Hello---!!  Here I am again and this time I want to say a little bit about POULSBO.

They call it a town and it is rich in facilities—it has a library, a fire station, a post office and all the things that a good town should have.   But it feels more like a village.  And that’s part of what is great about it.

Before I go further I have to tell you that when I visited the library recently the “greeter” was sitting behind the front desk wearing a headband with two delightful pink fluffy butterflies dancing on stalks six inches above it.  This lady (who is a mature citizen) has a whole drawer full of these topknots apparently. I didn’t have the camera—why take a camera to the library—because you’re now in POULSBO that’s why!  She says she does it for the children; I think she is one in fact and loved her for her headband and the fact that she followed me around the library being helpful.  I am finding that people are kinder here and much more laid back.  Everybody here loves LIVING here and it softens their outlook it seems to me? The guy in the fire station came out to our car to take a good look at the bloody thumb before directing me to the hospital.  (When you move, you don’t know where the emergency room is until you damn well need it now!)

Back to Poulsbo:   Recently I chatted with an Insurance Agent, (I won’t even bother to document that saga but suffice it to say it took six weeks of work), and he told me that the town was SUPPOSED to be called PAULBO. BO is apparently the Viking name for town and presumably the guy naming the new encampment PAUL?  Who knows if that is true?    Rumor (rumour- we have UK readers you know,) also has it that someone screwed up and got the spelling wrong converting it to POULSBO.  I have no idea if any of that is true, and I don’t really give a hoot anyway.   I’m just not going to tell Paul otherwise he might get all proprietary over it.

So—VIKING – yes—the town has definitely a connection to these warriors and I haven’t researched yet as to why… frankly I’ve been too busy trying to find affordable faucets and sinks!

As I drive down into the town from the little yellow house, I come across this big thumping statue and its welcome in some Germanic language. 

Splendid guy huh?  I hope he didn’t wear all that gear to go raping and pillaging, as it would definitely cramp his style methinks!  So I drive along “Viking way” frequently and muse on all these things.

Poulsbo village itself is small and quaint and folksy and clustered around one main street which is most unoriginally called FRONT STREET.  (There is no BACK STREET-- ???)

Sadly it was late in the afternoon and the fall sun was already lengthening the shadows.

 It sits on the waterfront and of course has a small harbor which bristles with boats.

Apart from the organizations I mentioned at the top of this blurb, the main hub of activity in Poulsbo is on “front street” including more eateries than the town can support.   We are excited to note that a new INDIAN eatery is opening up next week on “front street” and we hope they’re good and can survive.  Needless to say, Poulsbo is a tourist destination and therefore much quieter in the colder months, making it challenging for some businesses to survive during those periods.  We even have a farmer’s market for about eight months of the year where people gather to sell hand-made art, (bird feeders and stuff like that)  baked stuff, cheeses and of course local produce.   I chatted with a lady last weekend who makes delicious goat cheese and who wants to learn how to make Stilton, which I do with some degree of success!  (I miss cheese-making but simply don’t have the room or time for it at present.)

One of the most famous locations in Poulsbo is SLUY’s bakery.  I don’t know how long SLUY’s has been in business but it operates on old-fashioned principles and produces pretty delicious stuff.   It is always so busy that it’s hard to take a photo of the counters inside.

Here is Paul gazing into the window;  as you may know Paul is a chocaholic,  (registered and should attend meetings regularly-not sure if even a 12 step would fix him).  If he can’t get chocolate, sugar acts as a mildly soothing substitute. So doesn’t he look happy?  

Inside there are about four filled counters of sugar-high materials.  

If you look closely you’ll see that the yellow cookies are in fact topped with happy faces, the blue ones are yucky faces. Who buys cookies with yucky faces on them?  “I am sorry you broke your leg, have some yucky-faced cookies, it will make you feel better?”  The mind boggles. Happily one of the newest businesses on Front Street is a jeweler (jeweller) and he’s busy working on a favorite bracelet which I broke.  SEE, tiny village it may be but it has everything we need.

The main road into the town from the ferry service (the ferry is about 17 miles from the village), is a fast moving highway and you know you’ve reached Poulsbo when you hit Central Market.

Now I have NO IDEA how a fiddly little town like Poulsbo came to have a grocery store like Central Market but it’s one of the reasons we moved here, so I am in a total state of acceptance about it.  Why would a market be so important?  Well I like to cook a lot and that means I want to buy all kinds of things to cook WITH as it were. 

Central Market is frankly AY MAY ZING!

Here are two thirds of the produce department.   I can’t get it all into one photo or even two!

