Look What We Made!

Yup - it's a real, working fire. No smoke in the basement. We had the fireplaces and chimneys inspected today, and it went really well. Nothing wrong on the inside; they fixed our wonky old dampers, cleaned a ton of junk out of the upstairs fireplace above the damper, and - the most important bit - removed the metal caps that had been placed on top of the chimneys! Oh, duh - we didn't know about those, and that's why the last time we tried to light a fire the basement filled up with smoke.

So as soon as the guys left Greg built a fire in the pub fireplace, and it's a beautiful thing - working great.

The chimney guy said that there was some erosion and wear on the outside that will need repaired at some point in the future, but it wasn't anything major now, nothing we needed to concern ourselves with immediately, so ... I'm taking his word for it. We have enough other things to do right now without worrying about that, and we'll have him back to inspect once a year, he'll tell me when it needs done, and we'll deal with it then. (And I like that he didn't immediately try to scare us into having a bunch of stuff done that really didn't need done right now, just to get the money).

This weekend is the kids' first weekend here, so last night we had dinner in the pub.


I have a ton and a half of things to do, but now I'm really having trouble dragging myself out of the pub with our cozy fire.

A Wee Bit Of Progress

Ah, the week goes on. And the weak go on, for that matter. I am slowly recovering from the cold or flu or whatever I had. We decided to postpone going back to the old house for the last surge of moving effort, for a couple reasons. One, since I'm only just recovering, I had an idea that if I went over there again this Saturday and ran myself ragged from morning till midnight, I was just going to have a relapse and possibly get sicker. Two, we got a chimney guy to agree to come look at the fireplaces on Saturday morning - he usually doesn't work Saturdays, but he was being very accommodating, and since our work schedules didn't fit in with his, he agreed to a Saturday appointment. Third, I have to get some stuff done around here pretty soon, or I'll go mad. Mad, I say!

I need to go get a few things for the new house - some bathroom rugs, a couple garbage cans, and a mattress pad for the new mattress. We want to get some pipe insulation too, as our water lines are sweating all over the place down in the basement.

I also have to get my desk set up somewhere, soon - I have to gather up the important papers I've been getting, and need a bill paying station set up for when the bills start coming in, so I can get a grip on the whole money thing without losing something. During the holidays and then the move, I lost several things, and a couple of bills almost didn't get paid, or got paid late, because of it. So I have to take the time to get that set up this weekend as well.

So we're going to move the truck reservation to next weekend, and do our (hopefully final) moving then, and take this weekend to get some other things under control.

Otherwise, things are settling nicely. The furnace issue was simple and cheap - the anticipator on the thermostat was set wrong, causing the furnace to rapid cycle. It was coming on and shutting off in 2 minute cycles, non-stop. Now it runs for about 10 minutes once every 40 to 45 minutes or so, and keeps the house pleasantly warm with just that - I'm encouraged.

I'm also fearing that first gas bill, but over time it'll get better. I know the house needs some serious weatherization, especially insulation in the 'attic' (the cubbies around the Imaginarium), but those are things we'll get done over time.

And we'll have the fireplaces looked at this Saturday, and if all goes well with that, we can have a real fire this Saturday night, instead of asphyxiating everyone.

So all in all, things are going pretty well. It'll get better, I keep telling myself. In another month (or two ...) this chaos will all be behind me, and I can start settling in to life in the Big House.

And more importantly, maybe I can knit again! I miss knitting. But I just haven't been in the frame of mind to do any, at all. Just last night, while sitting watching TV, I thought, hey - I could do some knitting. But I've so lost track of the sweater project, I couldn't even think about digging that out. One thing I could do, however, is start knitting some new dishcloths. I did one last year, and we really like it - it's our favorite dishcloth. Knitting some new ones for the new kitchen would be a fun project that didn't require too much brain power, and I could refamiliarize myself with the process again (since it's been months and months since I knit anything at all!)

Settling In, Freaking Out

Well, things are moving - slowly - along. I am sick as a dog, flu or something, and had to call off work today. But it worked out well, because in between swooning and having to rest, I have been very slowly unpacking a few boxes. Yeah, I know I shouldn't be - I'm really sick, not just faking it to get the day off to stay home (as my boss probably thinks), so I should be resting and getting better, not working here.

