Wyoming is populated by the Wyomese.

On our way to new home, we speculated about how one who lives in Wyoming is called. California has it easy — it's Californian. But Wyoming? Official "Wyomingite" is a mouth-full, I hope you agree. I proposed Wyomese — and supported my claim by submitting a precedent — by singing a song from the Disney movie Lady a Tramp — two siamese cats sing there "We are Siamese, if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please". Swapping Siamese for Wyomese is extremely simple. Our teenagers immediately rolled their eyes and unwaveringly declared us very embarrassing parents — thus ensuring that since then, of course, we use the song frequently and with relish. And we consider ourselves Wyomese.

A serious linguistic hurdle was thus overcome, and we could move into our new home. We were eager to find out how it would work, and what surprises come with the new house. There's one thing, seeing a house prepped-up for an hourly open house tour, with subsequently reading about it; a completely different thing is living in such a house, and problems that appear gradually.

A prairie schooner... of sorts.

I must say that our first impressions were very positive. Beside being confused by light switches (in our main room, there are five of them in a row in one of the clusters, so we don't know till today, which does what, and must always try), no bad surprises came during our first days. The house is well designed, has a logical and comfortable layout, lots of light and space. In our main room, which contains a kitchen nook, living space, dining area, entrance, and basement access staircase, there are windows leading to both east and west; daylight arrives from two sides, and no dark corners have a chance to form. Master bedroom is oriented north, and consequently is darker and quieter. Basement bedrooms line the south side — despite having windows under the ground level and receive light through shafts, sunshine manages to get all the way in for much of the day. Big room in the basement has a patio door and two regular windows facing west, and through them is relatively well-lit, and fails to instill an impression of a bunker. The western orientation brings only one complication, as it's the direction from which much of our wind blows, but it the house appears to be well insulated, since it does not chill out during frosty nights.

A large stand-alone garage / barn is located so that it protects the house proper from noise and view from the county road. Horse shed is open to east, turning its back agains western winds, so that it gets warm sunshine in the morning and creates cool shade in the afternoon.

After years when we could see each other with one set of neighbors, in our respective kitchens at a distance of six feet, and when we knew morning shower song-list of our other neighbor by heart (for our bathrooms, too, were six feet apart), our new space is a great relief. We can see our neighbors, but they are hundreds of yards away, so we have no idea what they're cooking for dinner, what is the favorite tobacco brand of their visiting grandfather, whether their dog barks at a postman, of if their kid would ever bring home an F in math. We also would have hard time hearing their home projects, drills, hammers and grinders — and here in the prairie, few landscapers are engaged, especially the kinds that endlessly mow lawns or — much worse — blow leaves and junk with motorized blowers, which besides being awfully noisy also produce billows of exhaust fumes. From our windows, we see a rolling prairie, with houses and farms, in our little valley on Crow Creek rimmed with cottonwood trees — instead of walls and fences.

Pronghorns are very cute...

Somehow we also lucked out with merciful weather. Although first snow fell in mid-September, it dutifully melted just before our arrival, and day temperatures settled on pleasant seventy, not dropping (much) below freezing at night. Locals claimed it to be an exceptionally warm and nice fall, and hope we would enjoy it while we can. For us it was important, because we still had many windows and doors open on the house, for remodeling and moving stuff continued.

Do you know the saying that if you want to entertain gods, you should tell them about your plans? We had indeed planned our move VERY carefully, probably causing said gods to roll on the floor laughing till today. Already on eleventh September we placed an order for a washer and dryer; advertised with two weeks delivery, targeting them even before our arrival. The house title was to be transferred on fifteenth September, our trailer was scheduled for fourteenth in California, we expected to have it loaded by the sixteenth; on seventeenth we would leave, arriving on the twentieth. Washer and drier should show up on twenty-fifth, trailer with the rest of our stuff around twenty-seventh.

A painter was scheduled on sixteenth — to be done before we show up. A floor guy was contracted for nineteenth — so that the painter would have finished by then we would still be on our way. In our previous house, we never managed to do paint and floors (for time, but mostly financial reasons), and then we had to deal with it later with fully operational household, furniture, children etc. We did not want to make the same mistake again, especially floors are hard to change with the whole family moved in already. Yet, unfortunately, besides the main upstairs room and all the bathrooms, the whole house was completely carpeted; with relatively new, but for Lisa's asthma completely inappropriate, high, fuzzy, solid light-colored, wall-to wall carpet. Even stairs were covered with it — I dare you to try vacuum that stuff!

Until they try to eat your feeble attempts of wind-barrier.

