odd number of cannibals and missionaries across the river without one getting eaten—old riddle. First I put my horses in the round pen to make sure they didn’t jump the fence and follow DD’s horses. Then with DD leading Dante, John, our helper, leading Sweetums, and while I carried Baby D, we started our trek down the hill. Soon Dante came galloping past me like a horse aiming for the barn—which he was. Next came Sweetums' thundering hoofbeats zipping past me like a freight train.
Our solution: call husband, ask him bring home the heavy-duty company truck, hook up trailer, and load Dante. Then with DD leading Sweetums, and me carrying Baby D. we trekked down the hill. Success!
Velvet spent the next day calling for them, and she stands there looking longingly at their empty enclosure. Sierra says “Whatever.”
Now I'm off to the redwood store for railing replacements.
Ta! Da!
P.S. Regarding my attempt to hatch chicken eggs—4 days before they were scheduled to hatch, they disappeared down Bear’s throat. (I do believe they were rotten and he didn’t eat baby chicks.)