But I'm only doing a very little bit, slowly and carefully. And so at least some small progress is being made. And I'm only doing that because if I don't get something done pretty soon, I'm going to have a bit of a melt-down. Yesterday was rough, rougher even than Saturday. Greg and I went back to the old house with the moving truck, and got as much more stuff as we had time to get, by ourselves. But I am extremely, extremely disconcerted about how much stuff is left there.

Then we had to bring it home, unload it all, and get the truck back to the rental place, stop at the grocery store for a few staples, and come home and eat - which we got to do finally about 9:00 at night.

Greg was determined to eat his first meal at the new house in his pub, at one of his pub tables, so before diving into dinner, he put one together, and got his wish.


This morning he spent a little time fixing up the pub, and it's coming along quite nicely.



The lounge area outside the pub is starting to shape up, too, although it has a little ways to go yet.


Because we had to get the truck unloaded last night to return it, but had no place to put the stuff (and very little energy) we dumped it all in the living room, which is a complete disaster area. That's why I've been forcing myself to do at least a little bit between resting, because if I don't get some of that cleaned up soon, well ... I was serious about the meltdown. The stress is starting to get to me. It's just a timing issue - there are so many different things to do, and no time to get them all done. I've missed a bunch of work now, which I need to make up. Yet I can't work over during the week, because now that I can't come home to let my dog out at lunchtime, I have to come straight home from work, because he'll already have been left alone for over 8 hours, more than he's ever had to endure in his life.

And next weekend we have to go back to the house and try to finish cleaning it out, for which we've already decided we're going to have rent a truck - again. There's just too much still to fit in our own trucks. And Sunday I am really going to need to spend some time working on this place, so don't know if I can go in to work extra then.

This place is, as I said, a disaster. Our bedroom isn't set up, I don't even know where all my clothes are, there's no food in the house. Some time that stuff has to be taken care of too.

I'm not expecting to get the place in perfect order in a couple days, but there are a few necessities that have to be taken care of - like food and clothing. And I have to find time to make up this time I'm missing from work. So ... imminent meltdown understandable.

Oh, and the furnace is acting funny, and one of the things I hoped to get done today while I was home sick was have someone out to look at it. The previous owners provided a home warranty, but I wasn't given the information on it, so I can't call in a service request without my contract number, which I don't have. And, they told me even if I had it, they only guarantee to send someone out in 48 hours, but you can't schedule it, and they don't do Saturdays. I can't take another 2 days off work just to sit here waiting for a furnace repair person. So I have no clue what I'm going to do about that, unless I give up on the home warranty and just call someone myself, and pay for it. Which I will probably have to do.

It'll all get done eventually, I know - it's just very, very hard right now. I wish I had done several things differently, but I didn't, so I'll just have to muddle for awhile. I'm sure this is why I got so suddenly, badly sick - just running myself ragged over the weekend with next to nothing to eat. I could definitely write a book - "The Complete Idiot's Guide to How Not To Move."

But don't get me wrong - it's all going to be well worth it. I really love this place. It already feels like "home", and I know that doesn't always happen ... when I moved into my last house, I felt like I was in a motel for weeks. It wasn't homey at all. I feel like I've been hanging out in this pub my whole life already. It's a beautiful thing. :o)

The Adventure (?!) Of Moving In

Well, it's been quite a 24-hours. I woke up yesterday about 5:45 a.m., and it's now 6:30 a.m. the following morning. Or, this morning. Sunday morning - it's getting hard to keep track. I've only had a few hours sleep because despite exhaustion and going to bed late, I woke up at 5:45 again, unable to go back to sleep - partly from excitement, and partly from panic.

We had a bunch of people show up to help us move, for which I am extremely grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you Matt, Rhys, Allison, and John! I honestly don't know what we'd have done without you all. I, for one, would probably have sat down some place and cried a lot.

Everyone worked their tails off, but for all that, we didn't get anywhere near all the stuff. It was discouraging. It wasn't anyone's fault but ours (mine and Greg's) - we just had too damned much stuff, and not enough of it packed up ready to move.

Well, that's only half true. In some cases we simply couldn't do any more in the house, because of it's frequently mentioned tiny size. After we'd packed up a bunch of boxes and filled the living room and the only free space upstairs, there quite literally wasn't anyplace else to put any boxes had we packed them, or to move things around to get to other things we could have dealt with early.

