TICKing things off the list

100 Facebook notifications (mostly from my sister)

20 file folders

15 boxes (give or take) in the back of the truck

8-dollar swimsuit bottoms

5 wood ticks (and counting...)

4 years' worth of Asian beetle carcasses littering the floor of our summer home

3 job applications

2 (HUGE) scoops of ice cream

1 enormous farmhouse

I know I should be able to count by now (I remember when Steve from "Blues Clues" got replaced on the show so he could go to college and learn how to count to 50) but I'm going to use the excuse that in real life sometimes numbers in the countdown get skipped.  At least I can get from 5 to 1 backwards without too much of a hitch...

Ann and I have been moving for days, Monday and Tuesday spent moving our entire lives out of Northfield and, step by step, up to St. Croix Falls for the summer.  We're feeling pretty accomplished, since we already cleaned most of the space we're going to be using in the house and have moved the bulk of our items into the downstairs library, where it should stay cool enough to sleep comfortably at night.  We'll ride bikes to work (and to church, and to wherever we go for fun on Friday nights).  We plan to live simply, in two rooms of the huge farmhouse and mostly outdoors, without air conditioning.  We're still deciding if we will splurge on internet, and the Monthly Grocery Bill Bets are open.

On the plus side, we walked up and down Main Street this afternoon and a decent number of places are hiring!  I'm feeling a bit overqualified, but right now I'm mostly concerned with diving into the community so I just want to meet as many people as possible, and be friendly to everyone.  We've been waving at other drivers and so far everybody seems receptive.  We already got a warm welcome at the Lucky Cup (which has Wi-Fi!) and signed our brand-new St. Croix Falls Public Library cards!  We plan to hit up the Music on the Overlook on Friday evenings and the Farmers' Market on Saturday.  This weekend, there is a safari-themed petting zoo.  Our new friend Cole at the library enticed us into going by naming an animal we'd never heard of, and said we'd have to come back and pet it if we wanted to find out what it was.

The ticks will take some getting used to.  It's a bad year for ticks, i.e. they are EVERYWHERE, and while EmRo got the bulk of them last week today Ann and I squashed about 10 overall.  I'm working on the bug thing, sweeping up the Asian beetles and daddy long-legs without squirming too much, not screaming at bees or ticks, and basically just discovering how to be comfortable with the parts of nature that bite and sting.  This should prove a character-building summer for me.

I couldn't be more pumped.