Oskar and Dorisa go to the Cabin

Wow. Three weeks since my last post. I apologize for neglecting my friends.

As you can tell from the lack of posts, we have been keeping pretty busy around here. We bought some rocks! It actually was very exciting- they were landscaping rocks for around our flowers in the front yard. We have most of them in place now and I think we are going to edge them with old railroad ties. Once it is all finished I will post a picture. Our flowers aren't doing great. We went and talked to the people at the garden center about them and we think they got to wet when it rained a bunch over the last week. We were told to deadhead them and let them dry out. This is tricky because it is raining again today. By the way, I didn't know about this deadheading business. There is a large sticky note in my brain to avoid getting any more plants that need to be deadheaded.

The bedroom has been painted for a while now and i am FINALLY finishing up painting the windows today. Between the humidity and the bumps on the walls, the tape isn't holding on too well, so I will need to do a bit of touching up but at least it's getting closer to done. I was wondering why whoever painted our windows before us did such a crappy job. Now I know. It is because painting the windows sucks. So so much. A work light would help I'm sure, but it is just ridiculous how much time it takes to do what looks to be so little. Plus I'm pretty convinced we will need to find some money and get new windows someday, so it's hard to put in a lot of effort on it.

'New windows? Aren't you getting a little crazy with the home improvement?' You ask. Well, here is the story of our windows. They are original to the house (1956) and they are actually quite cool. They each have a number plaque on them and they have corresponding winter windows and screens that you can snap in. It's a neat little system. The trouble is that a fair number of them don't open. At all. All the neat in the world hardly makes up for a lack of function when concerning windows. The previous owners said that the house stayed plenty warm in the winter, but I'm thinking that the windows probably aren't the most efficient things either. And yes, I am crazy about the home improvement. Have we met?

Bald Eagle friends!

My job is going well, Dan's job is going well AND we had ANOTHER friend come and visit us a couple weeks ago! In 2 months in South Dakota we have reached the number of friends who visited while we were in Alaska! It is fun when people visit.

I promise he doesn't wear this shirt every day. We apparently
just happen to take pictures of him every time he has it on.

Last Wednesday, Oskar and I drove 312 miles to the cabin. Dan stayed home to go to work and do chores. It is supposed to be a 5 hour drive on highways. It took us a bit longer but we never stopped and my little Chomper was a perfect little baby the entire way. And yes, there was a bit of a pee explosion in Oskar's car seat that required some attention when we got there. Oskar had a great time playing on the beach and in the water. He also got to fish with grandpa and drive grandpa's boat, which apparently was exhausting because he fell asleep on the boat and slept for about 2.5 hours. It was great. The trip back didn't go quite as smoothly as the trip up. Off and on torrential down pours mixed with stop and go traffic pretty much from Pequot Lakes to St. Cloud. We got out in Spicer to eat and stretch but Oskar was still a little whiny toward the end. In his defense, so was I. He does a hilarious thing now where if you look back at him in his car seat he makes faces at you and does a funny little giggle. We also played this fascinating game of 'Hi' for about 10 minutes.

Dorisa Deflates a Mattress, May as Well Have Punched Elmo in the Face

Holy moly have we done a lot lately.

A family picture!

I am incredibly thankful to nice people in the congregation- because of them I am now gainfully employed. I had a play-date a couple weeks ago and mentioned that I would like to have a job and lo and behold, her husband is an appraiser and needed an assistant. I started last Friday and went to a couple houses with him and this week I've been doing training regarding filling out the reports- which will be my main duty. I think it is going well so far and I’m enjoying the work. There is still a lot I have to learn, but every report gets easier, so that’s a good sign. He mostly works from home, so right now I’m working there (about a mile away) but eventually I should be able to do most of my work from home. It will not be a full time job, but he is offering very fair pay and I think that it is a good fit for my life right now.

Obligatory first day of daycare picture. And then he charged at me.