Consequently, exhausted and on no sleep, Greg and I have to go back to the house today while we still have the truck (today's the last day, has to go back by 8:00 a.m. tomorrow) and try to get as much of the rest of the stuff as we can. Once we turn in the truck, we can still move smaller items in our own trucks, but it will go much more slowly, so I want to make sure we get everything we can today. Fortunately our moving crew did get all the large, heavy stuff that we needed help moving. All that's left is stuff he and I can get by ourselves.

We had several adventures, of course. The first was the Big Ass Truck. Greg told them we wanted the 'biggest truck they had' - always a slightly dangerous thing to say. We ended up with this ...



... which may not look that huge in this picture, but it was. We couldn't back it into the driveway at the old house because the street's so narrow, he'd of ended up driving the front end through the yard across the street. So we decided to park it on the street and load it that way. Then it occurred to me - at the new house we're not allowed to park on the street, and I didn't believe that truck would fit in the new house driveway - the cab would be sticking out in the street. So I talked Greg into going back and trading it for a smaller, more manageable model.

In the good news department, I can get my truck in the garage!

And we pulled up the carpet in our bedroom to reveal a beautiful hardwood floor. Of course, the crew had to spend some time pulling up staples (in the padding) and Rhys single-handedly took out all the tacking strips along the walls.


Since we forgot to bring garbage bags, I didn't get this completely cleaned up yet, but it's going to look pretty great when I do.

So after we've moved everything we had the energy for this day, it was time for another adventure. Our plan was to have a fire in the fireplace in the pub while the band had band practice. Here's Greg lighting our first fire in the new home ...


And here's the fire ...


... and immediately thereafter the entire basement filled up with smoke. At first we thought it was just because the fireplace hadn't been used in a long time (yes, we made sure flue was open). But it kept getting worse and worse, and finally we checked outside and realized not a wisp of smoke was coming out of the chimney. Ooopsy.

So they hurriedly put the fire out (by pouring water on it - what a mess; but it had to go out), we ran fans and opened doors and windows, and in a little while had the smoke cleared out. None too soon, I think we were about to asphyxiate ourselves.

I guess I'd better get that chimney inspection I thought I could skip.

So I'm off to make some coffee (I do know where that stuff is, if little else) and get geared up for another day of moving. Oh, joy. I know - it'll be great once it's all here and put away - five years from now. (smile)

W. O. W.

It occurs to me that it's kind of odd, the way we buy houses. We go and see a place once, maybe twice, for probably, usually, less than an hour each time, and base our decision to spend thousands of dollars and the next thirty years of our life on those brief moments. It's really not much time to get to know much about a place.

It'd be kind of like agreeing to marry someone after one brief blind date.

I was having some mild angst about the new house over the last week or two, concern about a few issues, things I thought I wasn't going to like or were going to be a pain.

Well. We got the keys yesterday afternoon, and spent several hours in the house, just hanging out, exploring. And it was totally amazing. I had forgotten how big the place was, because it doesn't look that big from the outside. We just kept walking around from room to room, amazed. (Although I admit we spent most of our time in the pub, where we went first to have a celebratory drink).

Things I'd been concerned about seemed not to be an issue at all. One biggie - I was concerned my truck wasn't going to fit in the garage (it's a tiny garage, and my truck is not unlarge). Good news - my truck fits in the garage. It's snug, but then it always was here as well, and it does fit - that's the important part.

There were a couple of other things, but once in the house walking around for a period of time, they didn't seem to be any concern at all. I wondered what I'd been thinking.

I'm totally enamored with the place, and it was so hard to leave last night! I just wanted to stay, but we hadn't planned to do that, because there's still so much to do at the old house to get ready for the move today. But today I get to go back, to stay. Tonight will be our first night there, and the band is having practice, so we'll be hanging out in the pub, with our first fire in the fireplace. (And yes, there will be pictures!).

And since all new house experiences have to have their amusing moments, here's ours - we had to break out of our own house at one point.

The back door had a door knob (obviously) with a very old-fashioned lock, a skeleton-key type. There was also a deadbolt which was keyed on both sides - so once locked, you needed the key to unlock it even from the inside.

The previous owners showed up shortly after we'd gotten the keys, just to answer any questions we might have and explain a few quirks of the home to us (which I thought was enormously decent of them!). They told us that one of the prior real estate agents had misplaced the key to the back door deadbolt, so they didn't have one for it.

