I may have misread our mythological creature.

So our unicorn clearly has some faerie blood.   And not the cute Disney fairy; the traditional, slightly horrifyingly, devilish faerie.   

Or maybe our unicorn just has a dubious companion...

For those just joining in (seriously - where did you come from?  How did you land here of all the blogs?), we recently moved.   The new house was deemed a unicorn because it was both A - new (Chris' preference) and B - had a large yard (my preference).  Since they don't tend to make new houses with large yards everywhere, it must be magic.  Right?

Perhaps.  But magic is not always used for good.

So let's play the unicorn vs faerie game...

Unicorn - new house!  woohoo!  It's only a year old!

Faerie - new house needs new floors.   Faerie squared - vents for new floors "will be in in a week" -- 3 weeks ago.   Which means we have 80% of each room done but can neither finish it nor unpack nor move furniture into the right places.

Faerie the second (faeries are smaller than unicorns) - the front door is randomly smaller than every other front door ever invented?!?!   Huge credit to our fridge delivery people who defied the laws of physics to get the fridge that measured bigger than the door, through said door, without significant disassembling.

Unicorn - huge yard!

Faerie - that we can't fence until the builder finishes their grading (that will be....?   Somewhere between Oct and next year according to the neighbour) AND the city assumes the property (which could take up to 5 years?!?!).   Now that's all very dramatic, but talking to the random people who were inspecting our back yard this afternoon, it looks like this is already in process.  The city has deemed their grading insufficient so they have to dig up some of the grass, put down more dirt, have the city review it, replace the grass, city review again.  I believe that last piece is when the city assumes the property (at which point, we can fence) and it seems like it'll be in the weeks or months timeline rather than years; however, that's still TBC.  So we shall see.

Faerie the second - the mosquitos are winning the war!   There's a vacant lot diagonally behind us with ALL the long grass and standing water, a pond next to them, and wetlands across the street.  The end result is mosquitos.  ALL the mosquitos.  Neighbours on both sides have said worse this year than last (lot is newly vacant) so we're hoping once that gets under control our mosquito problem should lessen.   We've also invested in an outdoor mosquito killer so we'll see if that helps.

Unicorn - fiber run right to the house!

Faerie - this is really a junior faerie in that the wiring is very short and limiting to where we can put our box.  Mostly though, this one is all unicorn.  We have better internet now than we've had anywhere.

Unicorn - I have an AMAZING bath tub.  It's almost exactly the right size, has perfectly located arm-rests, and the back slopes just enough that I read for over an hour there the other night.

Faerie - the tub faucet is on the side.  Np right?  Except it means while the water is running, it consistently splashes on the book :(    

Faerie the second - the washrooms have no drawers?!?!  Like how do you put in a vanity with no drawers.  And no light in the master shower (that's not glass, so kinda impressively cave-like - do fairies like caves?).  I've figured out how to live without drawers thanks to baskets and other such concepts, but meh.   We tried one light for the shower that didn't work, but the search continues...

Unicorn - our AC is amazing!

Faerie - it is also very loud :(   I don't think I've slept through the night yet.

Unicorn - living in the middle of nowhere, parking is easily available and either free or laughably cheap ($1.75/h lol or $100 for a monthly pass).

Faerie - a frustrating number of businesses (like actual businesses with store fronts even) are cash only.  C is fine with this but it drives me insane.  I really love not needing anything other than my phone to live my life.   Even cards are old-school.   Cash?  It's archaic, makes my bookkeeping exponentially more difficult, doesn't earn me any points or cash-back, and kinda gross physically.  So yeah - I'm learning what stores I can give my business to and which ones I can't.

Unicorn - a ridiculous number of pizza places to choose from (and tonight's had a marvellous invention of half pizza / half garlic bread.   Amazing).

Faerie - very few other food options.   There are a disproportionate number of hair places?!?!  Maybe some of them could be converted into other food.   We DID find *really* good donuts though, so that's a unicorn all in itself.  I see no problem with living off pizza and donuts. ;-P

Unicorn - everybody seems to be super friendly.

Faerie - every single person we've met has asked C what he does.  Not one has asked me.  In many ways this town is several decades in the past.

Unicorn - amazing cycling trails (this'll get its own post)

Faerie - everywhere is downhill from here, which means cycling home when tired is *always* uphill.

So yeah - I suspect our unicorn has some faerie blood...   All first world frustrations for sure, potentially of the slightly mischievous magical creature variety.