Hunkering Down

Today the high at my house, according to our Weather Station, was five dgs F. The sky was blue and there was little, if any wind. If you just looked out the window, you would have been fooled. Open the door and you were sorry. I did to retrieve a parcel the UPS man left, and oh did my face hurt. The things in the parcel were still too cold to touch an hour after I brought it in.

I stayed home today. Taciturn did his Meals on Wheels route wearing the parka he acquired when he lived in Alaska. He said that with the sun and no wind, he was toasty warm. While he was gone, I decided to start the deep cleaning part of preparing the house so I started washing the cherry stained woodwork in the house with Murphy's Oil Soap. All of the cabinets, the window sills, the baseboards, and the doors and door frames are cherry stained, so to wash all of it is a lot of work and will take several days to do. I'm starting with the least used and working to the most used for obvious reasons. It sure is lovely when it is done--the woodwork just glows. I did that for a couple of hours today. I wiped the woodwork down then dried it with a dish towel.

The clothes I set aside yesterday I added to today, and I placed it all in a box for delivery to the mission thrift store tomorrow when I go to PT. I also worked on restoring shelves in my walk in bedroom closet to their rightful places. This is another thing left over from when we moved back in 2007. The renters took down lots of the shelves when they were here, which is why I worked on that today. They also took down several doors, which we put back immediately upon our return. The shelves obviously could wait. We really don't own that much. Some of our closets are practically empty. This house is too big for us.

I also found a very helpful website today. Our county has a site where a person can type in an address or a name and find out anything you would want to know about a property. I found out how large the houses are on either side of me and how much the appraised value is. The next door house that will go up for sale this summer that flipped Taciturn out? It really looks nice on the outside, but on the inside, it is 40% smaller than our house and so cannot be considered a comparable to ours. I also looked up how much the neighborhood houses that recently sold went for per square foot. So when T got home from Meals, I had a lot to tell him. Hopefully he will realize that we will NOT have to give our house away.

We decided that tonight is a good night for buffalo chili. I do like a good hearty meal on such a cold night.