Adjust you must

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – So we’ve arrived at Hilltop, and it’s a powerful thing.

Moose a'plenty.

Powerful not for what we bring to the equation.  After all, the house has stood strong amid these tall pines for 21 years without our presence.

But powerful in terms of what this locale brings to our senses and sense of well-being.

We’re getting to know this house, this place.  There’s much good.  There are a few quirks.

To know a new house is like knowing a new spouse, I think.  Sure, you date for a time, and you assume you know each other.  But then you live together, and the odd traits surface … the snore here, the toilet-seat-always-left-up there, the peculiar kitchen habits (for me, ketchup on everything.)

With Hilltop, we had but two 30-minute dates and then the wedding.  We were on a tight clock to find a house.

One hundred strong.

And so we’ve moved in.  There are many blessings, starting with what’s outside our door.  At least 100 pines stand guard on our north, shoulder to shoulder, moving as one with the bay breezes.  Deer roam our drive.  Last night, the low snarl from a raccoon in a nearby bush got Nellie’s attention. She quickly sat, ramrod straight, and fixed on the bush.  She would be there this morning had I not hauled her in at 10 p.m. And the birds sing a glorious refrain that I’ve not heard since our week at Wedding Central in the mountain foothills near Bellingham, Wash.

The horses at the ranch immediately behind us seem to have gone into hiding.  We think it’s because the ranch owners are doing construction … new stables and the like.  But we still hear the occasional whinny, which is welcome.

And we’ve fortified the deck with pots, flowers and even three tomato plants to accent the pines' green and brown and the rich pine scent.

Time to plant.

Then there’s the road, less of a blessing.  In our haste to buy this place, we tuned out the noise of the occasional cars, trucks and motorcycles along our Five Mile Road.  But it’s now proven to be our reminder that, despite the rural feeling of this amazing one acre, we are close to the city.

And so the traffic moves for us like, I imagine, the “L” does for a Chicago apartment dweller stuck near the tracks – with the rhythm and frequency of daily work life.  A rush in the morning, sporadic noise at midday, a rush again at night.  On Saturdays, less movement.  On Sundays, very little.

I had trouble tuning it out the first two days; Cindy hardly noticed it.  But I’ve grown used to it now.  It doesn’t have the charm of the trains that I learned to love while growing up near railroad tracks, especially when a motorcyclist seeks to prove his mettle by gunning the engine to climb the hill.  Imagine a swarm of angry bees times 10.

But it’s an honest sound, of folks traveling to work, living, doing what they must.  It's also our reminder that this house is but an interim stop ... that a lake awaits.

Inside the house, we learn new things every day.  The kitchen’s sink is nicely divided into two sinks, but the faucet design is odd … when washing dishes, the dishes tend to hit the faucet handle, turning off the water. 

The hot-water boiler for the heat – yes, we’ve had the heat on – does an efficient job, but the vent pipe juts out on the front deck, about seven feet up, and huffs and puffs like the magic dragon.

And walking atop the floorboards on my side of the bed sends a deep, staccato “brraaat!” across the room like a tuba in a Sousa band. I’m sure there’s some utility in that, but I’ve not yet found it.

We're calling it Puff.

Oh, and then there’s the fridge. We’ve never had one be so judgmental.  Typically, a refrigerator loves to be opened, the door swinging easily to access the good things inside.  But this one does not. The door is sealed as tight as a submarine airlock.

“Good God, what’s with this door?!” I’ve yelled to Cindy at least a dozen times so far, always in a hurry to grab butter, Half and Half or other fixings.

I’ve learned now there’s a technique: Grip the handle, but do so with your right hand; place the left hand on the fridge’s main structure; yank hard three times. To skip the middle step sends the fridge rolling across the kitchen.

I’ve often tried to see a higher purpose in such hindrances, and given that we’re both doing Weight Watchers, it all makes sense.  Plus we get Activity Points for the exertion.

And there are other things about the house.  The prior owners have stenciled so many moose and pine trees in so many rooms that we start cracking bad Boris Badenov jokes.  “Theese time I weel beat stupeed moose and squirrel!”

The biggest lesson of the house, though, is its size.  I remember a banker in Kansas City who talked often of “God’s law of adjustment.”  That is, in the end, we’re reduced to what is essential and proper for a good life.  And so we’re adjusting.  The house is now full of furniture, yet so is the garage.  That can’t stand, and so we’ll be divesting of stuff this summer and fall.  We must, after all, because our cars will need that garage by winter.

Says the car, "Please, sir, may I come in?"

Our material excesses proved a bit embarrassing in the move up.  We contracted for a 28-foot trailer. “You’ll have no problem getting everything into that one, with feet to spare,” said the trucking guy, seriously.

Two hours into the work, our movers warned us we’d need a second trailer.  We then filled that one up.  So 56 feet of pure American consumerism.  

Ever see those semis on the highway pulling two long, attached trailers like a freight train on wheels?  Yep, that was like ours.

Yeah ... it was like that.

And then, of course, we packed our cars as tight as a Japanese subway. Sky, our bird, was lucky to fit in the Beetle.  Linus got the comfy front seat of the van, but poor Nellie was in the back, locked in like a cow for milking.

The adventure continued once we arrived.  But I’ll save the details of that for the next post. 

All I can say is that Howard, the truck driver, proved heroic that day. 

And our realtor’s warning that our driveway-hill could be a problem in winter proved prescient … although four months early.  

Hilltop it is. 

Howard and I talk strategy.