Making It Home

 We've closed on and moved into this house one month ago today.  It still feels like we're squatting, mainly because we still don't have our gear from the movers.  We've gone from "You're looking at 2 weeks" to "you're looking at 30 business days, not calendar days" which puts us getting our stuff somewhere at the end of June.  We are sleeping on a mat on the floor, Leah's been on the floor since the cats demolished the air mattress she was on (we got her a new air mattress this weekend), and making do with borrowed items and yard sale things, as we don't want to go buying all the stuff that we know is on the truck.  We've bought a couple of cabinets and shelves, as well as a comfy chair for Leah, and some glasses, and we have met some really, really lovely people along the way. 

This is the pallet on the floor where we've been sleeping for a month...

One of the lovely cabinets we bought from a local yard sale site--I look forward to NOT using it for clothing someday

Between that, the furniture companies telling us we'd be waiting till summer to get delivery on our bedroom set and living room furniture, and the contractors coming in to look at the work we want to do and telling us "Well, I might get to it in November, or it might be spring" and "this isn't as easy a job as you think" and "I work kinda slow and would do this around my other jobs" we've just grown increasingly frustrated.  Last Thursday it all came to a head, and I told Greg it was time to start doing what we could do and learn to do some things that we weren't sure we could do.  

We started watching YouTube videos on how to build a partition wall and have gotten rather excited about it.  We discussed putting in a barn door to close off what's going to become our master bedroom from the bathroom/closet area, and Greg suggested that instead, we install a pocket door, which will allow us to use a little less lumber, and still get good support.  So we've done our homework on that, but we decided we should start with getting up the carpet and fixing the walls in that bedroom area.

Greg got excited about actually 'doing' instead of just talking, and before I got home from work on Thursday, he had the carpet ripped out!   We were kinda bummed out to discover the hardwoods don't continue into that area, but we are ok with putting down new flooring eventually.  The flooring that IS there is nicely finished, even if it's sub flooring of some stripe, and since we aren't going to be living in there for a while, it's no big deal at all.

After I got home from work and admired his labor, Leah and I got in the car and headed out on the town to buy what we needed to finish completing the porch area.  The porch was getting the most use from us when we first arrived, and we had had our lawn chairs out there before any other furniture arrived and spent a lot of time hanging out there with the cats.  We wanted one room to be complete and look great, and we decided the porch would be the easiest--particularly in light of the fact that the furniture set we had ordered on line had arrived and Greg and I put it together last week (that we were still speaking afterwards is quite something! :D ).  Leah and I went and got a couple of fake plants--an unfortunate necessity as the cats eat any real plants we bring in the house--as well as curtains, and the cushions I had ordered from Amazon had arrived and we were in business.  We moved out the small table I had gotten at one of the auctions, and in our Saturday yard sale rounds picked up a little bird house that brought all the colors together, and we were in business.  It's very welcoming and inviting, and the cats love being out there and having furniture.  Which I guess is what's important.  Haha

Then we started on the big work...  We knew the living room and entryway were coated in wallpaper, which makes me 3 for 3 in homes owned with wallpaper.  In our NY house, we had ripped off wallpaper only to have the wall come off with it, resulting in an expensive and lengthy repair process.  I had Friday off as a bonus day for Juneteenth, and we wound up using part of that day to rip off the wallpaper.  The wallpaper was painted over and I think it had loosened some of it, because it was not in good shape and the paint color was "not to our taste", shall we say.  We came to discover that in the half of the room that's going to be our bedroom, there are 5 layers of wallpaper on the walls, some of which I don't think we're going to get down.  The other half of the room is actually done in paneling, which had been papered over.  It is quite a challenge to get the paper off the paneling, but we're actually OK with the paneling and plan to just paint it a nicer shade of white than it already is.  But getting the paper off is going to be an issue.  Still, we got Leah involved and she actually seemed to find it fun being a paper archeologist and using water to get rid of the adhesive.  It was fun that we did it altogether as a family.

