September was hard.
We lived with the quiet for a little while, until catching a dark shadow out of the corner of our eye and finding it to be .. just a shadow became intolerable.
We reached out to the rescue society who brought us Shamus and Bongo so many years ago. They had two kittens we chose and got (extremely rapidly), Atlas and Ophelia.
They had a rough start as well, with stomach issues that persisted for .. longer than we wanted. We managed to work through them just in time for their spay/neuter appointments, so really, it was sometime in november before things stopped being completely insane.
Bundles of joy, that’s what they are. Atlas is a gentle giant, and at 8 months old is bigger than Shamus was at full growth, and I suspect he has some more growing to do. His sister Ophelia is much smaller, she was the runt. She makes up for it with a very dominant personality.
Her favorite position is ‘tree branch’, where she’s draped across one of my arms as I pack her around. I’ve somehow managed to become her favorite (I’m not complaining), just as Atlas has chosen Christina.
We also had a number of tasks pop up in rapid succession this winter.
Our washer started acting up, so we replaced both washer and dryer. (The dryer ended up needing service as it was installed off center and was knocking, but that ended up working out)
We replaced our hot water tank. The old one was showing some rust in places that made us uncomfortable. The new one installed relatively easily. It’s much bigger. We haven’t run out of hot water since. The installation job was ugly however, and we received no satisfaction from even the CEO of the company who did the work… we won’t be using them again.
We had the tree in our front yard trimmed. Big heavy branches, and it was getting uncomfortably close to the power lines. The tree trimmers did what they could, but it’s still a bit funky looking. Not their fault. Our timing was great as there have been several large windstorms since.
We finally got tired of our kitchen sink, with the rotting out countertop which made the faucet wiggle and impossible to tighten. We had the countertop and sink replaced, the counter with quartz , and the double basin sink with a single (huge) basin. That hit a little snag as well, some of the trim pieces didn’t ship out of Quebec in time for our install, so next week the work completes. No complaints however, as the company doing this was amazingly responsive and the installers were the most professional I’ve seen.
We still have bathroom renovations pending. A complete replacement downstairs, a new sink and shower in the main bath, and a new sink in the ensuite. Crazy money, but I keep reminding myself we’ll only do this once more, so we may as well make it count.
After this we’ll only have a garage door to replace, a retaining wall to get rebuilt, and an ensuite bathtub to replace. Those’ll be in the next 5 years or so. Everything else is just maintenance – repairing a tap, getting the house professionally washed, etc.
I’m keeping ahead of some of the worst bits of winter. I don’t think I’ll ever deal with it well, even with regular doses of vitamin d (which are helping). How many years did I not realize this? A lot of hard years that could’ve been easier. They’re in the rear view now, can’t change them.