the house

I'm not sure whether a day-by-day replay is really interesting or the best way of describing our vacation. Like, on one day we took a long walk and then came home and Christopher took a nap while I read by book and journaled. Not worth an entire entry.

So I'm going to tell you about our house in Vermont.
Back when we started thinking about this trip, Christopher found a site of vacation rentals. We looked at a bunch of these sites partly with the idea that we could swap our apartment in Brooklyn for a place to crash in Madrid, but between the ant invasion and the amount of hair Dinah coughs up, I don't think we're ready for someone to stay in our home when we're not there. In any case, when it became clear that we couldn't afford tickets to Spain we started thinking about Vermont. Christopher emailed me many links and voila! The converted barn on 100+ acres popped out at us.

Wow, you might say, 100+ acres! what we didn't realize until soon before we left was that we wouldn't be the only ones on that acreage. Our landlord and her daughter also live on the property. Their house actually butts up against our converted barn. And they own 3 horses, which need to be taken care of each morning before the ladies left for work or wherever her daughter was going (school?). And the horses, well they get up when the sun rises at 5am and neigh to each other across the field. One of them was pastured just outside our bedroom window. Need I say more?

The location was incredible. Our house/barn was built into the hillside, so we'd enter the first floor from the driveway level, walk upstairs and then could exit through a pair of glass doors on to the hillside. We had a BBQ (which I had little success with) and a little round table and chairs where we had breakfast. The views were beautiful in most directions, either looking down a field or towards an old red barn. Even looking towards the pasture above us was great.

And the inside? It was very simple and clean, open spaces on both levels and a sleeping loft in the eaves. The place was outfitted with satellite TV and a DVD player, and we actually spent more time than I'd hoped watching Law and Order reruns on USA. We did manage to finish season 2 of Six Feet Under, which I borrowed from a co-worker over a year ago. It was nice to veg out a little and just watch something after hours of introspective conversations. And I finished the first front panel (and half of a second) on Christopher's cardigan sweater. Bliss.