 

Also this weekend, we purchased a new island and range set up for the kitchen, which our friends Keith and Mary helped us transport back to The Cottage.  I got it off a garage sale site for under $400, and it is a darned sight better than what we presently have in the kitchen, which Keith laughingly suggested we donate to the local museum!  Honestly, they might be interested. haha

We've done other small things like removing and beating back the bushes in the front of the house, putting up a new shower curtain, putting in nice air fresheners, installing an intercom so we aren't constantly screaming up and down the stairs, and purchasing a small amount of artwork for our bedrooms.  Leah is still debating what color to paint her room, but once she settles on a color, we are going to get that done for her so she has a cozy place of her own.  (Would be helpful if it was before the movers arrived, but you can't rush perfection!)

All in all, putting in some sweat equity has given us a better sense of ownership and less of a sense of simply squatting in a building.  The cats had a field day hiding their mice and bottle caps in the paper and tunneling through, and we felt good having a nice place to hang out.  Funny, but it's actually really nice to look out the front window and see the beautiful porch beckoning us.  I'm trying to view this time as an adventure in la vie boheme, like the young couple we never got to be together, starting fresh with little to our names and a lot of love and time to build a home.  I would really, really like to not be sleeping on the floor sometime, though.

Bonus: The Casey Tibbs Match of Champions

You may have heard that much of this part of the country was being smacked in the face by triple digit temperatures at the moment.  In fact, many of my DC friends reported that they'd seen South Dakota on their local news as an example of how hot it has gotten.  And indeed, it has gotten VERY hot.  So hot that I got out my Bob Ross sunshade for my car, and people are scrapping over shady parking spots as I haven't seen since living in Little Rock.

Now, I've been many places where they say "Yeah, but it's a dry heat!" and you get to such a place and all you feel is sweltering humidity.  Like when I went to Tucson in 2011 and it turns out Tucson has a monsoon season and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die.  Well, here in Pierre, all you hear about is the humidity from the dam, lake, and river nearby.  So we were fully prepared for death by humidity.  Fortunately, the central air in our house works great, and we have an amazing basement that is nice and cool, and we thought we'd just hang out there till the heatwave passed.

However, the opposite of what we were told turned out to be true.  We've actually had very little humidity. It has been a very dry heat.  We've been in and out all weekend.  Bob Ross is still getting us through the hot car, but otherwise, we feel pretty good.

Consequently, last night we decided to take our chances and attend our first ever rodeo.  Now, if you've ever been to Pierre, I can just about guarantee that you've heard of the grand master of them all, Casey Tibbs. We haven't been to his museum yet, but he has a big statue across the river in Ft. Pierre and a giant museum in his honor.  He was apparently one of the best rodeo riders to ever live, and he went on to become an actor and stunt man.  He is a big deal around here.  And once a year, the local Stanley County Fairgrounds (where we went to the auction mentioned in an earlier post) hosts the Casey Tibbs Match of Champions.  It's a biggie.  And I was darned sure going to go.

We went over at 5pm when we were told there'd be a steak fry dinner and the gates would open.  However, the actual riding didn't start till 7PM, so we agreed not to sit in the heat aimlessly for two hours and went back home until closer to time.  After we got back, we enjoyed dinner in the barn with hot dogs and BBQ sandwiches all around.  We got our souvenir programs and armed with bottles of water, we hit the stands.

I didn't appreciate what a big deal this was till it came time for the colors to be unveiled for the National Anthem. Look at this tough customer.  Any idea who he is?

None other than the lieutenant governor, Mr. Larry Rhoden, who I wouldn't have known if I fell over.  The number three bronco rider in the world was competing last night, and they had kiddos as young as 8 (!) competing.  

The cowboys lined up and ready to ride

 

Now, here's what you need to know...  

1.  There is a lot of downtime in bronco riding.  Like, the announcer was so long winded that at least three times in the second round, the horses got bored and wouldn't come out of the chutes when they were opened.  So for instance, even though it was 104* outside, they had some dignitaries that they put on an old wagon and drove in circles around the arena not one but seven times.

So by the end of the second round, needless to say, Leah was over it.  She did say she enjoyed watching it when the action was happening, but she had reached her limit with the guy announcing and the princesses riding by with flags from the electric company and grain companies.  So we did leave early, but not because we didn't enjoy the bronco riding.

2.  I started learning to keep score.  This is not overall that difficult, because the scores are announced at the end of each 8 second ride, but there are two special acronyms in scoring, one being NS for "no score" which means the rider did not reach a full 8 seconds, and the other being RR for "re-ride", meaning the horse was uncooperative and the rider gets to try again.  There were four re-rides in the second set of riders, to tell you how grumpy the horses were getting.  Each rider can get up to 100 points--50 for their talent and 50 for how the horse does--something to do with vertical leaps and some other horse things.  The highest score we saw was an 87, and that was by the third overall bronc rider in the world.

