Dave had some summery presents he wanted to get for the kids, and with Sofi's birthday in December and Erik's in late July, there wasn't a good holiday for present-giving except Easter. So Sofia is getting a small bike, and Erik is getting a small slide, in addition to the usual chocolate Easter goodness.
Dave just finished getting the bike adjusted and the slide put together. I wrote up a few riddles for Sofia to figure out as she runs around looking for eggs, which will eventually lead to the bigger presents outside. ... Hmm. I hope we're not setting too big a precedent ... well, if necessary, we can make up some sort of story next year, about the Easter Bunny having a broken leg or something.
... The huge flocks of geese seem to have mostly moved north in the past few days, but flocks of ducks remain. This is in a prairie pothole in one of our fields, less than a half-mile from the farm. The ducks eased away a bit when I walked close, but they didn't take off, apparently judging me as not much of a threat. We did bird ID by photo, and figured out that these are lesser scaups.
This photo especially helped in the ID, since we could see the peaked head. Greater scaups apparently have a rounded head, in addition to being bigger, the guidebook says.... Dave's parents are here for the weekend. Don and Dave worked on several things in the new house today, including fixing the door (somehow the strike plate was set too far back, so the latch wouldn't stay in place and keep the door closed — a shim behind the strike plate did the trick), adding one ground wire they had missed, and doing some drywalling.
We had quite a discussion about what the move-in date might be. It's really hard to say at this point, as we have to guess at too many factors — how many hours Dave gets to work on the house, for example. But midsummer still seems like a good guess.
... I might have a few more hours to spend on the house, depending on how accomodating Mom is on doing child care: I found out a few days ago that my contract with my online editing job is being ended as of April 15. Basically, I'm being laid off, along with the rest of the copy editing staff. We've been deemed "redundant," and the mangement wants to be more "nimble" so they can post stories without having to wait for us to read them.
It's not fun to hear, especially as the money I brought in kept everything less stressful around here and allowed us to put more money into the house, but we'll survive. And I have a feeling something else will fall into place for me, workwise. I'd like to get my name out to do some more graphic design work, for example.
But first, I'm going to work on my book about my Aunt Lillian. I've taken it as a sign that she has a massive heart attack within a few hours of me finding out that I'm laid off. Really, how much more of a kick in the pants to I need to get going on this project?!
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