We knew we needed to get the backdoor unlocked and open, because we were going to need to use it to move things down to the basement. So Greg removed the deadbolt cover with a screwdriver (since we were inside breaking out, we could do that), and he was then able to turn the mechanism from the inside to unlock it. But it still wouldn't open. We thought it was stuck, so Greg was going to go outside and push it from that direction.

Then we discovered that the storm door was locked - which we couldn't get to unless we could get the inside door open. Greg hunted around and found a wire coat hanger, which we ran through the lock to try to unfasten the storm door. After a bit of trying, we managed that trick, and got the storm door open. But the door still wouldn't open.

We finally discovered that the lower knob had in fact been locked when we thought it hadn't, but we found the key for it, openened it, and succeeded in breaking out of our own house. Situation solved.

Okay - it's 6:45 a.m. and I have got to get cracking - I have 15 years worth of accumulated life to transfer to a new home today!

Scheduled Panic: T Minus 7.5 Hours

Well, here we are. We're getting the keys to the new house today!! I'm pretty excited.

And I'm also getting mildly panicked. Last night I finally dived into some of the more serious packing and readying to move, and - oh -we have a lot to do. No. A lot.

You see, we rented a moving truck, and due to the place being closed on Sunday, we have it all weekend. But we only have people to help move on Saturday. Which means we have to make sure and get all the biggest stuff that we need the serious help with on Saturday. And a lot of that stuff still needs something done before it can be moved.

The fridge needs cleaned out. Three dressers need cleaned out. Another large corner computer desk upstairs is buried behind a bunch of stuff that I haven't even dealt with yet, which means it all has to be moved somewhere, so the desk can be gotten to. (Yet in this tiny place, there's no where to move it to - that's why it is where it is right now). Some of the furniture downstairs still needs cleaned off or out. I was trying to do up all my laundry before I moved, so I'd only have clean clothes to move, but after I thought I was done last night, I found another pile of laundry in the bedroom closet.

But all this stuff needs done tonight, because there won't be that much time tomorrow. Our first help is getting here around 10:00 a.m., but I have to be at the new house by noon and hang out there because the gas company and the cable company are coming. So I can't be at the old house doing this stuff while they're loading the truck.

It wouldn't be so bad if I could have taken some time off work, but that just hasn't seemed like an option. Always, always, we're so far behind, and everything is either an emergency or has an imminent deadline. I can't take time off work without making it up hour for hour ... and since I need the next couple weekends free to finish moving what we don't get this weekend, and to begin putting the new house into some kind of liveable order, there won't be time to make up any hours I miss at work, so - stuff won't get done, deadlines will get blown. That's the one real down side to my job, that I can't just take time off work for something without still being solely responsible for still getting the work done. Time off during the week doesn't really help when I have to go in on the weekend to make it up.

The line about "scheduled panic" was supposed to be a joke. But in reality, I do think this is going to kind of be a disaster. We didn't do nearly as much as we should have ahead of time for this move, and it's going to be rough over the next week. We really should have bit the bullet and hired movers. The only catch there would have been, I'd have still had to have everything packed up and ready, and that's the dilemma - I don't. Although I think if we'd hired movers, I'd have been more motivated to get it done, knowing I had to have it ready by Saturday morning.

Well ... it is what it is. We'll deal with it as best we can. The good thing is that I don't have to be out of the old house by any certain date. I know my buyer will be on my ass big time in a couple days, wanting to know when I will be out - but we never settled on a date, and legally I have thirty days, so there's nothing they can do about it. And if my boss (who is eyeball deep in this deal, you know) gives me too hard a time about getting our stuff out, I'll just tell him, "Look- I can either come to work, OR move ... but I can't do both at once. So if you want me out sooner, you're going to have to give me some time off."

I know one thing: anyone thinking you can move an entire household in a weekend when you've lived in a place for 15 years is kind of silly. Me included.

Wow - It's Real

The whole moving thing is finally sinking in. After a day of absolute and total frustration yesterday, things should - should - begin to really ramp up today.

