Khufu's Excellent Adventure

Khufu has made himself thoroughly at home here. He wakes us up at sunup purring and rubbing his head until Tom gets up and feeds him. He claims all the best spots to curl up and snooze. He runs up and down those steep stairs like they're nothing. He loves the sun coming in the windows and the views out into the woods. He refuses to understand he is not allowed on the dining table.He is having a great vacation. He is a handsome, entertaining visitor and we are having a good time sharing the house with him.

In other news, we now have hot and cold running water in both the main house and the bathhouse. What luxury! How civilized! I have to admit, I miss the nightly walks around the area with the stars blazing in the cold black sky or the moon turning everything to silver magic. I try to make myself go out for a walk before turning in, but now that I don't have to, I rarely do it. Then again, when I get up in the night and get to use the indoor toilet I find I really don't miss that outhouse at all. And doing the dishes without heating water on the stove seems almost too easy. Now if we can just keep the pipes from freezing again...

In the daytime we do go for walks around the neighborhood. Here's a picture I took of our house from one of our walks. We have had fresh snow several days. Not much accumulation, but enough for interesting tracks. Wildlife tracks in fresh snow are like stories. You can see where the deer and her fawn bedded down. You can see where an ermine chased a mouse. You can see where a rabbit found food where the snow had slid off a south-facing roadcut and some grass was exposed. This is the most dramatic track we've seen lately:

The tracks of some small animal (its tracks were too obscured to tell what it was exactly, but I know it wasn't a rabbit) wander out of a small copse of trees into the open then vanish right at the point where there are two giant wing-prints in the snow. It looks like an owl came from behind and snatched the little fellow up. Nature red in tooth and claw.

Otherwise, we're keeping busy with Christmas preparation. Tom took me out to dinner at a fancy restaurant in town for my birthday (Yep, I'm still alive at 55). Cards and presents arrive from time to time. I need to get busy with cards and baking. It's good to be home for the holidays.