Running with the Cows

Well, it’s night here. And I haven’t written a legitimate blog entry in a while mainly because we’ve been too busy or tired or rushed to write on the computer at home and every time I sit in the warm library I just get really sleepy and have troubles writing.

We had a gigantic jump up in standard of living today. We met some wonderful people who offered us some furniture for free. We now have a large glass door that is acting as a window (brilliant) we’ve added parsley to our herb garden that now sits outside the glass door window (cute) and we quadrupled our table/counter surface. This has improved our little room SO much. Having a place to put things is really important not only for cleanliness, keeping track of things, and deterring rats, but psychologically as well. We now have everything lined up and organized as opposed to in random plastic bags littered across the floor. Awesome. But the grand finale is the addition of two large lounge chairs (thank god they fit through the narrow doorway). We shampooed them today and let them dry (thanks for not raining Ireland. And we’ve now brought them in next to the fire and by golly, it looks like we have a little home. Our two lanterns still light the small room. The wooden side of the roof actually reflects a fair amount of light and it’s positively cozy. Now if only we had an even floor and a door.

I put the tarp over the next section roof which I suppose is the official ‘moving onto the next step’ event. We are going to tackle the humongous job of cleaning the main house.

I must admit though, that today I finally broke down while moving/cleaning the lounge chairs. I have been remarkably good (for me) in regards to living with spiders, insects, and rats. Not that I’m particularly afraid of any (ok a little bit insects and I can’t stand spiders), but I haven’t complained once. I’ve dealt with them and to be honest really haven’t been that bothered. The gigantic spider and spider nests along with a swarm of potato bugs that were inhabiting my lounge chair seriously threatened the chance of this lounge chair ever getting into our house and getting my butt in it. So I broke down and got a little skittish with the lounge chair. But I cleaned it and rid it of the spider, the nests and the bugs. And now, I’m currently enjoying it. We also got three barstools and built our Beirut table, so we are anxiously awaiting our first visitor…

Thanks to all you people who have recently dropped me a line. It’s nice to hear from everybody. It’s been a month now that we’ve been here and I must admit that I am beginning to miss the city. Not any city in particular but city living, whether its Seattle (don’t miss the traffic) or Los Angeles, or the short time I was in San Francisco or briefly seeing Boston, I miss the city. I also miss having people who are similar to me around. But I went for another run today and that was good. I am horribly out of shape. Running is unbelievably uncomfortable when you’re out of shape. But I gutted out a nice 75 minute run. And I found out about a half-marathon on Saturday in Derry (which is in Northern Ireland). I am going to try to run in it and its giving me something to train for. I will try to run everyday from now til then. But I definitely was exhausted today before we even started moving all the furniture so it was an extremely exhausting day and I’m not sure I would be able to do that for a week. It just means I’d have to eat more (expensive) and not let any of my body recover from working hard on the house so I don’t know…but I do enjoy running again. I am also incredibly inflexible. I need to be careful or I’ll pull something soon…I can feel it.

We still haven’t met many people our own age here, but that’s partly due to the fact that we don’t really go out much. Brian’s not all that interested in going out and without anyone dragging me out, well you know me, I just sort of stay in. heh. But I’d like to, I really need some people my own age around here. Brian’s great and all, but we’ve spent a lot of time together. And we’ve spent a lot of time with people several years older than us. Oh well.

I am going to get back to Dorian Gray and I bid you all a good day or night, depending where you are. Hope you are well.