Belated post

It's high time I updated this page, and I finally have an opportunity to do so. I'm spending a few weeks up here in Walhalla harvesting sugarbeets in order to get a few dollars with which to buy some things that I want to get and to get the rest of the materials for the interior of the house so I can finish that project this winter.
I'm on the night crew hauling the sugarbeets from the field to the beet parlor and that is a trial for me because I have never been one to stay up all night, for me it's go to bed early or I end up crabby and stupid. Now I drive a half hour from the motel to get to the field at 11:15 at night and drive that semi truck until early afternoon the next day. Another complication is the roads leading to the beet parlor are like rush hour in Seattle only it's all semi trucks hauling beets to the parlor. I guess the best thing to compare it to is a bee hive! I like driving trucks fine but I dislike driving them in traffic, and dislike driving at three in the morning even more, but I can't really complain because I am enjoying most everything else about it, especially the checks! The beet fields are quite close to the parlor so I barely get into top gear and I have to shift back down through them again in order to turn a corner and start back up through the gears again. After 13-14 hours of that it's pretty much automatic so when I get into the car to go back to the motel it's a little alarming, I had to remind myself that the Mercedes does not have a jake brake after letting off on the gas and being a little startled when nothing happened! I'll probably be here for another week or two, depending on the weather, it's somewhat like a little vacation because it's so beautiful out here! Driving out of the Red River Valley every afternoon on the way up into the Turtle Mountains is a little like a dream world (possibly because I am so sleepy) The hills are alive with the trees in their fall colors and the pretty little farms and well kept fields along the road make for a wonderful scene, the sunrises are great too.

At home the biggest thing that's happened is the house moving. I really wish I had been able to take pictures of the procedure because there were plenty of picturesque moments and interesting views, as well as plenty of hilarious ones. To make a very long story short, I took the little shack I was living in and lifted it onto the flatbed trailer, then backed it onto the basement I had been building off and on over the summer. It took a bit of time to get everything lined up just right and the bridge planks set so the trailer would fit over the basement. After a day of several near heart attacks (my little Baldwin piano was still in the house, if the planks failed and the house fell into the basement the piano would have been wrecked, I would have cried. I can live in a tent but I couldn't bear to loose the piano like that) the house was seated on the foundation and I have spent the last couple of weeks on the final construction updates so that I can spend the winter doing the interior work like sheet rock, painting, cabinets, plumbing, wood work and trim, carpeting and things like that. The biggest part of the updating was adding a second level so I now have a two story house instead of a one room shack. It still looks like a shack at the moment, and probably will continue to look that way until next summer when it will be warm enough to put the siding on and build the front porch. All I will do to the exterior this fall is finishing adding windows, house wrap and the new roof, all of which are essential!
Adding the second floor was a trial I do not wish to repeat, if there is ever a next time I now know several things not to do, and several others to be very sure to do that I left out this time! I guess this is how to learn things, though I hate learning the hard way. How I did it was to take the chain saw and cut the house all the way through at the bottom, which promptly ruined a perfectly good chain on the saw due to the nails I chopped through. Next was to build braces and using four jacks and a lot of blocks I very slowly jacked the walls and roof off of the floor high enough to add a downstairs, I then built stud walls underneath and let the jacks down which left the original building minus the floor on top of new walls which were on top of the original floor. If I were to do it again I would probably try lifting just the roof, not the whole house!
As soon as I gat home from here I have to really rush to get the water line dug in from the well and the windows in, house wrap on and the new roofing on before everything freezes solid, then during the long and lovely winter I can work inside, God willing I'll be able to make it somewhat comfortable by spring, though by now, comfortable for me is somewhat diferent from what many others would consider comfortable! One thing I absolutely insist on having is a proper kitchen, I've had more than enough of washing dishes in the pond whenever I finally get around to doing it. I can hardly wait to have a real sink with real soap and clean hot water on demand so I can wash up right away, I love it when things are clean and that is hardly the case at my place right now!
For those of you who are wondering, the raccoons are doing fine, though one got in a fight with something and died, the two females disappeared after I stopped feeding them and the remaining two males have moved (after a great deal of encouragement from me) into a large hole about 35 feet up in a huge cottonwood tree out in the yard. It's absolutely impossible to keep a house with even one coon inside, two is incomprehensible! I'm not saying that they don't make good pets, quite the contrary, they are excellent pets, the problem is that they love to get into things but they don't pick up the mess after they get done investigating! Outdoors they are really a lot of fun and entertainment, indoors they are too, at least they are until I get tired of rescuing all of my things from little fingers! They seem to enjoy playing with the things I wish they wouldn't the most, like loaded guns, or freshly set mousetraps. Now, with their hole in the tree I think they are in good shape, I'll let them in the house sometimes just to visit but only on my terms!
I've got more I could write but I gave myself a time when I have to go to bed and it's that time. Driving a semi truck and no sleep is a deadly combination that I do not want to mess with, 5 hours sleep is not enough for me but it is going to have to do for now, the problem is that those 5 hours are during daylight hours and I can't seem to sleep well during daylight hours!

I'll write more when I have another few minutes.