3.  The standard wear of the American male at a rodeo is a blue plaid button down shirt, a cowboy hat, and jeans.  I will absolutely not be going with Gregory again until he conforms.  There were cowboy hats as far as the eye could see--all white straw.  

So that's what I learned as a first timer...

Here are some pictures I took.  I got videos as well, but I'm not fully confident on whether Blogger will let me post them.  I'll put some on Facebook if not...

The cowboy on the spotted horse was competing.  The two homeboys in purple are the ones who get him off the crazy horse after his turn is over and calm the bucking horse down.

Eventually, we left around 8:30PM and decided to get some ice cream.  We went to Ft. Pierre's alternative to Zesto: the Cool Spot.  We weren't so impressed.  It took forever to get ice cream, but it was good!  Then I decided to take the scenic route home and showed Greg and Leah the Oahe dam area.  We stopped at the scenic overlook and checked out the sunset over the Missouri.

Then home we went and cooled off and headed to bed!  It was a really fun thing to do together, and we enjoyed ourselves so much, which I did not expect.  I thought we would attend rather ironically, but it was so good!  We are really immersing ourselves in the culture here and there are pleasant surprises around every turn. 

ROAD TRIP!

As I mentioned in my last post, we decided that the long Memorial Day weekend would be a perfect opportunity for a road trip.  By that point, we had been hanging out at home for more than a week, and we wanted something fun and interesting to do in our new state.  We decided on Wall Drug and the Badlands because Wall Drug was where literally everyone asked us if we were going and we kind of wanted to get it out of the way (there is waaaaaaaaaay more to South Dakota than Wall Drug, people!).

Friday at work, I told my co-workers about my obsession with finding a buffalo to hug, and they all told me I was absolutely crazy.  Apparently one does not hug a buffalo.  They are massive and not altogether friendly.  However, Marcia, one of the members of my crew, told me that on the road we were following to get to Wall, there was a herd visible with three white buffalo, which are considered sacred.  So we headed out full of expectation.  Long story short, we found the herd and zero white buffalo there in.

Nonetheless, spirits were high and we were undeterred.  We followed Route 14 out to Wall, which goes along an old stagecoach line.  There were several geocaches hidden along the way, and true to form, Leah had to stop and pee several times.  It was a fun ride, and we started to see some of the local wildlife, including the infamous South Dakota pheasant.

Pheasants are to South Dakota what white tailed deer are to most of the Eastern Seabord.  As a co-worker put it this week, "Either you've hit a pheasant, or you know someone who has."  Before I started, I was told that South Dakota's unofficial state holiday is the first Saturday in October when pheasant season starts, and I truly believe that most of those hunters are just eking gleeful revenge on the birds for cracked windshields and bumpers.  Indeed, the basement floor of our local grocery store, Dakotamart, has walls of stuffed pheasants available for purchase!

We did not hit a pheasant.  Instead as we were driving, a kingbird flew smack into our windshield!  It seemed to glance off and keep going as there was no corpse in the road, and we declared it the bird's fault and kept on trucking!

I kept yelling at Greg to stop the car at any of the signs which swore there were "original wagon wheel ruts" from the pioneers and stagecoach lines that went along that part of the country.  He finally did, and our general reaction to what ground we saw was, "If you say so..."   Not easy to spot, to say the least.

We enjoyed reading Wall Drug signs along the way (think Burma Shave or South of the Border), and eventually zeroed in on it.  Parking was no problem, and we made our way inside, immediately upon which Leah a) decided she had to pee and b) decided she was terrified of all humanity.

Downtown Wall, SD, about two blocks away from Wall Drug

We dealt with the bathroom issue first and then headed out to the 'backyard' where there are sculptures and animals to climb on and take pictures with.  Leah hopped on the giant jackalope and Greg and I sat in a covered wagon.  

We even found this beauty...

We grown ups also had a blast riding the bucking bronco, but Leah was a bit too cool for that.

