We Are Official

You know you really belong in Bellevue, Iowa, when you own a boat. So, for our one-month anniversary, we bought the boat our neighbor John Hoff was offering for sale. It is a King Fisher, 17' fiberglass fishing boat with 3 seats and a 55 hp motor (see photo). Best, it was built the year I graduated from high school. John took us out a few times. First, to show us how the boat ran when were still in the shopping phase. Second, when we took it out for the first time as owners and his insurance-man instincts told him we probably still needed help. He popped up at the boat ramp just as the Bonnie Marie was marooning herself onto the rocks. (NOTE: Hey Bellevue - put in a damn dock, ok?). Since then we've been out twice. Our first solo trip was a bit of a comedy of errors, trying to get her completely off the trailer so we can pull the vehicle out but not so far off that I can barely keep her from being caught up in the Mighty Mo's current (NOTE: Hey Bellevue - oh wait, I already said that). We got better at it when we went out early Sunday morning. After our excursion I was standing thigh deep in the current holding the Bonnie Marie close in while Ron went to retrieve the truck. We were feeling pretty smug that we hadn't bent the trailer frame pulling her out (like we had the last time). Then up came an older fellow (in the truck - dad?) and a younger fellow in the boat (son?). Dad backed the trailer down the ramp; Son stayed in the boat and with a little squeeze of the throttle eased his boat into the trailer stopping the keel right at the place where it gets hooked in to the trailer. They reminded me of a steer-roping team, I must say. A few expert cranks of the wheel and hooking of hooks and they were off. I stood there waterlogged in the river waiting for Ron to come back with our vehicle (Archie had to stop to pee in the poison ivy several times along the route). I said to the expert sailor - you made that look easy. He just smiled and waved. I was glad to hide behind our Wyoming licence plates as an excuse.

Sugar Creek, Iowa church social

Last evening we went to a church social on the lawn of the St. Joseph-St Mary Catholic church at Sugar Creek, outside of Preston, Iowa. If that sounds hard to find, it was, rather. It wasn't actually in Preston, and since Sugar Creek isn't on our Iowa map we had to rely on some nice young guys at the gas station to ponder the possibilities and direct us on the right path.
Fantastic beef and pork, wonderful entertainment by the Iowa Corn Fed Girls. The highlight was the actual church. Small, with traditional altar and statuary. The most beautiful station of the cross you can imagine. Marble relief, it appeared. I hope to be allowed to take pictures there. The main point is the emotional wallop seeing the place packed. Before we even opened the door I caught a faint sniff of the incense that took me back to childhood. I could almost feel the bobby pin holding my twice-folded holy veil down to my hair. It was so disappointing many years ago when my childhood church went "modern" and got rid of all but the most subtle artifacts of Catholicism. This place in Sugar Creek - now that's what I call a Catholic church. I brought home a bulletin and will plan to attend a mass there soon. Lots of small Catholic churches in these parts are closing down. How very sad for the communities.

Baby robin on train track

Robin drama - little nearly-flightless fellow on the train track that runs parallel with Second St. here in Bellevue. We were munching ham salad sandwiches while the mom went off in search of worms to regurgitate. Little robin went from curbing along track to down into the rail bed. No perils of Pauline moment really, but we figured if cars along the road weren't an imminent threat anymore, oncoming trains surely would be. Ron the Bird Master plucked little fellow up and with much squawking and flapping (on the part of the robin) got him safely into the yard. More struggling and a bummed out Schipperke later, we all went inside to allow mom to calm back down and inspect her prodigy. All's well for now I think.

Bats in the belfry

Ron has gone through several filters shop-vaccing up bat poop from our walk-up attic. We realized these were not passing visitors when talking to fellow Bellevue-ers who've also had bats in the attic. We checked with the pest folks who specialize in bats (yes, there is that much in demand.) Upon hearing Ron's description of a large band of bats wheeling and squealing around the battic at dusk, Tom the bat fellow says we most likely have a mother colony. That sounds darling, doesn't it. Like a day care center in the attic.
Bats are protected so we can't just kill them, though that isn't something we would have done even if we could. Tom told us that we can't do anything about the bats until August, until the baby bats have weaned and can fly on their own. (Who knew.) Then he'll clear the attic of bat/batling pairs and replace all their ingress/egress with egress only doorways. I hope he brings about a million doorways: that's how many openings are likely in the attic. I like bats, but not well enough to go up there at night with a camera. Instead, here is a brown bat purloined from the web at getmycritter.com

Furniture and boxes, endless boxes

Why oh why do we own so much crap? A more important question, why did we haul so much crap 900 miles away to be stored for months on end in our garages while we work on getting the house ready to receive said crap. I was pretty proud of myself at the time of packing, feeling we'd had a decent garage sale and were able to offload lots of books on the used book store and public library. But now, in our new house where we've sacrificed an excellent walk in closet I'd been fantasizing about, I can't find anything I need among all the stuff I don't want. What do you suppose was at the front of the garages where the movers made aisles between our rows of junk? Halloween decorations and winter sweaters. Oh yay.
(Pictured is the pile of stuff being loaded onto the moving van on the Laramie leg of the journey.)

Finally in, sort of

We arrived in Bellevue on Wednesday June 10 and stayed through the following Tuesday at the Stone Street Inn with Sue and Rob Roben. Every day our house got a little closer to being livable on the top floor but we realized we'd be roughing it quite a bit. So we bugged out for a few days to stay with Ron's parents in Indiana. We came back here on Friday and are staying in our home, complete with livable bathroom. So livable, in fact, that it doubles as our kitchen. Our bedroom, now livable, doubles as our dining room. And so on. Getting better every day, just slowly. Joan and Mary have been painting upstairs and it looks beautiful. Ron's doing lots of work too (see photo). And now I have an internet connection. Could a desk be far behind?

End of the Beginning

We're closing the sale of our Laramie house today. A bit nerve wracking, mostly because we're sitting around waiting for the clock to say it is time to head over to the title company. We'll be renting the house back from the buyers until next Tuesday while we finalize our packing and I interrupt the forward flow to head to Casper for a writers conference (don't ask). I don't expect it to feel different after we close - I don't expect to suddenly feel like renters, like it isn't our house. But time will tell. A friend just said to me she was glad they closed and moved on the same day since it was a clean break. This whole process of buying the Setzepfandt House and moving to Bellevue has been slow motion and unconventional. I suppose renting after closing is more of the same.