Oskar started daycare yesterday. It was a lot harder for me than I thought it would be. Once I arrived at work I got over it pretty quick, but it was a tough morning. The woman who is watching him seems incredibly nice and was super kind when I dropped him off while trying not to cry (result: unsuccessful). Oskar got in there right away and was playing with the other kids. There is one little boy there who is a month older and goes to our church, so that is pretty cool. Oskar did pretty well. He got sad a couple times, but it passed. Lunch didn’t go great, but that’s okay, he will in no way starve any time soon. We skipped today but he will go back tomorrow. I thought it might be nice to ease him in to the situation instead of a sudden daycare attack. The only downside is that I think I’m allergic to something in her house. Oskar doesn’t seem to be affected. We’ll see if it continues.

We were graced with the presence of good friends a couple weekends ago. We got ranched (my new term for eating Pizza Ranch), explored the Falls, went on a couple walks and witnessed the beginning of the Hot Harley Nights Parade. That last one was accidental. We just saw the beginning as we walked back to the Falls after dinner, but it started with 15-20 Harleys riding down one of the main downtown streets with giant American flags on the back of each one. No idea where it went from there. People had spots staked out for a couple hours before it even started though so apparently it’s a pretty big deal. It was a really fun weekend. It’s nice to have friends visit. This is where the mattress bit comes in. I was putting away our Aerobed after our guests left and Oskar saw me lay on it to get the air out and just started wailing. It was probably the worst day of his life.

Before plants...

Dan’s parents came last week to help us do some landscaping. We went to the awesome garden/wine store and bought a lot of plants and came back and went to work. I can’t remember if I mentioned this before or not, but there is a nursery in town that has an amazing selection of plants, a super interesting layout, kitties walking around like they own the place AND they sell wine. Pretty sure they win. Anyways, the flowers have helped, but we still have lots of outdoor work to do. hopefully we can get some rock out there soon- as classy as the fabric looks, I think we can do better. A couple of the tall purple plants are having trouble standing up so I need to help them out a bit until they sober up and figure out what is going on. We also got some other things done last week, like the wood panelectomy, some superficial electrical updates AND we got some of our painted shut windows to open. This all happened in an incredibly exhausting 2 days. 

After plants!

That's all for now, I guess. Here is another picture of Oskar to send you on your way:

We got this super fuzzy blanket from our Realtor and Oskar can not get enough of it.
He often enjoys reading on his own as well.

“Youthful-Looking” Friend Pal Makes the Front Page

This was a while ago now, but my friend was featured in the local newspaper, The Brandon Valley Challenger. He was interviewed by the entire staff of the paper! The staff is a woman named Jill. I thought it was a nice little article. The senior pastor was also interview when he got here a couple years ago, so it isn't uncommon for a new person to be featured, but I don’t think they do a write up when someone gets a job at Sunshine Foods. Although maybe they might if there is new owner.

Anyway, if you click on the picture I think it will open it larger in a new window- give it a read!

Dorisa Provides an Update for the Masses

There is a new show on ID that is called Southern Fried Homicide. Someone somewhere is getting paid for coming up with this stuff and I’m wondering why it isn't me.

After weeks of chaos, the job hunt has begun. It is not going well. That’s about all I can say about that.

I think I remember a time when I sat down to eat meals, and I'm almost
certain I didn't used to eat my Thai food in the bathroom.

We closed on our house on the 20^th (after living here for 20 days) and I am thoroughly enjoying home ownership. There are all sorts of projects on my to do list and now that we FINALLY went and bought bedroom furniture, I think we will spend the time from now to when it gets delivered sanding and painting and cleaning the bedroom. Hooray! Other big projects we hope to get done soon include radon mitigation, an egress window for a basement bedroom and another inspection for our foundation. This will be followed by a wood panelectomy in the basement. The situation is critical.

We had a temporary ant infestation that has been cleared by the magic of Terro. We have since discovered a couple new bugs lurking about. We are not quite sure what they are...