Thereafter, it was decided we were hungry, so we had lunch at the Wall Drug Cafe.  There was quite a line, but it moved along fairly quickly, and we enjoyed our meals.  Greg got the buffalo burger, Leah a cheeseburger, and I got a hot roast beef sandwich.  We also got one of their famous donuts and a piece of pie.  Leah declined to get a drink and stole my drink using a free ice water cup.

After lunch we did a bit of souvenir shopping--I wanted to send out some postcards, and we got a pack of playing cards on clearance since we didn't bring our games with us.  We checked into the bathrooms and then decided to head for the Badlands as it was mid-afternoon and we wanted to get moving.  I had no real concept of what the Bandlands were, and Greg was busily telling us about when he had been there in 2018, but I still didn't really 'get it'.  We could see them rising in the distance and eventually got to the main entrance, which was on a field teeming with prairie dogs, so we got out for a few pictures.

We wound up buying an NPS annual pass, as we plan to take a few trips to NPS properties this year, and then started following the crowd to various overlooks and sites.  We seemed to keep following one family from North Carolina and their son kept going down into the canyons on increasingly narrow paths out to the edges of the little rock formations.  The rock is VERY soft and you can crumble it with your fingers, no problem.  The Badlands are the remnants of a once massive ocean.  Everything you can see with your eyes was once underwater.  There are tons of fossils to be found and really cool formations.  Well, I sort of became determined that I would hotfoot down one of the formations as well.  It was not easy wearing Crocs and the earth constantly shifting underfoot, but eventually I got down one big hill, despite Leah crying and begging me not to (she was nervous about us falling off the edge).  My valiant efforts inspired Greg to come down to where I was, and that pushed me go a little further and ask him to take my picture on the edge down in the canyon.  It is now my Facebook profile picture and one of my favorite pictures of myself.

Afterwards, we rolled back up (I really wasn't sure I was going to make it back up at one point, but an obliging shrub gave me the handhold I needed!), and kept going along the little dirt road to Roberts Prairie Dog Town.  Here, you can visit the prairie dogs and some of them stare at you before darting off if you get too close.  We decided to see how close we as a family could get to one, and we set our sights on a 'victim' and walked quietly and carefully altogether, stopping when he seemed to get scared.  It took us about 15 minutes, but we finally got within 5 feet of him. Or her.  Hard to say.

When that one finally ran away, we did it again with a second one, and then called it a day.  It was such a fun collective thing to do, just holding hands, whispering to each other, taking pictures, trying to speak quietly to it (LOL!  Like it knows or cares!), etc.  Afterwards, we decided to go have a look at the three buffalo that were lounging nearby, but we didn't get anywhere near them, just admiring from a distance.  On our way back to the car, a woman called us over to another set of prairie dog holes, but instead of prairie dogs, there was a badger rooting around!  So that was pretty cool, as none of us had ever seen one of those in the wild either!  

Afterwards, we kept driving, though it was well past five and we were all pretty darned tired.  We decided to finish the loop we were on and then come back the next day to finish the main drag through the area, although, we did have to drive a good portion of it to get out.

At one rest stop, we were stopped by a gentleman from Minnesota who was impressed we were so far from home, much less that we had moved to SD!  He chatted our ears off for about ten minutes before we bid him a fond farewell, but I truly do like that kind of friendliness and interest in each other from strangers.  It was pretty cool.

Eventually, we made our way back to Wall, taking note of a couple things we wanted to do the next day for fun.  We checked into the Travelodge and then headed out to find dinner.  The first place had no one working.  The second place was so overcrowded there was nowhere to sit.  So we eventually went to the DQ near the hotel.  It was convenient and fast and we had an OK meal there.  After that, we returned to the hotel and watched some crappy TV before falling asleep on actual beds for the first time in two weeks.

Now, the Travelodge seemed to be going through some things.  There was a sign on the door that said if wanted ice, we'd have to go to the Days Inn.  And that breakfast would be provided, but we'd have to go to the America's Best.  So in the morning, we went over, stopping for a couple of pictures with the buffalo.

The breakfast was OK, but crowded owing to the fact that two hotels' worth of guests were trying to eat, so the line for the pancake machine was crazy, and I wound up eating yogurt and Greg had a bagel.  We returned to the hotel to check out, only to discover sometime overnight it had shut down completely, as there was a sign on the door saying if people had a reservation they could go to the Days Inn and they would try to accommodate them.  We were grateful we got in under the wire!

