Getting the Hinckley House was a pretty good idea, but getting one of these hammocks was an even better one. I ran about a zillion errands yesterday and then had a very busy morning/afternoon, including moving a dining room table upstairs — a job which, in retrospect, only an idiot would think was meant for a single person (Rob’s away for a while). So by about 6:00pm, I was really happy to find a couple of trees in the backyard (the mowed part between the house and the pond) and quickly hang the hammock.

Not too shabby a view, right? There’s a goose family that lives on the pond, and I was able to watch them wander around near the shore, nibbling on weeds. All I could hear was frogs’ singing and the occasional squawk of a dumb pheasant somewhere in the woods. On Thursday night, I was in Minneapolis, and at one point in the evening, I paused whatever I had been doing to listen to the frogs, except then I realized that there wasn’t even anything making noise similar to frogs (except maybe the tinnitus in my left ear). When I was drifting off to sleep later, I was jolted awake by a perfectly normal plane going overhead — clearly I’ve gone a bit rural when it comes to the sounds I expect in my environment.

Anyway, as I relaxed in the hammock, I kept thinking of that Vonnegut quote, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’ And then I packed it all up and went back inside for some more manual labor.

Should I breeze by the fact that I’ve been absent so much lately? Well, I won’t go on about how sorry I am (although I’m annoyed with it as much as anybody), but I will say that it’s funny how posting here has almost completely fallen off my to-do list. It must be in part due to all the little tasks and busyness that whirl around the Hinckley House — it’s hard to find a moment to organize my thoughts (it often seems that if I’ve stopped moving, I’ve stopped thinking, as well). There’s also just the shift in my routine; I find myself rarely picking up a camera to document anything. (Rob posted photos of the turtles and the baby geese over on the Hinckley House blog, though.)

As things get more organized in Hinckley, I’m hoping to have more time to go through my house in Minneapolis — there’s a lot to weed out. After we closed, I was at the HH for two solid weeks, and when I finally came back to Minneapolis, the house didn’t feel smaller (but it is — it’s one-third the size of the HH); everything just seemed so close together. Like there was too much furniture. Of course, I’d just spent two weeks in a house with next to NO furniture, but I still think there’s some reduction / moving around in order.

One of the fun things about spending large chunks of time both in the cities and ‘up north’ (Hinckley is about eighty miles from my house in Minneapolis, which isn’t nothing, but there’s SO much more ‘north’ to Minnesota that it seems silly to that) is seeing the springtime changes occur in the two places. Everything started to green up early this year, anyway, and it almost looks like summer in Minneapolis right now. But many of the trees in Hinckley still have only tiny leaves, and the perennials are just barely poking their heads out of the ground. I picked several stalks of rhubarb from my garden at home last week and planted some potatoes and cabbage and cauliflower there. It’s hard to decide how I’m going to garden this year, not really knowing where I’ll be spending the bulk of my time!

Anyway, I’m hoping I’ll soon have more to post on the Hinckley House blog. Rooms are getting closer to looking finished-ish, and I’m excited to show you guys what I’ve been up to!

On one hand, I’ve been so busy that there’s not really been any time to write about it. On the other, how many times could I have written about painting, anyway? I’ve been at the Hinckley House more often that not over the past three weeks, and we’re making good progress. We have real appliances now (no more living out of a dorm fridge for me!) and drinkable water (the well was certified as ‘drinkable’ when we had it tested, but now, you know, it’s not yellow and filled with odd bits of silt). I wrote a post about progress on a few of the rooms here.

I’ve got all the pets up here with me at the moment, and they seem to like the big house. There are windows that go almost all the way down to the floor, and it’s so funny to see Henny put her little feet up on the sill in order to look out. Beany always acts supremely confident no matter where she is or who’s around, so she’s been fine, and even Birdy is coming around. Rob’s been in town for a little over a week, and Birdy has decided she’s no longer afraid of him, which means that’s he’s seen more of her in just a few days than anybody else (besides me) has in over a year.