I cleaned out parts of our gutters the other day. This was extremely exciting and included me saying, “It smells like terrible rotting life,” and “Oooh! Something is growing over there!” Needless to say, I was successful in clearing the issue. Oddly enough, it had nothing to do with neither the rotting life nor the growth experiment.

Sent Dan up to take a look, Oskar thought he needed to help.

I have also participated in standard lawn maintenance. I have learned many things here.

1.  If you think the blade of your mover will hit the root of a tree sticking out of the ground, you are probably right.

2. Our yard has many stealthy holes in it. MANY.

3. The front yard may look flat, but it is a liar.

4. Sticks hurt.

On the left is the garbage can I registered for and received for our wedding.
On the right is a shower curtain left in the linen closet of our new house by the previous owner.
Destiny.

Through all this I have been surprised by Oskar. Well, he often surprises me, but I was especially pleased with his reaction to the move. He and I arrived at the house alone. I hesitantly worked my way into the house through doors that were left open for us (It’s a small town, who needs keys?). We were told the house would be empty, but I really didn't want to barge in on anyone so I called in and received no reply. I put Oskar down and he just went nuts; exploring all the rooms, running and laughing. He loves his room and even spends some time now and then playing in there alone. It is still teal and lime green, but we will get around to changing that eventually, I’m almost sure of it.

I promise that I will eventually post pictures of our house. It will just take a little time. I hope to do more regular posts as well. Again, it should get a bit easier now that we are a little settled in and will be spending more than 5 days in a row in our house.

No Pins, No Pattern and No Clue: Dorisa Makes a Quilt

Well, that is a bit of a lie. One: I did use pins at the end to finish up the edges and two: after years of deliberation I realized I didn't need or want another quilt and didn't want to learn how to quilt, so I will I will now call it my patchwork mess.

Let me paint you a picture: It’s spring 2012. The trees are budding, there’s a warm breeze in the air and I’m feeling ambitious. I think to myself; time to start making my camp quilt. I cut up my t-shirts and make a rough pattern on some graph paper that I’m not at all happy with. My ambition was then thwarted by a parasite that made me too sick to function as a human person for nine months and a move to the last frontier. (If you judge me for calling my beautiful baby a parasite you have either never had a baby or your pregnancy was fun and easy. Good for you.)

Two years later, we are about to move again and I conclude that making the blanket will cut down on the volume of stuff we need to move. This is true, but I still didn't know what I was doing so I just went for it. Luckily it all worked out. It even made a rectangle and everything!

Tying the ties on my patchwork mess was one of the most frustrating things I have ever done. After getting all the pieces sewn together I thought this would be the fun and relaxing bit. I was wrong and more wrong. Struggling to pull the needle through with the yarn on the end, I watched a tutorial online hoping to learn a thing or two. I was doing it correctly; I think those old broads are just stronger than I am. This made me sad. Tools! I thought. I need tools! I got a pliers to help me out. Did not work. Went to the store to get a variety of sewing needles and more sewing machine needles (I had already broken two). I opened the cheaper standard set of needles and picked the one with the biggest eye. I got the yarn through the eye with ease so I got foolishly optimistic. Stuck it through the blanket. Couldn't get it through. Got the pliers again. Definitely… well I don’t know exactly how to describe the myriad of events that followed but this is what happened to the needle:

Hint: It is supposed to be straight.

I ended up using what can only be referred to as civil war surgery needles and wearing nitrile coated work gloves (generously donated to me by my former employer) to pull the yarn through. Traditional? No. Effective? Extremely. 

Dan often calls me sneaky domestic. Mostly, I'm resourceful and stubborn. 

I learned an important lesson about my sewing machine. Needle size matters. I broke 4 needles during this project. Pretty sure someone who knows something about sewing machines would have figured this out. But, now I know, and luckily when a needle breaks, all it does is make a big noise. This is followed by a cacophony of verbal abuse. Still haven't figured out where that came from, but it happens every time a needle breaks. Weird.