Leah wanted to go back to Wall Drug and we thought it might be good at that hour because it was early and should be quieter, but upon making our way over there, we found out the shops didn't open for another half hour, so we went geocaching around town.  One geocache was hidden at a local playground, and Leah and Greg climbed around and had a lot of fun together doing that.

We went back to Wall Drug and Leah got the merch she wanted, before we headed back out.  The first place we stopped was The Ranch Store, where they have a prairie dog village at which you can hang out with and feed the prairie dogs.  In the store, you buy unsalted peanuts and then go to town feeding them.  The field is packed with babies and adolescents, as well as full grown adults, and Greg decided to take the time to bond with a prairie dog to the point it was willing to eat out of his hand.

Leah and I were not so lucky, and mainly wound up just tossing peanuts at them and watching them play.  It was still a lot fun!  Afterwards, we drove over the Prairie Homestead, one of the last few remaining sod houses left in South Dakota.  The pioneers and homesteaders to this area, including the Wilders by the by, all lived in sod huts due to a lack of available wood from trees.  These huts were started by digging into banks and creating 'caves', which were then secured with some timber and baked earth bricks.  The huts were not the most pleasant things on earth--when it rained they frequently leaked.  In this old home, the only divider between rooms was a sheet of builders paper.  There was a fascinating little movie to start and then a tour, which was self guided.  There was the original sod hut and then a wood addition that was put on later, as well as a chicken coop, root cellar, barns, and outhouses.  

As I said to Greg, if this were me, I'd be saying "Edgar, hitch up the team, we're going back to Boston!"  It certainly gives you a sense of how hearty the pioneers must have been.  Although frankly one wonders given that the Native Americans seem to be doing fine what exactly their story was...

After our tour, we went back into the Badlands for lunch at the visitors center and ate Indian tacos, which were made with a mixture of beef and buffalo, so I can say I have eaten buffalo.  I bought a lovely little Native American pot with a buffalo on the side which we have proudly displayed downstairs.  We drove back through the Badlands for another look, although frankly, I fell asleep!  When we went out the other side, we were just in time to watch a herd of buffalo coming up to and across the road, so we stopped to watch and take pictures for a while.

It was time to head home, a two hour drive back to Pierre along Route 14.  We decided to stop in Cottonwood, basically a ghost town, which you can read about here.  In 2010, the population was listed as nine people, and we saw one person come out to see their dog as we drove around and took pictures.

While I was out taking photos, Greg was all "OH!  There's a geocache nearby!" and so we decided to make a go of it.  We followed a dirt path through a field 3/4 of a mile to find the damned thing, bouncing and jouncing all the way.  "I'll find a place to turn around!" he said as we rolled past an abandoned house that had a dessicated airplane tail in the side yard.  But before he could, we were at the cache site, a fence at the local cemetery.  It took a long time to find the cache and Greg was fully prepared to give up, but I said, "We did not come all the way up here to not find the damned thing!" so we stayed till the job was done, and I am pleased to say I am the one who found the cache.

See the road?  Yeah, neither could we.

Rather unfortunately this meant we had to roll back down the hill, but we didn't seem to hit anything, so that was a plus!

We eventually got home, without any further incident, and declared our road trip a success.  We all really enjoyed seeing some of South Dakota outside the big city of Pierre and mostly are awed by the wide open spaces.  It is absolutely crazy how open the country is here.  As I remarked to a friend, "I finally feel like I can breathe."

A Week in Pierre

Today marks two weeks we've been here, but let's not get ahead of ourselves! We woke up Saturday morning in our new home, on air mattresses lent by a co-worker I had met over lunch in March and couldn't have put a face to her name! It was interesting sleeping on it--it squeaked a lot on the floor and made a lot of noise, and I thought we would never be able to sleep again. The cats were going crazy, so we found their food dishes and fed them, and once everyone was up and breakfast consumed by the humans, we decided to walk down to Capitol Lake and see the ducks. Pierre is the second smallest state capitol in the country, and the capitol complex itself is quite lovely. The Capitol building rises with its stately dome over a gorgeous little park with a small lake. Ducks, catfish, and turtles have made the lake home, and we enjoyed our first walk down there, pledging to come back with actual food for the ducks the next day. From our house to the lake is about four blocks, and we walk past the governor's mansion to get there, so we bid her good morning (from our side of the fence of course!) and sent her some subliminal messages as we walked past her place. (No, we did not actually see the Governor, just waved in the general direction we thought she might be in).

