Heading out

Well, we are about packed up and ready to go on our trip west. It's been a bit more of a chore than usual because we feel we need to leave the house sort of ready to be used temporarily by the Feinlands, in the unlikely but remotely possible chance that when they have to move out of their house on July 1, they have no place to go. I say "sort of ready" because we haven't done a major cleaning, for sure. But, e.g., I cleaned up the downstairs bath, which is sort of funky to say the least, in a way I don't usually do.

These past couple of weeks have been crazy busy. Just as an example, last Saturday, I got up at 6a.m., packed the car to the gills with trash for the landfill, which I had been accumulating for weeks, and took it and was there before they opened at 8. Then I came back home and vacuumed out the car thoroughly, and wiped it down with Armorall. Then I quickly showered and changed and we headed off for the Guilford Community Church where we sang in the choir in a service for Rich Hiler. A remarkable man with a complicated family life, and it took two hours for people to say what they wanted to say. Then we had to quickly come home, change again, grab a quick bite to eat, and go to Grafton for our River Singers rehearsal, supper and concert. By the time we got home, I was pretty wiped out! I went to sleep pretty quickly, but was not fated to get a good night's sleep. At about 2 a.m., I thought I heard Ellen bustling about in the kitchen. She was making a lot of noise and I wondered why. But then I reached beside me and -- she was asleep in bed! Soon I realized that what was in the kitchen was a large animal! What to do? I shut the bedroom door, so that whatever it was wouldn't jump up on the bed. To make a long story short, a raccoon had found it's way into the house and was feasting on granola bars.  It eventually went back outside and we got a good look and a photo - it was dark but I was able to enhance the photo:

Raccoon in the night

The whole experience set my heart racing - not much sleep that night!

 

Emmy leading a rehearsal, with Mary Cay in the background.

The River Singers concert featured Emily Miller and her husband, Jesse Milnes, both fine musicians in the Appalachian tradition. 

                                   Donald Saaf, Jesse Milnes, Will Danforth