We ordered flooring materials, of course, also ahead of time. We assumed that being able to pick from samples at the California end of the national chains of Home Depot or Lowe's, we could order them for pick-up in their Cheyenne outlet, no problem. I'm sure you know where this is headed. The refused to show us vinyl flooring, identified on internet, at California's Lowe's — saying if we want, they could order a sample, inspect it in four to six business weeks, and then the whole floor set would arrive in another six weeks, to California. We had exactly two weeks to the floor guy's date. Our Cheyenne realtor, Tiffany, saved us: she grabbed samples of everything they had at the Wyoming branch, and took pictures of it at the new house. Thus we just ordered the best match of what they had on hand, hoping it would arrive within those two weeks. We would have busted the bank with vinyl for the large basement room, and hence we decided to cover those unbelievable nine hundred square feet with a commercial carpet — the immortal, non-fuzzy, beady kind, with some nondescript irregular faint pattern — simply with something that would survive our kids' school operations, running of rats, Lisa's exercises and jumping, spills and drips while watching TV, and so on. We had spotted a suitable carpet at Home Depot, but when we expressed our desire to order it, we were told it was sold out. Se spent another afternoon over their samples, but with no success. After all, we did not want our family room to look like a doctor's or train station waiting room.

Getting desperate, we ran into a nearby outlet of The Floor Store. There we were able to pick a carpet and secure an agreement that with such a large order, it would work with the carpet being directly shipped from the manufacturer, to our house and not through the store, from whence I would have to be transported nonsensically again across half of the continent.

Daddy pronghorn.

The result of all this was, when we, after almost two weeks for various reminders and run-arounds, had entered our new house, the paint WAS DONE. Alas, the painter had left a heap of refuse in the middle of the garage, thinking that his fellow floor guy would come soon and haul everything off anyway, long before our arrival. Following similar idea, doors throughout the house were taken out of their frames — why should the painter put them back only for the floor guy to take them out again? Two windows that had been broken when we'd seen the house, and which repair the original owner had paid in August, were still broken.

After many phone calls, raids to local outlets, and emailing around, we discovered that:

1. vinyl flooring might arrive next Tuesday, or perhaps the following Tuesday, but we should not plan anything hasty, for if it arrives on Tuesday, it would be released on Wednesday, hence ready for pick-up on Thursday, or better yet, Friday.
2. The transport company refuses to deliver the carpet to a residential address; the carpet is heavy and the transport company requires a warehouse with a fork-lift, for the carpet weighs 300 lb. No, a floor guy with three men is not sufficient for unloading, for the carpet has gained mass to 600 lb overnight. Henceforth the carpet is warehoused in Aurora, Colorado, and stops being the transport company's problem. The Floor Store thus began to look for another transport company, which took several days, then came a weekend, and so forth. Not to keep you suspended too much, the carpet got eventually delivered, the floor guy pulled it off the truck pretty much on his own. The carpet guy then came and the awfully heavy carpet, which could not be possibly handled without a forklift, pulled out of our garage on a concrete slab in front of it, and there he sliced it up and within a single day, he carried it and installed in the our basement. Sure, he is a muscular chap, but I doubt he possesses any superpowers.
3. washer and dryer are "in transit" — and because coronavirus it will take longer; how could we expect that it these hard times anyone would stick to their promised deadlines, for if they stuck to those deadlines, half of the nation would drop dead, (if you fail to understand, never mind, we don't either). On top of that, no one from the East Coast ever goes to Wyoming regularly, since it's such rural area (Cheyenne being on Interstate 80, connecting San Francisco via Chicago to New York, so we're definitely one of the easiest places to drive to).
4. trailer with our stuff departed from in front of our old house four days after we have left, subsequently traveled about a week to Las Vegas, Nevada (again, why a week and why south to Vegas, when we are on a direct route east, I don't get it) — which made it "only" a week late when compared to our schedule. But that was not as important, for we could not move the stuff into the house, because floor wasn't finished, see bullets 1) and 2).
5. window guys were originally only willing to talk to the original owner, for he had ordered and paid them for the repair of broken windows, which he proved by a receipt. This, however, meant the extent of his worries and responsibilities. Window guys had no such contract with us new owners, therefore they did not worry about a complication, i.e. the relevant type of window being discontinued. Anyway, they got paid, the original owner was happy, and so they were done. And now, some obnoxious latecomers harass them on the phone, why those windows aren't fixed. It's obvious — they're discontinued, and how dare we claim it's a fraud? Original owner got upset by such uncouth accusation, as he did not get defrauded, did he? Eventually, as we would not cease to bother them, the window guys admitted that there's actually nothing wrong with the frames, only glass panes are smashed, and hence they — being professional specialists — could perhaps just replace the glass? Until we told them so, it did not occur to them as a possibility, and they objected that it would mean taking out the broken windows and driving them over to their shop, while we would be without windows — longer than a day! That is a serious business. But having one window taped over with a plastic bag and another simply left cracked for three months, that's no big deal. And would you know it, in the end it was possible, including them loaning us temporary windows for a day. But it took us two weeks of hassle, and pointless stress.

