Emma's Return

Yes, it has been a long time since I've written. I have been feeling somewhat down in the dumps, and since Emma is never down in the dumps, she did not even open her blog. Nevertheless, I awoke this morning feeling slightly cheerful despite the cold and rain, so here I am, back in business. Below is the latest Epping Road addition. The fields are just beginning to turn red, although elsewhere in Maine the foliage is much farther along. The coast is last with this phenomenon. We are lagging behind with every season, and this time of year it is to our advantage.

I have spent some time getting the chicken house ready for winter, cleaning it out and changing the wood shavings. I will put plastic at the windows later, when it gets colder. Temperatures in the daytime are still in the fifties and sixties---something a hardy chicken can not complain about. They are still outside every day, and at night they snuggle together on top of their little house. It's a good chicken life.

A few days ago I went downtown to the antique store to retrieve my bed, where I left it for sale when I decided to move my bed downstairs. Now, two bedrooms later, I decided to bring it back and re-install it, brave and masochistic person that I am. I was determined to do it right this time, so bought enough correct hardware to do the job. I will say that it did help, but I still had a lot of trouble. I dropped the heavy iron parts on my feet many times, bent my precious new bolts when the headboard collapsed, and couldn't figure out how to work some of the parts. The screw holes in one section were mysteriously stripped, necessitating major duct tape work, and I also ended up putting the headboard on backwards. I slept in the bed Saturday night in its unsatisfactory state, then tackled it again yesterday, dismantling the entire thing again and beginning over. How determined I can be when I get something in my mind. This time I corrected most of the mistakes I made the first (and every other) time I assembled the bed. Now it is as solid as the proverbial rock, and the headboard is correctly facing front. I changed the sheets to my prettiest ones, took a bath and washed my hair, and anxiously awaited bedtime. It was not a disappointment. I kept waking up all night, smug and satisfied, looking around me from a higher perspective than before, feeling the firmness beneath me, smelling the cleanliness. The dogs slept comfortably all around me. Nothing like a hard job well done.