April is when we report write-offs on our tax returns.
Personally, I’ve decided to write off the month of April. At least the first half:
Piles of snow were still on the ground for the first week following Easter. We’ve been hammered with snow since mid-January. The weather people (you know those people, right?) teased us all March long promising rising temps and no precipitation.
Wrong.
Coming into the home stretch at the end of March, surely we would see spring arrive in time for Easter.
Wrong.
We even ran out of firewood – Scott planned last autumn to lay in enough to get us through the winter. Well, it would have worked if winter ended by 21 March.
So then we moved into Summertime hours, April and Easter, with still more snow and no firewood.
Our car was stranded down at the bottom of the hill once again so we knew no one would be able to get up the hill with more wood.
We started scavenging for wood in the forest behind us. It’s perfectly legal to drag wood out that is already dead on the ground. As long as you don’t actually cut anything down, you’re within the law.
Then the water went out.
Just for 24 hours, but even so, we melted snow to flush the toilets and drank wine and vodka instead of water. Both water and wood came back online the next day.
We’ve both been having back problems and finally realized it’s the cheap cushions on our bed that were the cause of our misery.
I sent Scott off to IKEA to first buy a couple of decent mattresses, then as soon as he could get the car up the drive, I sent him back to get the bed itself.
It’s quite lovely – a big super-king with storage drawers and everything.
If you know me, you know how I love to assemble IKEA furniture! There are nine bookcases, one guest room bed, two occasional tables, one dining room table, one bench, one step stool, two chests of drawers, a desk and two chairs I have assembled myself in this chata. My whole kitchen is IKEA (the professionals did that).
We decided to wait till Easter weekend to get the old beds down out of our bedroom so I could assemble the new one.
It started off as a fun kind of day. I was looking forward to using the new set of screwdrivers The Boy gave me for Christmas.
I managed to manhandle part of the bed to the basement and then get the frame up on end so I could whack it with a hammer to pull it apart.
I never knew using a hammer to destroy something could be so much fun!
The problem came when I tried to vacuum the floors where they hadn’t been vacuumed since we moved in permanently.
All of a sudden, pop goes my back.
This precluded us sleeping on a new bed right away.
Instead, we were relegated to the tiny (55 inch-wide) bed in the guest room, all three of us, for four nights (did nothing for my back btw) – until I was ready to help assemble the new IKEA bed.
In the end, it was Scott who assembled the bed as I read him out the instructions.
Now:
We both know couples who would have divorced in the same circumstance: the wife instructing the husband how to assemble an IKEA bed.
That did not happen to us in any way.
In fact, it was I who made two grievous errors during the process (wrong screws, wrong fasteners) and Scott didn’t shout at me once as he was having to unscrew bits again and again. In fact, he said he wished he’d been taught to do this kind of stuff when he was young.
We were both extremely proud to be able to sleep in our new bed when it was finished the next day.
Just about a week ago, when the sun and warm weather finally returned, Sisi and I celebrated by walking all the way up the hill and back – my first real walk out since my back incident.
The trail had been impassable most winter long – the snow was thigh high in places, so we were both glad to get the exercise, Sisi and I.
No problems up and down the hill.
But when we got back to the bottom, I opted to walk on the last remaining snow/ice patch rather than in the sticky mud and I went down on one lousy patch of ice.
I fell directly on my ass and heard the spine go, “Oh. No.”
I have been in constant pain since. Scott bought me some Gentleman Jack, a widely prescribed pain killer.
And we have just taken posession of a pilates for over 50s DVD and one for lower back pain.
Yesterday, April 15th, we celebrated (long distance) my younest niece’s 21st birthday and marked the 21st anniversary of the death of my father, with a chimney fire.
We wanted one more fire to cozy things up.
Scott made the mistake of tossing in an innocent-enough-looking smallish cardboard box.
Then it was just hellfire and damnation.
Or so it seemed.
The living room filled with smoke, we opened the windows and got the fans going, then we started hearing “boom, boom, boom” coming from outside – I went down the basement to open the lower floor and the entire room was filling up with smoke, worse than upstairs.
I went upstairs and the bedroom was filling with smoke too.
Yikes!
All windows were thrown open and Scott went out back, I went out front, just in time to see the chimney spewing ash and exploding bits of chimney lining! It was like an effing volcano!
Sisi freaked and ran about 50 yards up into the forest, sat down, and watched from there.
Our insurance man owns the cottage next door and happened to be working in his garden there yesterday. He came over to help.
With an incredible amount of luck, we have no lasting damage, we did not need to call the fire department, and we have warm weather so there’s no need to light a fire again inside. With any luck, the only lasting effects will be “smoked house” odor until I can get the curtains laundered (tomorrow).
The sun is shining today, so I’m on my way back out with Sisi to enjoy it while I can.
