stubsadventures

The sleepy town of Waiparous that I have moved to, so far is very quiet and peaceful. There are some “neighbourhood” deer that are always around some where. Today, I came home to the family of six of them in my backyard. The fact that there are piles of their poo in the grass would indicate that this isn’t the first time they have stopped by to say hi. They still have some wild in them, if you make a sudden movement, they’ll dart but they will let you come surprisingly close if you move slowly. They let me take some pretty cool pictures of them. They also ate right out of a planter right in front of me! It was ants in Drumheller that were my nemesis. Looks like here, it will be the deer.

The day times have been filled with beautiful sunshine and perfect temperatures since I have moved in. For my vacation at least, the weather is cooperating. The house during the day is full of sunshine and the sounds of animals and the river.

During the night, I would say I am not quite as comfortable with my little piece of Utopia. There are no curtains or blinds on most of the windows in the house. There really is no one around to see directly in, unless they were outside directly looking in. When the sun goes down and it’s dark outside, it is almost worst case for someone with an overactive imagination like myself. For those two know me well, they know that I love scary movies, I love doing things that scare me, I love going to scary places (see Ghost Towns blog). So, having said all that, at night when the lights are on in the house and it is completely dark outside, you can’t see really anything outside of the windows at all. And note: there are a lot of windows. I’ll be sitting on the couch and look out the window, just trying to see something and all of a sudden I will think: what would I do if a face popped through the darkness right now? So then I’m thinking about it, which isn’t good. So, for now, the night times are clearly still filled with some anxiety. I think it’s just going to take some getting used to.

The transformation of the house continues, it is slow but steady and starting to see some changes helps keep the momentum!

Stubs

One of the things I love the most about this house is that I can see myself staying here for a long time. It is worth the effort to put in the work here to make sure this house is exactly the way that I want it because I know I’ll be enjoying it for a long time. That being said, one of the first things to be done was to paint. As much as the yellow really screamed “the west” it was a little too much for me. I dubbed it, the New Mexico Yellow. The mud room, although not yellow did require a bit of a facelift as well, and I figured while the getting was good, I might as well paint the whole main area. Luckily, Jo was around and able to lend a much needed hand. I was running out of motivation painting alone.

The hardest part was painting over the baseboards, the color they had was a deep matte gray. It required four coats in some spots. Hence now, my hands being in a claw shape from hours of trim work.

Yesterday, I had the scariest encounter in the shed. I was in there, just minding my own business when the biggest wolf spider came running at me. He practically tried to push me over. It was so big and so hairy, I wasn’t sure if I could even kill it but I managed to squish it. Flip flop foot and all. There are so many spiders everywhere when you live in the woods. I have found them everywhere. In my shower, almost all the corners and don’t even get my started on the wood pile. Going to get wood for the fire is like a test of my heart strength. I will say, I have noticed over the last week, I freak out a lot less when I see them. I’m not super pumped to see them either, don’t get me wrong, they are still going to die but the fact of the matter is, it’s just part of living in the woods.

Stubs.

Well, the title says it all. I mean, there is no avoiding it at this point, I live in the woods. The three days of moving were a bit chaotic to say the least but it was all worth it when I was handed the keys. Some of my closest girlfriends, who I work with up north were here to help me celebrate (and I obviously put them to work immediately after).  The first person dropped by to introduce themselves within the first hour. This is a smaller place than I thought. In the winter time, there are only about 30 residents. That is not very many when you are that far away from a town. I timed it finally, 20 minutes almost exactly to Cochrane.

Within three hours of being here, I found myself enjoying the silence when I hear someone at the door, again. I answer expecting another villager introducing themselves but to my surprise, I find a delivery driver, who was trying to turn around in my drive way and smoked my fence. At first, a part of me thought that this was like a “welcome to the village” joke or something, and I honestly looked around to see if people were hiding the bushes. When I walked down the driveway though, he had in fact smoked my fence and totally busted up the chicken wire around the dog run. I just stood there and scratched my fence. He asked me if it was my house, and I told him that I had just literally taken the keys. He felt so bad. I told him to not worry about the fence, that I would fix it and I could only laugh to think about the fact that this is just the beginning of this crazy adventure I have set out on. Little things all add up when you live out here, Lobster and I decided to have a fire. I forgot, that meant chopping wood… there is so much to do before the winter!

Tonight, the painting started. Lots of pictures to come.

Stubs.