A week in review & Nanook

Saturday, December 19, 2020

It’s been exactly a week since I sat down behind the computer to notate the happenings ’round here. There’s not been that much going on so I’ve not felt motivated to ‘write it down before I forget’. It seems, these days, if I don’t jot something down after it happens then the days start blurring together and the details are lost.

Backing up in the week to last Tuesday we had a few moments of scrambling in the afternoon trying to accommodate a last minute booking. Most of the cabin was already turned over from the guests that had just checked out but we didn’t have anyone booked until Thursday so the last minute stuff wasn’t done. We managed to pull it off and the guests were fabulous and really enjoyed the cabin.

Speaking of cabin, for what started out as a slow month for bookings it has steadily picked up to the point that we only have a few nights available the rest of the month. It’s CRAZY I tell ya! We now have 101 reviews and that doesn’t even include all the guests that have been here as not all of them have left a review.

Friday I went in to work at the newspaper. Next weeks’ edition of both papers we publish will have the Christmas Greetings and Santa Letters in it and I wanted to get that section of the one paper finished or at least a good enough head start so that it wouldn’t take much time on Monday to finish it up. I was there much longer than I had anticipated due to text formatting issues. We received more Santa letters than I thought and while I was still working on the second out of three schools I was already running out of room and pages. sigh. I finally stopped for a few minutes to devise another plan to solve all the formatting issues. Thankfully I came up with a plan and after that plugging all the text in and getting it formatted went MUCH smoother. I was able to print out the pages right before I left. I’ll review them on Monday and make any necessary changes and call that section DONE! That will only leave one paper to deal with and since a few Christmas Memory stories were submitted and not very many Santa Letters it should go rather quickly.

However, that only left me with one day off. My B&B boss called first thing this morning asking a computer/email question and she mentioned that they were short-handed today and tonight. Everything within me wanted to volunteer to go in but I knew that there were already not enough hours in today to get everything done that I needed to get done. Sure enough, if I had gone in I would not have gotten everything done. If there’s one thing I know about the B&B, it will get done one way or another with or without me.

I was mentally exhausted last night so we headed to bed earlier than usual. In fact, even after reading a couple chapters in the latest book I’m reading I turned the lamp off a few minutes before 9 o’clock and we slept in today until almost 7:30. Goodness!

Once we FINALLY crawled out of bed, got the morning chores done and were enjoying our second cuppa coffee the fence guys showed up. I had gotten a name of a feller that installs fences from a co-worker and we had given him a call earlier in the week. He and another feller came by and walked off the area we want to fence and re-fence. I believe I had mentioned before that we were wanting to fence off the paddock behind the current chicken paddock and the current fence around the existing chicken paddock is in much need of being replaced. The guys walked off 720 feet of fence line. He’s going to give us a quote on Monday. I’m trying really hard to tamp down my excitement because I don’t want to be disappointed if it doesn’t pan out or come to fruition mainly from past experiences with trying to get something hired out and winding up being sorely disappointed. I do know that if we are able to get the project done it will be a HUGE visual improvement to the property.

While we were talking with the fellas we noticed a dog trotting down the street. It was the same dog I saw yesterday morning on my way to work. It was at the end of the road, in the middle of the road, watching the neighbors. None of our neighbors own a dog like this so we called for it and lo and behold it trotted across the field, across the creek, and came right up to us. She followed us around as we walked the new fence line and followed us back to the house. We gave her some food and water and guess what? she’s still around! We plan on keeping her until someone claims her. That way she’s warm, safe, fed and loved. Meet Nanook…

She’s very friendly and lovable. LizzieBelle isn’t too thrilled sharing her house and her Mum & Dad but she’s being somewhat of a gracious hostess with only a few snarls and baring of the teeth here and there. Nanook doesn’t seem to be too concerned.

Those eyes! She’s a little stinky so maybe in a day or two after she’s settled in, we’ll attempt to give her a bath. Although I think she’s already settled in. We let her and LizzieBelle out then we headed up the hill to work on the cabin. Guess who followed us up the hill? Nanook! She laid down on the deck and waited for us to finish up then followed us back down. She’s been napping ever since. I’m sure she’s happy to be able to get some sleep without having to keep one eye open.

We’re not sure if she’s just lost or if someone dumped her but there’s no collar and she hasn’t been roaming too long as she still looked pretty healthy. At any rate, she seems to be pretty content. We’ll see what happens.

How did we come up with the name Nanook? There’s a lovely, talented girl I follow on Instagram who is from Sweden and her dog’s name is Nanook. The meaning of the name is ‘Polar Bear’. We thought it was appropriate for this sweetie so Nanook it is for as long as she’s with us.

One just never knows what’s going to happen ’round here!

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This evening we practiced the songs we’re singing tomorrow in church while waiting for our guest to arrive. We were requested to sing ‘O Holy Night’ and however many other songs we wanted to sing. We decided on two more songs, ‘Mary, Did You Know’ and ‘The Gift’. We’ll go over them again in the morning and pray we do them justice. The holidays have been different this year but we are glad we still get to do a little singing to celebrate.