The market is very large and open 24 hours a day.  Within the portals of the market you can find:

• ·        A coffee shop that sells freshly made biscuits and gravy…(I’m going to have ‘splain that to UK folks. Think scone with béchamel sauce heavily laced with sausage pieces.)
• ·       A British section with the Brit answer to chocolate chip cookies, i.e Digestive biscuits (that’s a cookie in USA) and Marmite!
• ·       An Asian section with freshly made tofu, and every kind of ingredient, many of which I am still unfamiliar with.  That sentence ends with a preposition and Mrs. Saunders, erstwhile English teacher is turning over in her – well you know!
• ·       A machine that produces fresh tortillas every day
• ·       The biggest salad bar you’ve ever seen
• ·       Artizan bread galore
• ·       Herbs and spices by the pound
• ·       Teas by the pound
• ·       A deli counter with 20 types of olives and four kinds of capers

• ·       A cheese counter where there are a dozen different kinds of goat, and sheep cheeses by the pound in brine. (Actually shown on the other side of the olive bar)
• ·       A regular cheese counter with cheese from all over the world.
• ·       About 10 freshly made soups, (Thai chicken curry -- num!)
• ·       A kitchen with two Japanese ladies making fresh sushi
• ·       A sandwich bar
• ·       A hamburger grill
• ·       A Mexican food bar
• ·       Other items like pre-made lasagna that you can purchase and heat to eat
• ·       A pizza shop
• ·       Seafood (like calalamari and shrimp) that you can buy by the shovel full
• ·       A barbecue outfit with pulled pork and ribs and stuff
• ·       A counter where you can buy hand-made soap by the pound ! (There's a special guillotine on the counter!.)
• ·       And a little kitchen where you can take what you buy, heat it up and eat it! 

 It is for sure that while Paul and I are finishing the house, (I’m going to be doing most of the painting and decorating, Paul is installing the kitchen except for the counter-tops), we will be munching at least one or two meals at the market every day. No cooking for me for a while.  

It’s almost Halloween.  I know you’ve seen orange pumpkins. I had never seen white and peach colored pumpkins but they’ve got them at the market.   And by the way have they GOT pumpkins!

That sign in the middle of the pile says Please DO NOT CLIMB!  A veritable mountain of pumpkins.  

I myself am not a pumpkin carver and I don’t eat pumpkin pie but there will be many of these carved into macabre faces with candles lit inside them come Halloween, and a million little hungry kids looking for candy from the neighbors.  Hmmm, how come Paul isn’t wandering around doing that?  I guess he’s a bit too tall?

And the status on  Cooper’s Folly-----

The wrecking machines are now on-site the as I write, and the lovely Josh, who has a business called KAT TRAX  (I sense a story there) is cutting  down 100 trees, demolishing that moldy old shed (it took six runs in Paul’s truck to empty it) and dig trenches for a geothermal heating system.   Amongst other things! (He has felled 60+ trees in two days.. talk about productive!) Tomorrow some trucks arrive to take away all the stumps.  Later on some big lumber(ing) guys will come with more trucks to take away all the logs for which I am supposed to get a nice fat check-- (er cheque!)

 Now don't you think that driving one of these must be one of the most fun jobs on the planet?  Josh seems to think so!

By the way, the thumb is an ugly mess, is still sore but I’ll live to fight another avocado pit.

And so it goes.

Thanks for reading!

The process-- what a process!

So here I am, packed into our third bedroom a.k.a. the world's tiniest office, and back to back with Paul,
now a third of the way through October, healing slowly from the brutal and nerve-wracking business of THE COUNTY. We say these words with the same fear as we say "global warming" or "government deadlock!"  A syndrome we seem to suffer from a lot around here these days..

Anyway, as soon as I knew for sure we had sold our Renton house I started packing AND working my tummy off, (I WISH), getting paperwork done.  Dennis the Builder, (hereafter called DtheB) had recommended an architect so lickety-split we sent off our drawings to them and got them going on an official set of plans.  Then -- they had to be sent to another company to have them converted to ENGINEERING drawings also.  (Just how do we put up the roof on this behemoth) kind of thing?

DtheB downloaded all the paperwork to request the permissions.. there are a ton of them and I'll show you what I mean.

Septic system
Well
Propane tank
Generator
Garage
House
New road access
Water report
Soil report     blah blah blah.

The propane tank is for my gas cook-top and a fuel supply in a power outage... which can last a long time in the boonies.  The generator will back up ALL the main power systems in the house.  The well means no more bally water bills.. yea.  The septic system takes all our output and turns it into ashes!

