Cat jail, gardening, Florida

There are lots of things that come up in the years after buying a house, I think especially a first house, that you would never have thought of checking out before buying. There are some things that are obvious – for example, our garage is falling apart and we knew that when we bought the house. Recently our garage door  cracked, and now we have to get a new garage door and opener installed. In order to not be wasting money on a new opener, we have to get a new roof put on the garage so that water doesn't leak in and ruin it. The new door and opener are being installed tomorrow, and we are waiting on an estimate for the new roof, though it is such a small and simple job that it is likely to be not too bad. This we knew would be an issue and we expected to have to deal with this.

What we did not expect was to have a problem that seemed almost unsolvable related to this:

So Maddy is terrible for sleep. She has a tendency to walk all over us, sleep on Jeff's head, and be generally disruptive. For a long time this was not a problem because Koshka would sleep at the foot of the bed, which would keep Maddy off. But after moving to Regina, Koshka prefers to sleep on her own, and thus does not protect us from the terror of Maddy in the nighttime. 

And how exactly does this relate to anything about our house? It all comes down to problems with ventilation. In order to keep Maddy away from us at night, we have to keep our bedroom door closed. But our bedroom is poorly ventilated, and it gets hot and humid and smelly from our body heat. It's not such a problem over the winter, when the temperatures outside hang around 20° below zero, but starting in spring and going all the way through fall it is a problem. So last fall we vowed that we would get better ventilation in our bedroom before this summer. But, when we had someone come take a look to give us an estimate, they basically said our house was too old and it couldn't be done for less than thousands of dollars. He suggested we get a screen door for our bedroom. So after much thought and some trial and error, we devised a method for trapping Maddy in the basement at night. The result looks and seems a lot like part of an Odyssey of the Mind problem (if you know what I'm talking about, you will know what I mean): 

 It is a combination of part of a baby play yard, wall hooks, hair rubber bands, Velcro, and corrugated plastic. I devised this plan, with input from Jeff, over the course of weeks and really maybe months. But this weekend it was constructed, and tonight is the test: we sleep with our bedroom door open, and hope that Maddy doesn't find a way to break out of the basement. Even though the nights have been very cool, sometimes getting close to freezing, I have been hot and the room has felt stuffy and I am very much looking forward to experiencing some airflow while we sleep.

We also spent a lot of time this weekend planting the garden. The weather has been mostly sunny and highs right around 70°F, so perfect gardening weather. We decided this year to use a composting weed barrier over the whole garden to cut down on the need for weeding, so after putting down the weed barrier last weekend, we cut holes and planted seeds and tubers in them yesterday.

This year we have planted two kinds of potatoes, rainbow beets, carrots, Swiss chard, lettuce, yellow zucchini and green zucchini, cucumbers, peas, and basil. Jeff does not so much love gardening, but he is a good sport and helps quite a bit anyway, and I think he does enjoy having the fresh vegetables that we have grown. As we are getting used to how things grow here, and to our garden space, I think we are making continual improvements. My guess is that this will be our best garden yet in Regina.

Finally, I should mention that I probably won't be blogging next Sunday because we will be away. In Florida. On vacation. (Yay!). Since Jeff was not able to go to Oregon over Christmas, he ended up having a travel credit with United airlines. The credit had to be used within a year, and we realized that it is unlikely that we will be doing much traveling for a while after the baby comes in September. So, this was a perfect excuse to book a vacation. We decided on Florida because there are beaches, it will be warm, it's not too terribly far (Hawaii would be an awfully long trip from here), and I have never been.

We're going to a place called Fort Myers Beach on the recommendation of a friend. It is surrounded by state parks and nature preserves, so more our speed than a place like Miami or Orlando. We have reserved a tandem kayak for a half day exploring a nearby nature preserve, and have booked a "dolphin cruise" where we will be taking a tour of the area with a marine biologist, heading to a tiny unpopulated island to look for wildlife and shells, and are apparently guaranteed to see dolphins. We are staying at a hotel right on the beach, with a room that has a full kitchen, barbecue on the patio, and is facing the Gulf of Mexico. I am super excited for our trip, and I will be sure to post pictures when we get back!