Lycorne With an I instead of the Y it's French for Unicorn. I just like this spelling better.

A lot has occurred since my last post. Shane, Bob and I have moved to Trempealeau. The move itself had some unusual details and things but there is no reason to go into all the ins and outs of the move. Anyone who has moved before, knows things rarely go as planned for a move, and often the unexpected occurs. I will mention that one of the very unexpected things during this move is that on Friday, September 22, Shawna (Shane’s sister) received a 3 day eviction court order. She had to be out of her rental, by 6 pm, Sunday, September 24th.

Since she was moving in with Karen, they wanted us to try and move our things out sooner, that idea of theirs had mixed results. But I can say we now have everything at our new home in Trempealeau, and it’s nice not to have to commute to Holmen so Shane can do his work. We couldn’t get internet service in Trempealeau until Thursday, September 28th, so until we had it we were driving back and forth daily.

This past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we went to Amrail, in Chicago. Amrail is an event put on by a group of model railroaders in Chicago, for the purpose of having out-of-town guests come and operate their railroads. We ran for different railroads during our trip, one Friday evening, two on Saturday, and one on Sunday morning. They were all lots of fun, and definitely the makings for a great trip. And as an added bonus we were able to stop at Bill Kirchmeyer’s new home in Rockford, IL on the way back to see how he’s coming with his benchwork. It’s a beautiful home, a huge basement, a great plan for the layout, and a wonderful start on his benchwork. This is definitely going to be a great railroad to come and operate once he has it finished!

Sunday evening after we returned, Shane and I met the downstairs neighbors. Rosey and Chris appear to be really nice people. Rosey just recently moved here from Rhode Island, so naturally she’s having a bit of cultural shock from the differences between the East Coast and the Mid-West. One of the biggest things she’s adjusting to is the fact that on the East Coast is that you don’t get to know much about someone unless you’ve known them many years already, and here in the Mid-West people are curious and want to get to know you once they meet you. I know the difference between the two because I spent 6 1/2 years living in the Greater Boston Area, which is most definitely that way. Out there you don’t become friends with someone until you’ve known them at least 1/2 a dozen years already, minimum.

Rosey isn’t currently working, she’s taking some time to organize their apartment and settle in before finding herself a job. One of the things she offered was that if we needed to go shopping or anything let her know and she’d be glad to help us with a bit of transportation when she can. It was very nice of her, and on Tuesday when she needed to go to LaCrosse to run some errands, we went along. Shane had considered staying home, but since he was waiting for someone to get back to him with some work, he decided to come along. It was an enjoyable time for all I believe, I know I enjoyed it.

Rosey and Chris are smokers though, and at the moment, that smoke is finding it’s way up the old staircase. We need to talk with the landlord about either closing off the stairs, or sealing the door with plastic, or something. I’m sure hoping that it will all work out. I like this place a lot, and while I can’t really smell the smoke much, I’m sure it’s not good for me or the baby. I know that Shane and Bob are much more sensitive to it, but I really hope something can be done.

On the thirteenth, I had my first appointment with the nurse, and then one with Dr. Peck. The appointments went well, just long, my first appointment was at 1:30, and I didn’t get out of the clinic until a few minutes before 5. At this point everything seems to be going well, and it appears that I should be able to have things the way I would like. What do I mean by that you ask? Well, for starters it means that I will have a midwife rather than a doctor, and I’m looking into have a water birth. Sure it’s early yet and a lot of things could happen before April 25th, but currently there is no reason for me not to have a midwife or waterbirth.

I am greatly looking forward to our move to Trempealeau by the end of the month. It’s going to be a relief to have our own place, and not be sharing living space with Karen. Lately she has been really upsetting Shane a lot and while I do my best to stay completely out of it, just the raised voices of them arguing can set me a bit on edge. Luckily whenever it happens I just tell myself to relax, there is only a few more weeks of this.

While I’m happy that Shane and I are moving on, I’m still sorry about the pain and upset he’s going through now with his mother’s behavior. While I find it difficult to dredge up sympathy for her, I really wish this wasn’t so difficult on Shane.