In a general urban environment many of these are not required BUT our lot isn't IN an urban an environment, (which is of course why we like it a lot) and doesn't have access to water,  gas or a sewer system. All that is very common around these parts and there are many businesses set up to assist homes with that.  There are companies who come and inspect your septic and there are companies who pop round and fill up your propane tank without even being asked !  Yahoo!    HOWEVER it gives "THE COUNTY" lots of reasons to throw their weight and our dollars around!

So one evening DtheB came over to the yellow house and spread drawings all over the available (few) flat surfaces gathering together all he needed. Then (after Maggie misterstrone), he and Paul sat down and filled in forms for an hour.


They tend to look like this:
Are you
Black                              White                     Asian                            Hispanic                  Alien

Now the average dude is going to tick one or the other as applicable and that's what we did.  WRONG!

Having assembled this six inch pile of paper,  Dennis and I go off to THE COUNTY and we sit and wait just like potential jurors waiting to be picked.  An hour later we got picked and sat in front of a young lady whose job it is to
a) take your money
b) pick holes in your submission.
Which she did very effectively.

This was an interesting exercise in self control and patience-- both commodities being in short supply in my character!

My eyebrows began dancing when she said she wanted a full submission for the garage-- I muttered "it's four walls and a roof! "  And then shut up and bit my tongue. DtheB was a saint and sat there saying "ok I can do that" over and over again.   Much of the hour spent here, (after an hour waiting to be picked) is now a musty memory but I do remember that we have to answer ALL the questions as in:

BLACK    Only when bruised      WHITE   Yes especially in the winter     Asian  Nope but I like your food   HISPANIC (around here that means Mexican) Nope         Alien  My husband thinks so!

So all that nice paperwork we did was rejected as we'd not answered ALL the questions. This one struck me as pretty asinine.

Do you have  Gas  Nope  Water Not your kind   Electricity  YEP!

What is your main source of heating?

Excuse me, I just told you that I only have electricity!?  How else am I going to stay warm dude?

And finally I heard her say. "Oh you need a SWM," which she pronounced SWIM.  "What's that"  says DtheB (who has worked his way around a ton of county nonsense and is by now also beginning to raise his eyebrows).  "That's a picture AND a narrative " she replies very calmly. So, you want me to write you a novel eh? Ok - this might be something I can be good at!
 By this time the tip of my tongue is bleeding from being clamped between my teeth.  But DtheB quietly says, "OK I can do that!", and I mentally wish that I had his patience.

So we pass some things with colors -sort of.
We have a soil report-- in my last blog I showed you a photo of Paul going off to dig up a bucket of soil--they need to know that if it rains the water can be absorbed into the terrain you know!

We have a well report-- I'm not allowed to drink the water from my well without filtering it or I will turn brown apparently as there's a bit too much iron in it.  Well as I'm perennially anemic this sounds like a good idea to me but-- gotta get a $1000 dollar filter machine!  OOOO KAYYY!

Great-- our well is 100 feet from the septic system!  KEWL-- we got that one right.

And the land will percolate well enough to cope with the multiple bedrooms we plan to put in.. Great!

And on and on.

After our official rejection, DtheB went away, we got a plan for the well which the original owners hadn't bothered to do and finally, DethB went back with all his papers which got accepted.  It is a measure of the bloody and bowed nature of this exercise that even DtheB was heard to mutter, "these people are over the top!"

In the final analysis they approved the paperwork and summoned me back there to collect it.  The first time I went there I navigated by following DtheB's back bumper... this time I had to find it on my own!  ULP!
The county planning offices are in fact in PORT ORCHARD which is about forty miles away and much map studying was done beforehand to get there. A GPS is promised for my Christmas stocking!

I sat there, (this time I got "picked" quite fast,) and then another assistant/county civil servant sat in front of me for five full minutes and said----nothing.  There were several phrases running through my mind,  the mildest of which was "wassup?"  through to words which you can only imagine, and finally I sniggered and said, "you're so quiet!"  (At this point I was truly proud of my restraint.)   And she said-- she really said...

"Lots of the departments who were supposed to sign off on your submission haven't done so!"

And I said, "does that mean I don't actually HAVE permission to build?"

And she said, honest to goodness   "oh yes, I'll just sign them off on the computer."

And I thought... "what am I paying you over 11000 dollars for?"  (Actually that damn pile of paper cost at least $17000 after all these reports and stuff.)

DtheB launched into action while we were waiting, (as did a nice lady who works septic systems) and we have tons of people offering to put in a septic system for us AFTER we cut down lots of trees.  Paul and I went around the property at the weekend tying red tape around spindly and sickly trees signifying that they are on death row.

And so it goes-- next a report on Poulsbo and some of the amazing and delightful things about it, one of which is the local emergency room where I ended up recently on a Saturday night having tried to cut off my thumb!

Thanks for reading...(-_-)