Bread — paper is mostly possible to peel off.

For the first few days we simply camped on the main floor, in our sleeping bags, taking turns eating with our couple of plastic spoons and plats and camping cups. When it became obvious what all would not be happening soon, such as flooring, trailer, least of all the washer, we put a door back in our bedroom door-frame, and sent the kids camping in the basement, where bedrooms had doors. Meanwhile we purchased some cheap pot, a frying pan, plastic bowls, silverware, and cleaning supplies, so that we could cook. Then we got metal folding chairs and tables, so that we could sit down to computers, for work and school.

During all that Sid and I kept calling on various offices — finding doctors, registering to vote, re-registering cars — and buying one. You see, locals would look, amazed, at our minivan, and then point out that this indeed was a very nice and warm autumn, but WINTER IS COMING — and it was obvious that if I wanted to have my goaties at home, I would need something to haul the animals, feed, hay, straw, fencing, and other stuff. Furthermore, Tom has reached an age when he could get a driver license, and thus we would need to increase the total count of vehicles per household. Then there's this thing: our lot is right next to a paved county road, but our access road, and our driveway, are both dirt — which a minivan can handle only during GOOD weather. Our motor pool got thus increased by a used Ford 150 pick-up.

Wild rabbits are cute — and stupid.

I signed Lisa up at the local vaulting club right the first week. Well, "local" — it's in the neighboring state, Colorado. I was quite worried about that, as it's rather long way off — but given the fact there practically aren't any traffic jams here, the route twice as distant takes only a couple minutes longer than our hitherto commute in Silicon Valley. When I tried to locate the club on an aerial map, I could not spot anything resembling a vaulting grounds. So when approaching, we crawled carefully down the county road and tried to spot the correct posted house number, hoping we won't commit criminal trespass. When in actual sight, it was not as hard spotting horses and riding pen and vaulting barrels, and exercising girls. The club operates at greater leisure that our old one in California. Vaulting happens every day, and one pays for actual attended days of week. And if the girls can't make it in their scheduled days, they can swap it for another. All this for about a third of the California price. Head coach lives there (she owns the vaulting business and the ranch), and if you need to go, you must use her bathroom; I was shown where the fridge is and the kitchen, if I wanted to make coffee or needed to drink. Such typical American ranch, continually run through by a greater number of children — own, various borrowed (e.g. student renting a room there), kin, vaulting customers — dogs, cats and occasionally an adult may flicker by. A very comfortable place.

Fort Collins, Colorado, offers extension of our shopping options. Besides Costco it has Cost Plus, a funny store with imported goods — where, besides German pickles, we bought our new sofa and upholstered chairs. Today, when supply of anything ordered gets delayed (not just our washer — we know of friends who have been waiting for months on their furniture), one does not ignore an opportunity to pay and immediately carry furniture home. Even at the price of loading half of the sofa in the minivan on Lisa's Tuesday practice, and the second half on her Thursday practice.

During our first days we also tried to take our bearings in our vicinity and figure out how thins work here. We had expected a small town living at a pace different from a ten-million metropolis. Still we were surprised how differently life is set in an industrial city (interstate road and rail hub, natural gas and oil extraction, refinery, Air Force base), than in a city full of programmers. Restaurants close by nine, or even eight, sidewalks get rolled up, and evening's over. On the other hand, all our handymen start working at seven in the morning — weekends included. Well, that suits me, for I finally found myself in a place set to my clock — I get up with the chickens and by eight in the evening I'm ready to bed, but Sid reaches operational temperature only by eleven o'clock in the morning and has most energy by midnight. Let's not mention the teenagers.

Small town has also many advantages. For example, all tradesmen are skillful, experienced and functional. A line at a city office means, there is one person, maximum two people, ahead of you, and that mostly because the clerk is nice and chats with everybody. You get a same-day doctor's appointment. Parking in downtown is free and always available. When a salesperson at Office Depot promises that your ordered office chair comes on Tuesday, it will be delivered on Tuesday — despite corporate website claiming that office chairs are on back order and your money for long-term unfulfilled order will be refunded within a year. A moving trailer, according to corporate website liable to spend a day, two, or three by being shuffled locally around and cleared document-wise, arrives the same day it got announced from Salt Lake, Utah, to the local dispatcher — he simply called to make sure we'd be home, and directed the trucker right to our address.

This one dug up a burrow under our patio.

