the Thompsons Settle in for a Spell in the Country

I’m writing this from my new bedroom.  When we extinguish our lights at night, darkness enfolds us in its embrace.  While we sleep, mice scavenge for food in our kitchen, and when we awaken, roosters wish us a good day.   We are in the country!

I know everyone wants pictures of our new house, and I hope to indulge your fancy, but first I need to deal with the critters in our kitchen, the leaky chimney and roof, the lack of hot water, and the faucet that couldn’t be turned off except by cutting the water supply to the sink.  That on top of unpacking and sorting and purging, plus the normal caring for and feeding and such of my husband and seven kids.  So pictures are pretty low on the list, quite frankly.  But at Christmas, when I have my first Christmas tree in six years—then I will beg, borrow, or steal a camera in order to show off my beautiful 12 foot tree. 

Not having lived in the country for some time (about 25 years), and never as an adult, I’m not sure about some things.  For instance, is it Farmer Faux Pas to mention my mouse problem?  Are mice just something everyone in the country deals with in their own way, but no one really discusses it?  Or is it okay to admit this problem? I poked fun at having a freezer (hopefully temporarily) on my front porch, and afterwards I noticed my neighbors’ freezer on their front porch.  Oops.  Maybe I’m really a city girl at heart, and maybe a few years here will be enough, or maybe I’ll adapt to country living easily and want to stay forever.  Not sure. What I do know, however, is I’m not a subdivision girl. 

I’m also not a clutter girl, so cramming all our possessions from our old house into our new house is not an option. We filled a storage unit with things before our move, but paying storage indefinitely for things I don’t need is also not an option.  Mark is taking a few things out each day, and we either find a place for it here or get rid of it.  By the end of June the unit will be empty, and our house will only have the necessary things in it.

Instead of a photo tour, I’ll take you on a word tour.  Not quite the same, but here goes.  To get to my house, you must drive up a very long driveway.  The boys joked about always letting the girls get the mail, but what happens is they all walk down to check for it several times a day.  The driveway is narrow, has many trees beside it, and is part gravel, part concrete.  When you get to up to our house, you’ll be tempted to park by my bedroom door and walk in that way.  In fact, that’s what you’ll probably do the first time.  It seems as though the big deck off the bedroom should be the front door, but it’s not.  Let’s pretend, however, that one of my kids finds you on the driveway and directs you around the house to the front door.  You know, the one with the freezer on it. 

The first room you walk into is our Keeping Room.  Because we keep things in it.  All our pantry items are stored on bookcases in the Keeping Room right now to make them a little less accessible to mice, and our dining hutch is also here, as are many boxes of school books waiting for shelves to be built. 

To the right is the kitchen.  When you walk into it, you’ll exclaim how it reminds you of your grandmother’s kitchen.  This is due to the fact the wood cabinets are 45 years old.  But then you’ll want to see the rest of the house, so you’ll go back through the Keeping Room to the Great Room. 

The Great Room holds our dining furniture and our living room furniture and my desk and office supplies.  But mostly you’ll see the enormous stacked marble fireplace.  And you’ll exclaim how our furniture seems to fit in with the theme of the room.  The wall of windows will also arrest your attention, and you’ll go outside on the deck to check out the view.  Coming back in, you’ll note the extreme height of the ceiling and wonder how on earth such is cleaned, but then you’ll notice the 16 foot telescoping pool pole with the vacuum hose attachments and feather duster on top, and you’ll know. 

Around the corner of the fireplace you’ll walk through my office nook into my bedroom.  Nothing noteworthy here, but you might notice how far our bed must be pulled out from the wall because of its height, and you might comment how handy the space between the headboard and the wall would be for storage.  To which I will reply that I’m currently keeping all my winter clothes in boxes back there.  Two doors in my bedroom lead to the master closet/laundry room and the bathroom.  Ours is the only bathroom on the main floor, so we must keep it neat and clean.

Back into the Great Room and around the fireplace again you’ll head up what my children have named the Elf Stairs since when you walk up them you’ll feel like an elf.  After the short hike upstairs, you can check out the kids’ bathroom, and straight ahead is the Girls’ Room.  Amazed at how large and messy it is, you’ll go around the fireplace, past two school nooks, and into the Boys’ Room.  Again you’ll be amazed at its size and messiness, and you’ll realize you can access a deck from every room of the house except the kitchen, which has windows rather than a sliding door. 

On the boys’ deck are a few stools, a collection of weapons, and a sizable amount of rope for zip lines and ladders and such.  The girls grabbed my broom and swiffer one day last week to get their deck clean, and they put four little chairs on it.  Ours has a couple of rockers and a couple of wicker chairs, and the back deck has our picnic table, grill, and a few more chairs.  

When we moved in, the garbage can was behind a slatted wood partition.  Seriously?  That seemed too pretentious, so we opted to tie it up next to our front porch.  It keeps our freezer company, and we don’t have to go far to throw away our trash.  And speaking of trash, our trash guy (a relative of just about everyone on the street) comes up our driveway to get our trash each week.  So thankful we don’t have to walk it the .1 mile down the driveway, and especially thankful not to drag it the .1 mile back up!

The land around our house is woods.  Right now there are cardboard bunkers in the front yard from an AirSoft War the boys and a few friends waged yesterday. 

Now wasn’t that almost as good as a photo tour?