Being up here with not much more than the basics (well, I have some decorative stuff in my bedroom) — and what we do have spread around big rooms — reminds me of how much I could simplify back in Minneapolis. I was thinking about what I would definitely bring up with me if I were to move to the Hinckley House permanently (not in my plans, by the way), and there’s not much. I hope we can stop this place from accumulating the (seemingly) inevitable mountain of clutter!

There’s a new post on the Hinckley House blog.

So… this is why I’ve been quiet lately. So much to do, so much fun (and work).

Nothing much to say around here, so here’s a photo of blossoms on the cherry bushes. Crazy early for this part of the country.

– I made another roll cake! I used the King Arthur Flour recipe for their Classic Jelly Roll, but I filled it with vanilla powdered sugar frosting (a lot of people call that ‘buttercream’, but to me, buttercream is made with granulated sugar, not powdered). I like making these rolls because the slices are a decent, not-too-big size, plus they just look really cool. Here’s this latest one all rolled up. Oh, and did you notice that there’s nary a crack in the cake this time?

– The dogs were on fire today! When I was working on my laptop this morning (sitting on the sofa), I looked over to find this, which is pretty darn cute. And then I was able to record a bit of them playing outside — Henny has been waiting so long for a playmate that’s her own size! I captured the photo above when I walked from the kitchen into the living room. I have no idea what they were doing; they stayed like that long enough for me to grab my camera and take several photos. I guess they were just relaxing (why does Henny look so proud?). Then we had a thunderstorm in the evening, and the dogs huddled in a corner together. Eventually, Greta found her way into her little house (crate), and Henny curled up in a cat bed right next to it. Now that the storm has passed, they’re back on the sofa. That’s a busy day of being cute.

– I thought it would be fun to bake a loaf of no-knead bread, since I haven’t done that in a while. I’d forgotten that the recipe calls for too much water (in my opinion), PLUS it’s been really humid (so strange), so the dough was just too soggy to rise well once it was in the oven. Oh well. It’s still pretty good, in a dense, chewy, crumpet-y type way. For dinner, I had a couple of slices toasted, with veggie pepperoni and organic cheddar.

– And speaking of organic cheddar, I’ve been trying to buy only organic dairy, which is pretty doable without going to great lengths (ice cream is tricky, though). The real exception is processed cheese slices — American wrapper cheese. It’s so bad, but it’s the only kind of cheese I like on a veggie burger. I think Whole Foods sells an organic variety, but I rarely go there. BUT… my local supermarket sells vegan wrapper ‘cheese’ — several kinds, in fact. I bought a package of American or Cheddar slices, and they’re really good! The ‘real’ wrapper cheese is so processed that the fake stuff pretty much tastes the same. And I don’t have to worry about sad cows. Everybody wins!

– Puppies! I posted some similar photos on flickr the other day. Henny isn’t bothered by Greta’s presence, but she’s never been a cuddly dog. Greta is rather taken with Henny, though, so they’re always together. Henny was sitting on her mat earlier today, and Greta came up and stood as close as possible. She wasn’t pestering Henny — just wanted to be near. I remember reading that Chihuahuas seem to flock together or recognize their own kind, which I thought was nonsense, but seeing how quickly these two have connected, I’m reconsidering my position.

– Today was spent working on projects, alternated with sitting outside (in the warm, humid air) with the dogs. I also ran to the hardware store to get oil for this chair that I recently sanded and stained. (That photo was pre-oil, but it looks fairly similar now.) The story is that I got the chair for $5.25 at the thrift store, and judging by its dark cherry finish, I guessed it was from the 80s or 90s (you can see it when I began working on it here). But when I took the seat off to recover it, I found a ‘Do Not Remove This Tag’ tag that was dated 1923. The dark stain was hiding some really interesting woodgrain (I hadn’t intended on sanding it down, but one thing led to another…), and I love-love-love the finished chair. My next project is FINALLY refinishing this old desk I got off craigslist in 2006. I’ve done the drawers and the top so far, and I’m really excited about the great old wood that’s under all the layers of gunk.