Restaurants are more posh that we were used to, and generally more expensive. No formica Asian bistros and buffets. Food is excellent, lots of ethnic cuisine choices, but one apparently eats out on "occasions", not just to have something for lunch. Grocery stores don't sell alcohol — not even beer! — you must go to a liquor store. And the biggest problem — there is no decent bread. It would seem that everything which emerges from an oven (including at a local fancy bakery), is immediately stuffed in a plastic bag and stewed in its own steam, until it assumes the consistency and flavor of a (cold) fluffy dumpling. We considered for a while if it was worth holding up the local bakery at five o'clock in the morning and bodily prevent them from bagging, but then I decided to try baking my own bread. From a friend I obtained an idiot-proof recipe for bread made in a cast iron pot, so my first attempt resulted in the upper half of the loaf being edible, while I had to soak the lower half for half day before it let go of the pot. For my second attempt I armed myself with a baking parchment, and since then the loaf can be taken out of the pot; only sometimes it keeps a few pieces of paper. Sadly, my family thus got spoiled and refuses to even try the local dumpling, and I may henceforth practice in improving my bread-making skills regularly. When I figure out a trick how not to bake the paper in, I'll let you know.

Besides bread-making and washing clothes in hand (re. washer, which has apparently embarked on a trip around the world), here in our wilderness we also sport wild game. Local antelopes, who are neither real antelopes, nor goats (despite being popularly called "speed goats"), are in fact pronghorns (whose alleged closest relative is the giraffe), and they roam the prairie freely, including our own property. They are very cute — I only had to chase them away from eating our poor little trees. Our next encounter with wildlife was a bit more dramatic — when Lisa came to me at midnight, claiming a rabbit fell down her window shaft. So I, wearing a nightgown, equipped with a bucket and gloves, went chasing the rabbit. The idiots are able to jump up three feet from stand-still, so besides chasing the rabbit into my bucket I also had to somehow keep it in while I took it out of the house. And next day go and by fine chicken wire mesh and stretch it across the shafts — there are covers with bars on top, but stupid bunnies are obviously able to fall through the bars; we have found some mummified remains at the bottom.

Sun sets over neighbor's roof.

Life of a wild west woman also consists of labor on the claim. When I discussed with another handy tradesman, how to rebuild horse shack into a goat pen, I noticed that what I regarded as layers of sand inside the shack, was in fact old horse manure. So I took our ox wagon Ford, went to buy a wheel-barrel and a shovel, and endeavored to clean out the shack. What I first expected to be a twenty-minute job (toss out the few obvious horse pies with the shovel), eventually took me several days — load the barrel, push it out to the prairie, toss and spread the decomposed manure so that it would get more or less lost in the prairie. The manure was visibly so old I did not need to worry about burning out grass, but I did not want to leave it in the pen — horse people surely know that the fine ground, into which the manure decomposes, turns with the first rain into a bottomless, sticky mud, which pulls your rubber boots off your feet and horseshoes off horse's hooves in no time. Better to get rid of it while it's still in the form of fluffy dust (as long as you keep in mind how very fine dust it is, and stay advised to toss it into the wind, so it does not fly back in your face and mouth).

My second worry was little trees. For that, we had invited the original owner, since we really had no idea how that should work. We imagined naively that planted trees with installed irrigation implied AUTOMATIC one. Well, it works pretty much automatically — as long as I screw on the right hose on the right outlet, water is pumped to several hundreds of trees and bushes, which might, over time, should they grow, develop into a wind-barrier. So I learned how to assemble and disassemble hoses and pressure reductions, and while we had our nice an warm autumn, I irrigated. Then I also pulled weeds from around the little trees (many had obviously not survived last winter, rabbit raids, or simply died), and I periodically check windbreakers for those few little pines that still somehow hold on — small burlap squares on two poles. And I scour the internet for information what kind of trees in God's name would survive here. Local deciduous trees (aspen) and junipers thrive here, but evergreens don't care for the wind. It seems that our county sells very affordable seedlings in the spring, so I need to know what could grow here.

Moving trailer picked up delay of only about a week.

Don, the original owner, gave us eventually a tour of the house, explaining where is what turned on and off, where to change filters and how often (air filters for heating, water filters for water from the well). We learned that the gas fireplace in the main room has a flip switch (one of those nobody knew what it does) — and he told us a secret where our mailbox is. It's nowhere on our property, but one road down in a communal box, together with seven others, and they all have just a number, no name or address. Meeting with the original owner is always interesting, getting to know a person who has arranged many things on the house, having thought them through. Especially in a place we don't know much — it's good to know that a roll of orange plastic fencing in the barn gets to be stretched between the house and the barn to stop stow from forming banks on the driveway, the fireplace lights up without main power, as the switch activates a battery hidden under the fireplace — that could save us some trouble in the future. Again, why reinvent the wheel?

On September 30, our moving trailer had finally arrived with rest of our stuff — and though we still could not move furniture in, at least we gained access to plates and pots and pans, bedding and pillows and mattresses, dining table and chairs — and we gained one more step toward the goal of feeling "at home".