Work

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Morning at Haven

Ah, there’s nothing like opening the front door in the morning to survey your very own 5,000 square feet of land. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and it’s going to be a gorgeous day!

My first night at home was good, but not as spectacular as if I had gone straight from Mexico to here. I’ve had many equally dark and quiet nights since I left Isla a month ago and certainly more comfortable beds! My bed isn’t bad, but I really do need a topper, which I’ve discovered means deeper sheets, so it’s really a more pricey project than I had a realised.

I fell asleep reading on my iPad last night and woke up flat on my back nearly eight hours later with the tablet on my chest. Too funny!

There’s so much to do in the next weeks. I still have mountains of laundry to wash and tons of bags and boxes to unpack. Miranda needs a good dusting and cobweb removal. I have to finishing set up the kitchen and work on my grocery list for Moose Jaw.

Outside, I want to finishing cleaning up the shed floor and then paint the inside (I think I have enough exterior paint left to do that), then set it up like a proper shed so that I can empty out the cabin and start thinking about what I’m going to do to make it a liveable space. In the meantime, I’d settle for a cleaner and more functional laundry space (my washer still works great!) because the cabin is a mess. I can’t get to the freezer or even the lawnmower. Oh, right, lawnmower. I might try to get to the lawn this afternoon. The grass is really tall!

Work is apparently incoming later today or tomorrow so it’ll be time to figure out what sort of routine I want with that. I think I’ll do five intense days a week and two shorter ones. My government contract is done for the year, so I don’t have anything lucrative lined up, just steady stuff with piddly pay. Better than nothing, but I need to dig for something juicier.

My budgetary focus for the summer is the trip down to Mexico in the fall, as well as my first month or two there, rather than the property. I have lots to keep me busy here that won’t require spending a lot of money, so I’m just going to enjoy being in my own space and puttering around. C&C are doing more work on their house, mainly roofing so that will occupy some of my time, too. I’m really not worried about being bored! I intend to savour these quiet contemplative days knowing that I’ll soon enough be back to the hustle and bustle of my Mexican abode. Talk about the best of both worlds. I continue to be in awe of myself for somehow managing to create this unbelievably amazing life!

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Preparing For the Final Push

John is graciously allowing me to stay through Monday. I am so grateful to have had this stop since the weather has been dire through Colorado, Wyoming, and southern South Dakota this past week. My host near Rapid City even got snowed in, or just about.

When I was planning the trip home, it was always my intention to spend the bulk of May in New Mexico, then pretty much canonball to the Black Hills as soon as the weather turned. So I’m actually right on schedule and about where I hoped to be on this date. I just didn’t expect to get such great digs in Santa Fe that would allow me a little breathing room to have so much fun!

I’ve got a few more outings planned for the weekend as well as a small project. I’m leaving not too late on Monday and have an excursion planned. Then, I’m driving. I have a back roads route planned through Colorado and Wyoming that will get me to the Black Hills by Thursday morning, even if I have delays because of weather. I really want to do the mountainous western route, even if it will mean worsened gas mileage, because I’ve been through the Denver area before. But I’ll monitor conditions and head towards an interstate if I need to.

But if the weather cooperates, this is what my route to the border looks like:

My clients are busy and I already have work for Thursday and Friday since my host will be working, too. Then, I’m taking the weekend off to go exploring with her and a friend (Mount Rushmore and Deadwood are on our list). Monday, I plan to head for the border, stopping at Devils Tower in Wyoming. And then Tuesday, I will hit the border when it opens, 8:00 a.m., and be home by 10:00 a.m., which should coincide nicely with Charles and Caroline’s morning coffee break. 😀

The weather in Santa Fe hasn’t been great, but the weather ahead of me is much more terrible, so I’m actually not that eager to get going again. I’ll need to pack my overnight bag for winter conditions and have resigned myself to the fact that I’ll be moteling it all the way to South Dakota. But thankfully, I have free accommodation through a very expensive weekend. My blog readers are awesome. I need to tell you guys that more often!