Yesterday I got lunch at the falafel place, and it turns out you can substitute pita and hummus for the fries when you make a meal, so I used those to make tonight’s pita sandwich (with leftover tofu from the other day). Almost as good as the falafel version!

Oh, but wait. Here’s a dog:

And it’s not Henny. I received an e-mail last night from Underdog Rescue, which is where Henny came from — they had some new puppy mill rescues who needed foster homes ASAP. I wrote back to say that I couldn’t commit to long-term fostering this time around (I had Henny for over three months before I eventually adopted her myself), but that I could help acclimate a new rescue to life on the outside. So I picked up Greta the Chihuahua this morning, and now Henny has a foster sister.

Even though Greta was a puppy mill breeder, just like Henny (and Greta is currently four, whereas Henny was three when she was rescued), she’s nowhere as ‘damaged’. Whether that’s down to the conditions of their respective former lives or their personalities, I don’t know. She’ll come up and lick my hand but doesn’t stay put for pets (I think dogs like Greta and Henny need to learn what being petted is). She’s currently chewing on a rawhide, which I even saw her playing with earlier.

The two dogs are getting along really well, which is gratifying. Henny is usually pretty scared of dogs she doesn’t know (including the four-pound Yorkie we sometimes run into on walks), but I think being on her own turf has helped — and I suspect she can sense that Greta needs some TLC, too. For Greta’s part, she seems to love Henny and tries to stick close to her side. If they start cuddling, I’m going to lose it.

So, anybody want a six-pound, brindle Chihuahua?

How are the pets, you ask? (Well, pretend you asked — I am.)

– It’s been ridiculously nice here lately, weather-wise. So I’ve sat outside with Henny and Beany the past couple of days (Birdy is less interested in the great outdoors), which Beany loves. It’s impossible to catch her to make her go inside, though, so the trick I’ve discovered is leaving the door open and then getting behind her and clapping. Sometimes that doesn’t work, though. I was scolding her yesterday, which Henny thought was hilarious, and she decided to help by cornering Beany and barking at her. She did something similar a few months ago, when I scolded Birdy about chewing on the Christmas tree. My little enforcer.

– The nighttime routine for the pets goes like this: After I wash the dishes, I get the cats to go downstairs. Beany would rather not go, so I do the clapping thing (it can be the most unenthusiastic clapping, too, not forceful), and she reluctantly heads down. Birdy, on the other hand, loves it in the basement — every now and then I find her in the cats’ bed in the middle of the day — so she makes a beeline in that direction when I say, ‘It’s time to go downstairs.’ I think the cats spend most of the night cuddled up together, which is why Birdy likes it. I let Henny outside (and back in again) while I’m brushing my teeth, and when I’ve finished straightening things up, I tell Henny, ‘It’s time to go to bed,’ and she hops off the sofa and trots into my bedroom and inside her pup tent. Except now I don’t even have to say anything; as soon as I walk to turn off the last lamp in the living room, she’s on her way. It’s nice to have pets who are such sticklers for routine.

– Things about Henny: She likes bananas and kale. She knows the sound of a yogurt container from a room away. If I offer her a big treat (something she has to carry away to enjoy), she’ll sniff while I hold it and then look expectantly at the spot on the ground where I should put it — she’ll take small stuff from my hand, though. She’s learned to leave treats until I say ‘okay’. Once, when I was working in the basement, I heard her barking, and then I saw her at the top of the stairs (she won’t come downstairs). It turned out the mailman was at the front door (on the other side of the house), and she hadn’t been barking at him but to let me know.

– Things about Beany: She loves to be pet, but not on top of her head. You can work your way there, but if you come at her to pet her head, she’ll duck. She’s so friendly that when the neighbor dog (a little Westie) was sniffing her through the fence today, she flirted with him instead of running away. When I brought Beany to the vet right after adopting her, he said to watch out, because she would become a biter. Nobody has ever been so wrong about a cat.

– Things about Birdy: She has a fuzzy head, a whiny voice, and she’s always sitting on whatever I need. But I’m still pretty fond of her.