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We live in a funhouse

 

     Old houses have oddities like crooked walls and strangely sized doors.  I’ve been sort of shopping around for four interior doors.  Of course, all four are different widths and they are all taller by more than an inch or two than any I can find.  We’re so blessed to have an old house….  Sometimes it’s like living in a carnival funhouse.

     Most of our doorways are out of square, which makes for more interesting problems.  Floors tilt and bow.  The stairs are all narrow and steep.  The attic stairs do a lovely eighty degree turn, twice. 

     The cellar steps are another test of balance and agility.  Although they don’t have turns they aren’t level and the bottom step is only an inch high, just enough to sprain an ankle if you hit it right.  Or rather, if I hit it right I’ll sprain an ankle, which I’ve done many times over the years.

     The entire house, except the attic and back porch, is heated by radiators.  This makes the placement of furniture a challenge.  There are two radiators in the living room under the master bedroom and one in the master bedroom.  The room is very hot in the winter.  I have to sleep with the window opened even when it’s below freezing outside or I’ll die of heat stroke.

Miss Patty hides

 

     We crate the pups when we aren’t here to supervise during the day.  They enjoy getting into things too much to leave them to their own devices.  Today I thought Mr. Houdini dog taught baby sister Patty how to open her crate door.  It wasn’t so.  It seems that DH hadn’t latched her door properly. 

     DH had gone upstairs for a nap while I was outside working in the gardens.  He’d crated the dogs.  When I came in Gavin was snoozing in his crate but Patty was nowhere to be found.  Then I heard her thunder down the stairs.  She zoomed around the corner at the bottom of the steps and about jumped out of her skin to see me standing there.

     She dove into her crate and hid in the back.  Her guilt was so palpable I thought I’d better go see what she’d been doing upstairs.  She hadn’t touched anything in the bathroom.  DH had his room’s door closed.  The laundry basket waiting to have clothes unloaded had the back room door blocked.  That left the bedroom.

     Oh yeah, she’d been in there.  She had used the bed for a trampoline.  Pillows were scattered, some on the floor, and the bedspread was askew.