It was Neil’s birthday weekend and we got the keys to the cabin so we both took off work Friday and drove down to celebrate! We had so much shit to bring down that we had to take 2 cars. I've been planning this day for months. Years, really.
We loaded up sleeping mats and enough blankets to survive an icy cold night on a snowbank in Alaska, dropped the kid off with Grandma, and hit the road.
The exterior is done! It was pretty surreal pulling up to a fully enclosed free-standing cabin, framed majestically by the red, orange, and yellow colors of peak Midwest Fall. I took another 75 pictures before we unloaded all of our crap. Paper towels, toilet paper, pillows, couches, lanterns, generator, trash can, Snoop-Dogg wine, decoy wasp nest… all the essentials.
As we climbed the freshly-built interior staircase to the loft for the first time and inspected every inch of the place, we noticed something a bit strange, (beside the distinct, pungent, and slightly overwhelming smell of wood that is).
Tiny winged lady-bug-like insects were beginning to gather in small groups around most of the windows. Hmmm, we thought. "We better caulk around these windows", I said out loud. Before I could even finish the sentence though, it seemed like they were collecting INSIDE the cabin by the hundreds, right before our eyes.
It actually started to freak me out as I began having visions of the plague. Here I showed up today ready to battle yellow jackets only to be surrounded and then suffocated to death on the first day by… lady bugs. What a way to go.
I texted my woods neighbors, “Hey, how's it going? Hope you're well. Do y'all have thousands of lady bug things taking over your house and threatening your sanity, or just me?”
And I was both relieved and terrified to find out that it's apparently normal around here. (Insert screaming). I guess it's their one last hurrah before the season changes and the frost kills them all and our fresh new cabin looked like a fine place to swarm. At the exact moment we turned the key and began moving our stuff inside. Yay, welcome us.
So we did the only thing we could think to do, we drove 30 minutes each way to buy a cabin vacuum and then we came home and frantically sucked those little bastards into oblivion. Phew. Death by lady bugs averted, for now.
It was a gorgeous but a tad-too-toasty Fall afternoon of 85 degrees, but we tried not to complain about being sweaty as hell because we knew overnight there would be a dramatic 45 degree temperature drop and we might actually freeze to death in our sleep.
We set up our sleeping quarters in the loft and it was actually a pretty decent, cozy, and even romantic spot. We had stacks of pillows and layers of thick fuzzy blankets but the real star of the show was the dual-zoned remote controlled heating blanket we splurged on last year. Yes sir, it is as amazing as it sounds.
Fueled by celebratory wine and our solar generator, we were unstoppable. Well, not really. By our calculations via the app connected to the generator, we had exactly 9 hours of warm blanket time before it ran out of juice and we turned into frozen lady bug bait. But no worries, I haven't gotten 9 hours of sleep since I was hungover in highschool so I was fairly certain we would survive the night with plenty of warmth to spare, and we did.
We made it to 4 am before my husband woke up and turned on his side of the blanket.
Yes, his side only.
I guess we fend for ourselves out here in the woods. I turned my own side on before declaring out loud that for the record, I won, outlasting him in the cold night air contest that neither of us knew we were in. It may be his birthday, but I'm the winner.
We also woke up to what sounded like hurricane force rain pounding overhead. We have a metal roof and no insulation yet so it sounded like elephants stomping ladybugs above our heads. And good news, no leaks! We stayed dry as a bone nestled in our warm cocoon of off-grid blankets. I guess we are both winners.
I wanted nothing more than to drink hot coffee and watch deer or Bigfoot creep through the woods outside my windows as the sun came up, but Mother Nature had other plans as she usually does, the bitch.
The rain didn't let up so we drank our coldish coffee while we packed up our belongings, I peed in the bucket one more time, and said see ya later to our little slice of Heaven in the woods.
Until next time…
