Adventures at The Bunny Manse

ByDeath toll =0 Near death toll= Harris, pipes, furnace Tuesday 2-17-15 = Ice storm Wednesday = Natalie gingerly walks to work after picking up breakfast at Scratch where the other three sit and enjoy their food. Madeline playing outside, Margot napping, Harris goes outside, slips on the back stairs, and hits his head- hard - on the concrete steps. He blacked out, forgot part of the morning and after Natalie got home, he was taken to the ER. No crack to the skull or brain bleed, but he's on brain rest (no screens, quiet, rest, lots of sleep) for a head injury just the same. Thursday = our lemon of a furnace is replaced. Coldest day in years, recording breaking really, and we have no heat downstairs while Harris is on brain rest upstairs. Girls leave the house for lunch and shopping. Natalie is sick, but not as sick as Harris. We wandered around the Trosa thirft store, southpoint mall, target...anywhere warm where the baby could be pushed in the stroller. I know we l...

Overheard in line at the Farmer's Market this weekend. Person 1: So you're buying a house? Person 2: Yeah, we figured it's cheaper than renting. Plus we can do whatever we want to it! Oh cute, naive, little snugglebunny. I just want to eat you up! Lemme guess. In year 1 you might paint a room over the builder colors and change a bathroom towel bar. You will also plant bushes in the yard and make a small gardening patch.

 I went back to work on the 17th so have blissfully quiet surroundings. We started with three carpenters fixing the rot. Basically, they started on the porch and have worked their way around our house fixing any rotten wood they find. Along the way, they've found -literally - 400 lbs of squirrel nests. Squirrels ate through the crown molding and made nests in the eaves. At one point, these were fixed with metal soffits. We've replaced those with wood and are encouraging the squirrels to stay very far away from our roof and attic. We then added to the fun a set of roofers who are working on the total restoration of our slate roof. It was not leaking, it had been patched and tweaked over the years, but it had maybe 10 yrs left on it - and those 10 yrs would be full of $1,800 repairs when slates blew off (yes), the metal flashings finally gave way (yes), and the rot from water running in at weird angles. We decided to go ahead and do it now while we still have access to the s...