Village Life

This is my first time to live in a village. Or rather, a village in America. While our address is Setauket, we technically live in Old Field, which is comprised of the homes at the end of a small peninsula. We don't have any stores or post office, but we do have a constable. He works out of the lighthouse.

Seriously. How adorable is that? (Cue whistling of Andy Griffith.) I ran out to the lighthouse earlier this week, when it was still sunny and cheerfully fall. I think a total of 4 cars passed me then entire time. It's nicely secluded and, I suppose, what a village should be like. Unfortunately, no more running. The next four days look like this:
We met our neighbors last week and they kindly brought over a large mum for the front porch. They also gave us a little history on the area we live in. They bought their land back when our entire neighborhood was farmland, and apparently the area our house occupies was called "the meadow." Hard to believe now with all the trees that completely shield our house from theirs. They said the farmer was reserving the highest ground for himself but had to sell out after he lost his money in pickle futures.

I like learning this stuff. It gives our area even more character.

Speaking of character . . .
Look at old Moose-Pal here. He's effectively won me over. I am going to become one of those people that writes about their dog all the time. This buddy is hilarious. If I remain unemployed I'm considering a segment of blog posts entitled "The Phobias of Pal." Because we've added to balloons, boxes, and vacuums . . . electric cords, baskets, and the fireplace tools. These things don't have to be moving, their very presence sends Moose cowering in the corner. The above picture is Moose barking because his toy is in a basket and he's too scared to get it out.

Well, yesterday the inevitable happened - we found a tick on little old Moose. I'm not surprised, he loves to traipse about in the underbrush, but Matt quickly hauled him onto the table to perform a thorough inspection.

Did I mention Moose had just received his Bama jersey from Murray? He had it on at the time.

Excuse me, Pal, please lift up your shirt.

I think if you're going to take pictures of your kitchen table, you should make sure every piece of mail from the past three days is strewn across it.

So don't worry, we're taking preventative measures on the tick front. Meanwhile Moose snores peacefully beside me.