What can I say, I get hundreds of spam emails every day. Like everyone else, I hate it. I do what I can to keep a handle on it, but I can’t even control my own. Since Shane and I announced to our families of our upcoming family addition, I have been receiving many more spam mails, and now they are coming to my personal email box. While the person who added me to babytobee.com may have thought they were helping me, I really really wish that instead of signing up my personal email address, they had sent me a link to the place and perhaps a line or two of why they thought I would find it useful.

How do I know it’s not something I signed up for? Well that’s easy, I have an endless number of possible email addresses to choose from since I own my own domain. Whenever I sign up for things on the web, I am always picky about the email address I use. I select an address that will allow me to have some indication of whether or not, the site I went to sells my email address to other lists as well. This also allows me to block that email address if I start receiving an unreasonable amount of spam at it.

Bottom line everyone? Don’t sign someone else up for an email list. Even if you think it’s the best thing in the world, or right up their alley. Always talk to the individual first, either in email or person, and it’s really much nicer to send them the link to allow them the choice. I will admit that I have sent people invitations to lists, or places before, but I do believe I have always talked to the individual first. And while I may send someone an invitation email, I haven’t signed them up on a list, they’re the ones that I allow to make that choice for themselves.

While I could make separate posts, I’ve decided it’s not critical for me to do so. Instead of making a couple short posts, I’ll make this one and include the information I would have put in each.

On Friday we meet with our future landlord. I recall mentioning that Muriel owned the property, but she recently had a hip replacement, and can no longer handle the step to and from her place. This is why she has moved in with her daughter and son-in-law who have a ranch home with everything on one level. Muriel’s daughter and son-in-law are the ones that will actually be handling the rental.

While I can’t recall her son-in-law’s name of the top of my head, he’s a nice individual and quickly addressed all our concerns. They live in Mindoro and he works in Galesville, so he’ll be close in the event that something happens at the rental. He also mentioned that Muriel has 5 dogs and several birds (hence the animal smell in the house). He’s already told us that as far as he’s concerned, the place is ours, and he’s offered to allow us to move in on the 15th for a half-month rent. Now all we have to do it get him the deposit and rent, and it’s a done deal.

On Friday night, we had a RiverRail session at Dennis’ again. It went as smoothly as always, and was just as much fun as expected. We had talked about missing it or only attending part of it so that we could see Skeeter Lewis again. Shane and I had our first date listening to Skeeter Lewis at Riverside park during the Forth of July Festival La Crosse has every year. Unfortunately this year without our own vehicle, we were unable to listen to him play jazz.

We had received word that he would be playing at Skipper’s on Friday night, but while we having such fun at Dennis’ we decided not to end the evening in a smoke filled bar, even if it was to listen to some wonderful jazz. Besides, I had awoken early, missed my afternoon nap that day, and was quite tired. I actually went to bed once we arrive home, and for anyone who knows what I night owl I am, yes it was very unusual.

On Saturday, Bob had asked us to go to Caledonia with him, to met his friend Rosa. She is a very nice lady, and while I could go into much more detail, I think my husband summed it up nicely yesterday in his blog. If you’re interested you can see what he wrote here.

This morning, we had an appointment to view a 2 bedroom apartment in Trempealeau at 10:00. As for the apartment we viewed, while the price may have been right it was just too small. It would have worked for the two of us last year, an the price would have been inline with that, but it just won’t work now. One of the main problems was there was no place to set up the home office, and the other was that both of the bedrooms were rather small.

Since we were already in Trempealeau, we went to the Wildflower Cafe for breakfast/lunch. While we were there, we mentioned to our waitress, Alice, what had brought us to town that morning. Once that she found out the we were looking for a reasonable priced three bedroom rental, she brought us a telephone number of someone who had just such a place to rent. Shane talked to the owner, Muriel, on the phone while we were there and received more of the particulars on the place, as well as the location.

Once we finished our lunch, we drove to the place to get out and walk around the yard. Once we were walking around we found the side door wide open, and while did call in, no one answered our call. Shane called the owner immediate, to let her know about this. She said that we could go on in, check the place out, but be sure to lock up when we left.