As soon as we were done, we optimistically piled into the car to go furniture shopping. We had sold or given away a great deal of the furniture we had in NY, as we didn't want to pay to move it, and so it was time to buy a dining room set, living room set, and bedroom set.  Pierre has two furniture shops in town as well as a couple of thrift shops, so we started at the thrift shops hoping we'd get lucky.  We didn't.  Now, we could furnish the house cheap and fast by doing yard sales, and in fact, I'm on a couple of yard sale sites, but we really want to actually decorate our house, so we had settled on cottage style before we got here.  We had looked at a bunch of furniture on line before we arrived, and we thought it would be fairly easy to just go pick things out.  So we set off for Ashley Furniture.

We walked around the store and came upon a dining room set we all three agreed was just right.  We had taken measurements of the dining room and measured the table and it seemed it would fit.  The only downside was that it came with a bench on one side instead of two chairs, but we talked to the salesman and he said we could certainly swap it out, so that's what we did.  We looked at the bedroom set I was convinced I would love when I saw it online, only to discover I didn't actually care for it.  So we bought the dining room set, set up delivery for the following Friday, and headed for Slumberland.

The salesman at Slumberland was a young kid, very enthusiastic and talked our ears off about Pierre and all kinds of things not really pertaining to furniture.  We walked through the showroom and I stumbled upon a rocking and swiveling arm chair, and I just loved it and that was it. Sold!  We walked a bit more and came upon an upholstered blue arm chair that just sort of invited you to sink into it, and again, sold!  We thought we wouldn't find a living room set, but ultimately on our way back towards the door, we found a really nice couch and chaise (I call it my fainting couch) and all three of us agreed that it was comfy and perfect and just right for our basement, so we bought those as well.  

We went to pay for everything, and although we could take the chairs home (if we could transport them), we couldn't actually get the living room set until mid-July.  Given that we were sitting in zero gravity lawn chairs from Walmart, this seemed like a long time off, but the fact that all three of us agreed on furniture was also something of a miracle, so we decided to buy it and just wait it out.  Mary offered Keith and his truck to pick up the chairs the next day, so at least we wouldn't be totally uncomfortable.  

That's pictures of the set we did get!  Next step is to learn how to get the cats, specifically Stepstool, to not scratch them up!

At this point, Leah was more or less done, so we decided to go have lunch which we enjoyed at a local Mexican place called Gallo's.  There is a sweet little downtown area in Pierre and it is located there, as opposed to the more commercial main drag.  We all had virgin margaritas and pina coladas, and celebrated a successful shopping morning.  Then we took Leah home and did a little more shopping, which yielded a shelf and a desk.

We took them home and I had thought we'd be able to put the microwave on the shelf, but it wasn't deep enough, so we took it downstairs and set up the TV.  We also put the desk downstairs and got Leah's computer set up, and Greg and I did battle with the cable modem, and soon the house was full of glorious WiFi.  Unfortunately, the Roku wasn't cooperating!  So no TV that night.  (Turned out the batteries in the remote died!)  As we still didn't have our comfy chairs, we trotted the lawn chairs down to the basement and hung out down there before calling it a night and going to bed.

Sunday morning, we returned to Capitol Lake armed with chips and bread for the ducks.  It was absolutely perfect and gorgeous weather, and the ducks were, of course, happy to see us, and we whispered some greetings to the Governor as we strolled past her party pad.

I had read on one of the yard sale sites that there was an estate auction in Ft. Pierre, just over the river, so when we got home, we rolled over there.  There wasn't a TON of stuff that they had that we wanted, but I wanted an old trunk to use as a coffee table, and I found a cute little table that I thought would fit 'somewhere'...  I managed to win both of them for the price I had set and we even managed to fit them in the car!  Afterwards, we went over to Keith and Mary's and Keith got his truck revved up and we headed to Slumberland and GOT MY CHAIRS!  It was a tight squeeze getting them downstairs--our basement stairs and hallway are very narrow and for a hot minute, it didn't look like my rocker was going down there.  Fortunately Keith came armed with tools, we took the base off, got it into the family room, and put it back together.  Voila!

