Friday

 William spent the night last night.  I guess that I'm going to have to simply accept that he is really truly officially a teenager. I am going to miss the boy that he was, He was in his own world. 

I want to thank everyone for the book suggestions. I ordered 7 books. I've never ordered that many books all at once in my life. $33. Eep. Granny Sue's suggestion about Bill Lepp was a good one. All the guys in the house used to be addicted to Patrick McManus books. They would read them and howl with laughter. They were a very popular stocking stuffer. I know that I'll be able to tick off some names on my Christmas list early this year. That was a great discovery. I've also got three series and a half dozen authors in my notebook for future reference. 

And while I'm thanking people, bless you all who are posting your spring flowers. It is snowing here (again!). Red and AC did not keep that crap up north. Thanks for that, you two. I thought that Canadians were supposed to be so nice, yet here we are. 

The wood stove is going for another night. It is supposed to be warming up here at some point, and next week is supposed to have highs in the 40s-50s. I am just ready for the season to change. A few warm days makes the return of winter even harder to take. 

Tim was very surprised to see that someone had set a trap line down behind the old house. Today, a truck pulled in, and he saw a man checking the traps. He was gone before Tim could get down there to him. Tim couldn't believe it. That really is quite an egregious thing, to set traps or to hunt on property without asking permission from the landowner. 

In the way of rural living, one person knew someone who knew someone...we managed to track the mystery trapper down. He felt terrible. He'd been given permission to trap on adjoining property and had made a mistake about how far up creek that property came. He did not know that he was on someone else's land. 

I am glad that it got all sorted out,  and amically too. We gave him permission to run the line on our property, now that we knew who he was and how to contact him. 

Not all things can be resolved amically, though, I guess. We have taken the next step in the case against the city for the capped drain. The city has not responded. They received the first stack of bills on February 22nd, at about 9:30 AM. The final bill was submitted on March 5th. I think that's ample time to respond or to at least give us an idea of how they mean to handle it.  The dead silence makes it pretty clear that they don't mean to handle it at all. They are simply waiting for us to go away

We can't afford to simply forget about over $11,000. Not many can.