Coming soon!

Our new house... we're on the left, but the right is coming up for sale soon and we're bound and determined to get it and use both sides.



It's a duplex from 1846 - built as part of the Vernon Mills worker's housing: 42 units rented to the cotton mill workers. At the time, it sat two miles outside city limits, so it is part of its own little grid. The city grew up around it, and it remains intact as part of the neighborhood of Hampden. It's about 3 miles from Alexis's job, and five blocks from a sweet little shopping district.






It has a lawn (and part of it gets full-day sun, hooray!), from the patio in the back you can see the other stone houses. It's like the most charming little hidden village, but within a few minutes of everything!

It comes in glass and metal

No plastic.
No paper.

We are getting milk delivered again!

It is with giddy expectation that I pad down the stairs and out the door to experimentally heft a cooler we leave on the porch. More often than not, the box is heavy with fresh milk and cream. Maybe a dozen eggs. Maybe a pound of butter so delicious I eat it with a spoon. Maybe a frozen chuck roast. Maybe ice cream.

In Michigan, our milkman was often late. Pierced and tattooed, he brought biscuits for the dogs and left us a newsletter ("The Moo News") with our bill printed on the back. He was just lovely, but late! How can one lure one's spouse from bed if there are only empties - no cream for her coffee?

But not here!

We are on a new route, so they've told me. Did it have to do with my saddened silence on the phone? I am crediting my moping with bringing us Fresh! Milk!

A new route, so he comes first thing.

The cream comes early, but I still let her sleep.

Crisfield update

Crisfield is feeling better, thank you. Though in the last weeks, she's continued to feel put-upon...she doesn't like to be touched on her back, she's cold (think of losing that much hair), sighs a lot and is generally mopey.

However, when she's feeling sad, she's generally extremely cute:




(She put herself in the basket with a sigh and a groan...Alexis covered her with a blanket and she slept that way all night.)

Plucked Chicken

Crisfield had a very bad trip to the kennel which ended up with a very bad bath which resulted in this very sad skin condition.