The building is a double-wide trailer on a basement foundation. The basement is rented out as a separate apartment, so we don’t have access to that, but we would have half the two car garage. As I mentioned, we were looking for a three bedroom apartment, this duplex has washer/drier hookups, the kitchen is a bit small (but manageable) with new appliances, a nice sized dining area, a huge living room, a 3/4 bathroom (no tub, but has a shower), and three bedrooms. One of the bedrooms has a build-in bookcase, but no carpet, and paneling on the wall. This is the room we will be using for the office. Of the two other bedrooms, both have carpet, one a deep rose with a nice light walls (looks like they have been replaced from the original paneling to panelboard, but much better looking than painted paneling), the other one has darker carpet (a mixture of browns I believe) and paneling on the walls.

I should mention that most of the place has paneling, a lot of which has been painted over, which I guess helps some when you absolutely hate paneling as much as I do. In the dining area the paneling has one of those paint treatments that has one base color and then two other colors “sponged” on it, so it’s mild and not overbearing. The living room appears to have panelboard in a heavy floral pattern, but that’s not too bad. The hallway has the paneling painted yellow (which I don’t necessarily like), but it was a nice boarder next to the ceiling. The laundry area though is this icky light green painting on the paneling there, and it looked like perhaps the washer was there when it was painted since there is an area where you can still see the paneling.

The kitchen, dining area, and living room, have all had new flooring, and it gives the appearance of hardwood floors. I don’t recall about the hallway, but I think it’s carpeted. The carpet in the bedrooms while it may not be new, appears to be fairly new, and definitely in good condition. The main reason I think it may not be new, is that with their better noses, Shane and Bob could tell that the owner did have pets in the house, and carpets are most likely to hold the aromas the longest. (Especially considering there wasn’t furniture in there and the only other thing to hold odors would be he window treatments.)

There is also a 24X24 cement patio, with a sliding glass door it from the between the dining and living room area. There is also 3 foot fencing around it. Shane like the patio, as do I. We both see many possibilities in this place and are quite excited about it. We have an appointment with one of our prospective landlords tomorrow to do a walk though. (Ok there were a few small issues that we wanted to talk with him about, like one of the bedrooms looked like it had a roof leak, different locks on the doors since their the kind that it’s easier to jimmy than lock. We’d prefer a deadbolt lock.)

We had a great weekend for Labor Day, but since we were at a SCA event called Autumn Rose I have written up all the information in my SCA log so you can see how our weekend went here.

The down side was that we didn’t arrive back until almost 5 pm on Sunday, and we were incredibly tired. We laid down for naps, and I slept until 8 pm. This meant that we didn’t make it to my aunt and uncle’s for my Great Aunt’s visit. I am disappoint to have missed her, but at the time sleep was all that was on my mind. It was a long weekend with us leaving home about 7 pm on Thursday and not arriving back until a little before 5 on Sunday. I’m also not used to camping, even if we did have a building to sleep in.

There is some great news coming but there will be more details on that after the 13th. One great thing that I will mention is that Shane and I will be moving to our own place in the near future. We’ve finally decided that we need some space for us, and without Karen. She’s taken the news on that rather hard, but she’s figured out who she’ll live with next. If Karen has her way she will never live alone, nor would she move into any senior housing. Good luck, Shawnadee.

In July at the Koehn family reunion, Shane’s Aunt Joanne invited us to come out to her cabin again. Joanne is such a lovely lady when she saw that Bob had come with us to the reunion, she make sure to personally invite him out to the cabin as well. With other things planned and going on we didn’t have a chance to take her up on her offer until this weekend.

When Shane told Karen about the invitation and when we planned on going, she decided that she would go as well. She also talked to her sister, Kathleen who lives in Green Lake also and made arrangements for us to stay there on Sunday night.

What actually ended up happening was that Bob, Shane and I left home on Friday morning and did some rail fanning in Madison before heading to the cabin. It was a good day and Shane managed go take lots of pictures of the Wisconsin Southern Railroad which is what he intends to model.

On our way to Green Lake, we found a great restaurant for supper in Columbus, WI. It’s called Capri Steakhouse and they have excellent food. Their placemats give you a history of the restaurant, and it’s intriguing. It also has great food, nice supperclub atmosphere, and reasonable prices.