The rest of Sunday was spent trying to relax and chill before I started work Monday morning.  One note of excitement was that we have a neighborhood full of cats, and two of them belonged to the previous owner.  One of them, a fluffy white guy was living under our deck, and we started feeding him.  He deposited a massive fur ball on our deck, which we saw was matted with fecal material and some sort of brambles.  Upon getting friendly with him, we noticed that his back leg was in REAL bad shape and his fur was horrible.  I called animal control and they said that if we could catch him, they'd send a police officer over.  So we coaxed him out, boxed him, and the cops did arrive!  They sent a cop who didn't like cats all that much, so we had a good chuckle with him over that, but he took the cat off to the vet to get cleaned up and he will hopefully be adopted out in due course.  

 Preparing for work, I was a nervous wreck, as I knew expectations were running high for me over there, and I wanted to make a good first impression.  I also haven't worked full time in 12 years since Leah was born and hardly at all last year, so I was worried about the adjustment.

Monday morning dawned.  I was up and at 'em early and headed over to the library just on time, where I met Brenda, the other senior librarian and Cheyenne, the other new employee starting that day.  We took a tour of the library and I greeted my crew briefly.  The day passed by really fast, and I had lunch alone in my little office, as I hadn't realized that everyone leaves for their one hour lunch break.  After lunch, I met with the crew for an all staff meeting (they hate the word team, so they have dubbed themselves Kate's Crew), and by then, it was about time to go!  I had a really, really amazing first week of work, and such a beautiful and warm welcome, it was like an absolute dream.  Every single person on all levels is just great to work with.  It is a maze in the office part of the library, so I did get lost a couple times, but everyone just turned me around and got me moving.  It's been awesome.

My office before I fill it with 'stuff'

When I got home, we went to Zesto's, the local ice cream institution and enjoyed blackberry twist ice cream to celebrate a successful first day.  It was so delish!  It's also probably walkable from our house, but Leah sent us her order, so we drove to get home before it melted.

NOT my picture of Zesto

 Tuesday night was time for our first game with the Pierre Trappers--the local baseball team.  Hyde Stadium is just across from Capitol Lake, so we decided to walk down to the game, and Leah decided to stay home. (She's developed an almost-phobia about being around groups of people).  Greg and I had dinner at the game and we had a blast.  I kept up a running commentary and asked him his opinion about what plays they should make, and he charitably laughed throughout.

Around this time, we realized we were heading into a three day weekend and needed a plan besides "sit around a house with no furniture".  We decided we'd do Wall Drug, since just about everyone we knew asked us from the time we announced we were heading to SD "Are you going to Wall Drug?" or "You have to go to Wall Drug!"  Since the Badlands are nearby, we decided to make a two day trip of it, and i had a free night via Hotels.com and we were going to sleep on a real bed!  (By this point, however, we were so exhausted the airbed had ceased to be an issue and we were sleeping like babies on it!)

The rest of the week passed by very quickly--a blur of meetings and time with my crew at work, and good stuff like that.  Greg's birthday was Thursday, so we took him out for dinner at Drifters, a 'fancy' restaurant in Ft. Pierre where we enjoyed a really lovely dinner and massive pieces of cake from a local bakery (two pieces of cake lasted three days!).  He's now an old man and is obliged to complain about muscle aches and the kids down the street.  haha

Our dining room set arrived on Friday as scheduled, and as we had bought real plates and silverware and glasses, we were able to celebrate with a real home cooked dinner and eat as a family.  It was such a nice little celebration together and a great way to end our first full week in Pierre.  We had roasted pork with apples and onions, ranch beans, and a Pierre treat, frog eye salad from the local Korner Grocery (not made with actual frog eyes).

I can't speak for Leah and Greg, but I absolutely love it here.  My stress levels are all but non-existent at the moment.  The house is great, the family is great, work is great, the neighborhood and city are great. The weather, I admit is questionable.  It was hot as heck when we arrived, then plunged into the 40's, and today as I write this, we're heading for a wild 104!  But thus far the humidity hasn't come with it, so I can't complain too much.  We run the air or heat as needed, but otherwise, we're doing fine!  Nothing is perfect and there are petty inconveniences, but I would give Pierre an A+ for exceeding my expectations thus far!  I'll be back soon with tales of our road trip! :D