The bad news:

It is cold.  Very cold.  The windows are not finished being framed in yet so all the warmth from the house pours out from around the windows on one side of the house, being replaced by cold pouring in from the opposite side of the house.  Most of the doors have big gaps where cold air screams through, too.

So basically, we're cold.  Very cold.

The shower pipes froze last night.

By turning off the pump in order to address the frozen pipes issue, we have discovered that the steady trickle of water coming into the basement is not ground water seeping in but rather is water being pulled up the pipe by the pump and spilling out through a crack in said pipe somewhere between the house and the well.  Luckily for us this discovery was made After the ground was frozen and there is 2 feet of snow on top of it.  Good Times.

The good news:

Bryan was NOT killed by a stupid driver who pulled out right in front of him this morning on his way to work.  (That pretty much trumps all that other bad news up there.  I'm unbelievably thankful for that.)

The upstairs bathroom now looks like these photos and actually is a little bit warmish.  Bry is actively working on getting the shower installed upstairs ASAP.  The downstairs shower is no longer a viable option because, obviously, it freezes too easily.

There is now a drier in the upstairs bathroom.  (Thank you, Neighbors Tabors!)







P.S.  Sorry that these photos are a bit sea-sick.  The lighting is really weird up there and I was being quick with the camera.










. . . .

Has been at a standstill since the beginning of school.  We ran out of construction $$ at the end of August and it took me several weeks to put together a packet of receipts and estimates and project overviews for the bank and then the USPS changed its sorting route for Upstate NY and all of my early September bill payments were three weeks late.

THREE Weeks!  To get a piece of mail from Brasher to Potsdam.  And our mortgage payment got completely lost. 

That created multiple glitches with the the other Evil Empire (National Grid)  and with the bank that were finally all straightened out yesterday with a $25.00 stop check fee.  Aaargh.  So maybe we can have more construction $ next week?

My lovely new bathroom is still at the early skeleton construction stage.  That non-functioning bathtub taunts me every time I walk upstairs.

We got the two female Kittens fixed.   Emmeth can wait a little while.  He's not spraying and he still says "meeew?"  It will be a while yet before he becomes a full grown, sauntering Tom Cat.









The cows have moved away.   This makes us all very sad but we are growing some spectacularly large spiders in our side entry to make up for their absence.   I think they make a pretty good home security system.  By 8:00 every night, they have spun new, strong webs and hang at about head height to catch yummy flies - which we also have plenty of.

The cold is coming on strong.  Our first delivery of wood for the season comes today and the trees are beautiful.

















...

Yay!  We have a Roof!  That only leaks a little!


Not bad for a rainstorm with over 1 inch of water per hour for over 5 hours through the night.  Apparently, the only leaks are in places where the screws with their little rubber washers weren't tight enough or where there was a formerly used screw hole that was too big or hadn't been filled in yet.  (We're experimenting with recycled tin for our roof.  We hope it's going to work out well.)





Better yet - we had river front property this morning.



Complete with Class 3 Rapids on the Little Brook.

How exciting.














This is a photo of underneath our new roof.  See where that air compressor is?  Right there is where my new great big bathtub is going to go. 


!!!Yay!!!!















. . . . . . 

This is between us in Ft. Jackson and The Beorningstead.











The drive is now 12 miles instead of 6 - and we have to backtrack to get there.  Sigh. . . .















It makes fun tilt-shift fodder, though

















. . . ..

So it has been a while.

We closed on the Beorningstead on October 18th and had this fantasy that we would be in by Christmas.  On Halloween, Maxx came down with the Swine Flu.  The following week, I came down with it.  It wasn't so bad, really.  Maxx got Tamiflu and I was only feverish for a day or so.  But then, two weeks later, I came down with and earache from the 7th circle of Hell and was literally out of commission for 5 weeks with pain, dizziness and an inability to think.  Bry diligently worked away at installing plumbing and wiring and had lots of wonderful helpers while I was utterly useless.  In spite of all that work, we did not get far enough to move in before Christmas.




Then the cold set in and Bry had sinus surgery and nothing has happened over at the Beorningstead for about 3 months.





Now Spring is almost upon us and things are warming up a bit.  (Did I mention that it is always 5 to 10 degrees warmer down at the Stead than it is up here in Ft. Jackson?  Slightly lower elevation and better exposure on the lot does the trick nicely.)  I was over Saturday and took some photos of the progress.

There's insulation in the kitchen, new windows in almost every room and I have never been so excited about a piece of wire sticking out of a wall in my life!

Oh - and we have a potty there that can be bucket flushed.  We're almost civilized!


















 . . .