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Down Day

John picked up on something that I hadn’t even noticed myself, that I’m getting road weary. I didn’t realise it until this morning that he’s right! I’ve been on the road 12 days now and I haven’t had a real day of rest. Even though I have a project due tomorrow night, I just may leave it till tomorrow and instead just chill this morning and go hiking in the nearby hills in the afternoon.

I’m out in the country and it is so quiet here! I’ll take pictures later. It is the polar opposite of Isla. T or C wasn’t really that noisy, but I was still in a town. It was lovely to wake up with the sun this morning instead of the roosters or garbage trucks! 🙂

The night was cold and I just burrowed under a pile of bedding like I do at home, getting up around 6:30 to turn on the heat and then go back to bed with my iPad to catch up on blogs… and promptly fell back asleep in the middle of reading Croft‘s latest comment! Someone was more tired than she realised. 😀

The bed is yet another super comfy marshmallowly one, this time with a topper, so now I know that a topper would be a really good investment for me and that I don’t have to spend a lot of money. The bed on Isla is the same size as my bed at home, so the topper could go between both properties.

John has been reading the blog carefully and listening to all my gripes about my accommodations so far, worried about getting a bad review. Heh heh heh. No worries, five-star accommodations here. I mean, clean rig, good bed, good shower, kettle, and SHARP KNIVES. 😀

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Cozy

It’s rather funny, but my quirky little Truth or Consequences apartment feels more like home to me than the Isla apartment ever did.

The Isla apartment is huge and so cold with all that beige tile and those white walls. There is also no comfortable place to sit.

What a luxury it was this evening to do what I do in Miranda — shut the computer, grab the iPad, and curl up in a comfy chair with a few episodes of something on the iPad while a door was left open to let in the cool evening air. And that was after making a fabulous dinner that included roasting the meat in the oven.

I also love the warm wood floor in here. It’s convinced me that even if I can’t save the cabin’s original floor, I want real wood planks as my permanent flooring, not laminate.

I didn’t put any money into the Isla apartment this winter because there simply wasn’t any until it was much too late in the winter to do so. For next winter, I firmly plan to have enough in the kitty to get a decent armchair if the landlady hasn’t provided something, and I’ll be sure to bring back down my two lovely blankets that added some much needed colour to the space.

It’s been four full days here and I only have two left. How fast time flies! I’m working hard again tomorrow, but hope to get out Monday afternoon to see a little of T or C. There’s a museum within walking distance, so I’ll definitely do that. The admission price of $6 will put me in the poor house, but I have to keep you blog readers entertained, so I’ll sacrifice (*tongue firmly in cheek*).

 

 

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Typing

Work is a little out of hand this week, but needs to be done! I’m enjoying my Truth or Consequences apartment very much, especially the comfy bed in a dark and quiet room, as well as the kitchen. The weather has been beautiful, but I haven’t gotten out at all except to the grocery store across the street. This is simply not a tourism stop.

On top of my regular workload, I have to do all the bookkeeping to close April and start May. It’s especially important for me to keep on top of the budget when I have expenses straddling two months and I’m not entering transactions daily. I’ve gotten used to dealing with the three different currencies, but the addition of US cash is giving me a little more work. I may change my mind and just go back to using the credit card for everything and entering estimated totals until the transactions are posted to my account.

I came in right on budget for April, with about 30CAD to spare! This is a far cry from my last couple of months in Mexico where I usually ended with several hundred dollars to spare, but considering all the extra expenses I had this past month (not counting the truck, which came in within its own budget), I’m just glad to still be in the black!

I should perhaps point out that this is not the balance in my chequing account. I use a zero-sum budgeting approach where my budget resets to zero every month, I can only spend the money I earned for that month, and anything not spent at the end goes into the emergency fund. So this means is that I didn’t have to dip into the emergency fund this month and I put $30 into it. Every little bit helps. 🙂