On Saturday, Bob had a commitment he had made for that afternoon, and then he had to work on Sunday as usual. So he was only able to spend the one night at the cabin and then had to leave after he had had breakfast. After Bob had left, we went to Ripon to do some grocery shopping. The we consisted of: Karen, Joanne, Shane and myself. Karen drove, and I sat in the 2nd row to allow Joanne to sit up front. I received a very quick crash course in why I don’t ever sit in the back when Karen’s driving. While the van has great shocks and such and you don’t feel the side to side driving she does very much, you can see everything from back there, and it’s a terrifying sight. I realized months ago, that I don’t like watching the road much when she’s driving, it’s too scary. But to sit in the back and see it all, along with her speed is down right terrifying.

Saturday afternoon, we went out on the lake for a boat ride. While a critical person would say it was rather cool, and the lake was choppy from the wind, all I can say is that is was a GREAT ride. I certainly didn’t mind the cool or the wind or even the bumps. If anything it added flavor or color to the ride.

The funniest part of the ride though, is when Karen was trying to get on the dock. Her knees were bothering her (as usual), and when she tried to get out of the boat she ended up sitting on the dock. Ok, not so bad there you’d think right? Well, that sounds ok, except for the fact that she couldn’t get up from her seated position. After several failed attempts Shane had to finally get out and help her up.

On Sunday afternoon, we went over to Kathleen’s. When we first arrived, Kathleen wasn’t home so we headed to Ripon so that Shane could pick up the spices he wanted to make the spaghetti dinner with. Kathleen was actually at the farm stand we had stopped at the day before picking up some vegetables. We knew from experience how great the sweet corn there was.

Kathleen’s granddaughter, Mara, was staying with her, so she ws the first one to see the doll houses that Karen had made for the girls. Mara enjoyed hers very much. That evening for supper, Eric, Amy, and their daughter, Arienna joined us. Arienna was given her doll house at the time as well. While Arienna is only about a year so doesn’t quite appreciate it all yet, Amy was amazed at the detail Karen used to create it.

That night we slept in one of her guest rooms, it was the old downstairs office which had been converted to a bedroom. Unfortunately for us it was warm in there that evening. Shane solved the problem though, he found the screen and opened the window, even though the A/C was on for the rest of the house. He did make sure to close it all back up again in the morning.

On Monday we stopped at Aunt Judy’s restaurant in Princeton for lunch. They have some wonderful food, and reasonable prices. After which we went to the Flea Market in Montello. It’s one of those large indoor ones that’s open all summer. They also have a section that holds their outdoor weekend Flea Market and vendors. After we finished there we had to go to B & B’s Country Store. It’s an excellent candy shop and Shane had to pick up some Mint Chocolate Chip Malted Milk Balls, and other things. The rest of the ride home was rather uneventful.

Earlier today we had a party to celebrate the August birthdays in the family. Ok, in the immediate family it’s really only mine BUT since Aunt Mary Ann is now an even a bigger part of the family and her birthday is August 16th. Naturally with Bob living here and as far as I’m concerned a part of this family we also celebrated his birthday which is the 13th. We also tried to include Jordan who’s birthday is on the 10th, but Jason has mixed up dated and said he could go someplace with this friends today.

We had a fairly full house, it was Dad, Mary Ann, Bill, Kathy, Teddy, Max, Andrea, Chris, Mary Jo, as well as Bob, Karen, Shane and myself. Shane grilled brats and others brought a dish, we ate outside and it worked fairly well. The weather was great so it wasn’t a problem to eat outside which was nice.

My birthday for those of you who don’t know is August 8th. Shane and I didn’t do anything really special for my birthday. On the evening of the 7th he told me what he intended giving me for my birthday. He intends on giving me $40 to buy fabric so that I may make some skirts and such.

Dad called to wish me a happy birthday, which I appreciated very much. It was great to know he remembered. When he first called I was still asleep. Shane had let me sleep in because it was my birthday, but I was able to talk with him when he called back later.

Bob took Shane and I out to North Country Steak Buffet for my birthday.