Well, she's still there...

Does everyone do this?  You come home from a trip or something and when you first lay eyes on your house, there's that twinge of relief that it hasn't burned to the ground?

Similar feeling here.  So it had snowed and rained over the past few days.  The place was inspected a few months ago and has stood through 40-something winters.  There's no reason to fear the worst, but you can't help it until you know for certain.

The only slight surprise was that there were no critter tracks anywhere.  We saw a group of six deer during the drive in, and during our stays have seen a variety of animals (fox, a couple of raccoons, allegedly a lynx, etc) but there was no evidence of such visitors in recent days.  On the upside, there was no evidence of rodent squatters inside the cottage, either.

Shovelling wasn't really an option (or appealing in any way, shape or form, having cleared the driveway four times since Friday morning) because of a layer of ice that had latched on to, well...everything.  So we went inside and took some measurements of the master bedroom (sounds pretentious, I know...bear with me...) because we want to replace the carpet in there early next year.

While we we were there, we took the opportunity to stop at a few places that we usually drive through and say "we should stop here some time" and don't. 

We then hit a couple of stores in Westport 'cause Christine thought of visiting the bakery there.  At Village Green, that huge-ass store I raved about in an earlier post, Christine picked up a couple of mixes for dips (spinach, artichoke) and hot chocolate, while I walked out with dill mustard and maple butter (Hmmm...maple butter...).  At the bakery, we bought a loaf of oregano bread, a couple of apple turnovers and jelly donuts.

That done, we headed home so I could watch the Redskins win yet another game.  Ho-hum. ;-)