A Letter

Dear Neighbor-who-is-selling-drugs-150'-from-my-front-door,

Last weekend you were visited by a few police officers late at night. That must have been scary for you. It must have really shaken up your routine, because I've been noticing a few things since then...

1. Your new friends drive very fancy, very LOUD and fancy sports cars. This makes them very easy to hear when they're a few blocks away. It's made preemptively calling the police much easier for me. Thanks for that.

2. Your system of turning the porch-light on to signal that your store is open is particularly annoying because that light happens to shine into my bedroom window. While it's also contributing to the ease of phoning the police, the glare is getting annoying.

3. The friends who walk up and down the block at very regular times still look pretty relaxed. My husband has gotten a few great pictures of them, since they walk so slowly and seem to almost pose for the photos.

4. Lastly, that blonde who jumped out of her car to buy drugs from you totally blew the stop sign at the end of the street. Your clients should be more careful. Reckless driving could be a cause for the police to stop and search their cars. Just a tip.


It is really annoying that law enforcement hasn't been able to stop this yet. But for someone with laser-like attention to detail, I couldn't have asked for a better hobby.

What would YOU do??

You walk into your bathroom and see blood dripping from the otherwise spotlessly white ceiling. What do you do?

My answer was to grab a bucket to put under the drips, get the dogs in the car and drive into town. The bucket wasn't actually to contain the mess, it was to prove to the authorities (if I needed to) that there actually WAS blood dripping from the ceiling, and I'm not crazy.

I didn't tell Stephan right away. He was having a hard day at work, and I didn't want to upset him. So as we were driving back home and he asked, "How was your day?" he got an unexpected answer. His course of action involved going to the bar before coming home. Once home, we poked a screw driver into the ceiling (which was still white, though there was liquid in the bucket) to make sure that no one was going to come sailing down while we were sleeping.

This morning Stephan opened the ceiling wider and saw... daylight! We knew there was no roof cap, but we had no idea they'd just left it open to the air. Rain water had leaked down overnight and soaked through the pink foam insulation and the brown pressboard covering the ceiling, and onto the floor. 3 cans of Great Stuff later, we have a new access panel up into the attic through the bathroom.

In other news (yeah, the ceiling was bleeding, but life goes on) the internet man came over and I'm typing this from our very own living room! Oh? The living room? Painted a beautifully custom mixed autumn harvest orange. The dogs took one look at the area rug (from Chicago) and just sat on it. Their territory is back. The futon frame came in yesterday so we even have a couch again.

Tomorrow I start my job at Quality Personal Care, a senior assisted living facility. It should be fun- I'll let you know.

We are planning to come home next week for Easter. We leave Tuesday night, arrive Wednesday morning, and stay until Monday night. I don't know where we're staying, or when we're going out or anything so if you have plans and want us to join you please let me know!

And seriously, imagine you walk into your bathroom and the ceiling is bleeding. The ceiling is pure white except for the red droplet that forms and drops onto the floor, leaving no trace on the ceiling. What DO you do??

Where the Deer and the Antelope...

I'm a little stunned. Apparently we bought our house today.

We stopped at the Credit Union to check on our application, and ended up signing all the paperwork, taking half of it over to the lawyer's place, where he handed us a small check for the difference between the loan and the closing costs, and sent us on our way. We were still really confused, so I asked, "Okay, what do we do now?"

His answer was, "get insurance."

So we own the house! We're still not sure what the correct street address is. I'll have to check back on the paperwork. But we're in town for a few minutes, just getting more plaster to repair the walls, checking on bills and doing a load of laundry. Stephan had yesterday and today off. We're trying really hard to make the living room livable before we leave for Chicago next Tuesday night. There's a lot of sanding left, and a fair amount of painting, but Stephan has Thursday AND Friday off- so woo hoo!

Wow. We own a house. Crazy.

Baker: Day 7

Sunday was Stephan's first day at work. He seems to like it a lot. It took him a few hours to get his "nurse" hat back on, but once he did, I think he was fine. The medical center can accomodate up to 8 in-patients at a time. Yesterday they had 4. It seems like such a small number, but, as Stephan said, when you realize you're THE nurse for those 4-8 people, and you have to keep track of their medications, their needs, their schedules... it's a lot to juggle. He's working with a very experienced nurse named Peggy. She is the only other staff nurse here in Baker, the rest are all contract nurses. When Stephan is comfortable with everything, he and Peggy will alternate days on and off.

We're not talking about that game... the one with the oblong ball played on a 100 yard field. Let's just not go there.

Nothing new on the house front. The plan seems to be to move into a small rental we looked at last week until something comes up for sale, or spring thaws out the "sewage-house." With Stephan's extensive knowledge of sewers, replacing the line shouldn't be too tough, if that's what needs to happen.

Matt and Kayle continue to be blessings to us- opening up their home and lives to us. We are very lucky to have them here.