I was calling to have the utilities switched into my name at the new house yesterday. Wow, what a cluster-you-know-what. The water and gas people said someone had to come out and do a final meter reading before they could transfer the utilities. Problem is, I don't have the keys yet, so I couldn't schedule the reading, because I didn't know when the sellers (who do have the keys) would be available and willing to meet them there. But neither place was willing to let me have the sellers call and schedule the reading, then transfer it into my name. Somehow, they wanted me to be the one to let them in for the final reading - the person into whose name the utilities were being transferred - and any other potential scenario just eluded them both completely. They didn't seem to understand at all why I didn't have the keys yet. The snotty woman at the gas company even told me, "You're the one who wants the gas in your name, you have to make the arrangements." Well ... that's what I'm trying to do, Ms. Bitch.

The reason I didn't have the keys is that everyone (agent, loan officer, etc.) told me that I needed to have the utilities transfer on the date of closing (today) but I couldn't get the keys till the day following closing.

We eventually worked it out that I get the keys tomorrow at 3:00 p.m., and I've arranged the necessary meter readings for that same date, after 3:00 p.m.

I haven't arranged the electric transfer yet ... it took me, literally, all day just to get that sorted out with the water and gas company (the local water company people were quite nice, if initially a little dense about the situation; and the second time I called the gas company, I got someone much nicer). I ended up having to call the gas company about four times before I got that all sorted out. I tried calling the electric company; the first two times, halfway through the voice response system, I had to hang up due to interruptions; the third time I finally got them on the phone, they put me on hold, then we got cut off.

My patience was shot, so I'm saving calling them back for today.

But anyway - I'm supposed to close today, and then get the keys tomorrow at 3:00!!! So tomorrow afternoon I'll be at the new house.

Amazing. It's all so fuzzy, like a weird dream. I mentioned before that I hadn't yet entirely wrapped my head around the fact that we're actually moving. Up till now it's all just kind of seemed like an exercise in fantasy, thinking 'what would it be like if we were going to move,' but not actually believing we're doing it. Now it's finally starting to feel real, knowing that we'll be there ... tomorrow.

Moving ... oh my. I'm thinking it's going to be a bit of a disaster. I'm not fretting about it, it is what it is. But I think what it is, is going to be a disaster. We don't have nearly as much packed as we should have. We have tons of stuff outside that we never got packed because the weather's been atrocious, cold and snowy, for weeks. There was about a 2-day break where it was in the 50s or maybe 60s, but alas, I didn't run outside and pack up a bunch of stuff while it was like that, and missed my window of opportunity. Today it's cold, windy, and snowy, and not predicted to improve much over the coming days.

We have a bit of a plan though. I took so much crap from the person buying my house that one thing I did get carved in stone is that I have no set date to be out, and they will NOT bother me or come around the place until I am out. If I wanted to, I could take a month to move. I don't plan to take that long (I'm sure I'd get grief for that regardless of what the contract says), but I can have at least a week, and probably two.

We have a truck rented for this weekend. We will move all the biggest stuff that we really need the truck for on Saturday and Sunday, plus all the smaller stuff and boxes we can manage in that time frame. Then, what's left, we'll pick up slowly over the next week, and maybe even get the remainder of it next weekend.

It'll all work out - it'll be busy and hectic and exhausting and exciting and frenzied and maybe even, at some points, fun, but it'll all get done. Eventually.

And in a little over two days I'll be sitting in our pub with a fire in our fireplace and a drink in my hand, listening to the band practice, marveling at my new home. Sad? A little, leaving the old home. Excited? Quite a bit.

The Green, Renewable, Sustainable, Eco-Friendly Drinking Game

So me and the Dread Reverend were kinda bored last night, and decided to play a drinking game.

We sometimes like to watch the "Planet Green" channel (or whatever it's called), particularly a show called Greenovation, where people do allegedly environmentally friendly renovations to their home. This show was just coming on when we decided to embark on this impromptu gaming, so the rules went like this.

Anytime during the show someone said any of the words renewable, sustainable, green, or eco-anything, we had to take a drink. If anyone used the phrase 'global warming,' we had to take two drinks. And if anyone dared say the phrase "greenhouse gases" while standing in a bathroom, you had to down your whole drink, and make a new one.

Well. Who knew environmentalism could be so intoxicating! It's only a half hour show, and we barely made it through.

Viva la rumovation!

The Difference Between A House And A Home

I alluded to this the other day, but haven't yet gotten into it. I'm a little concerned that I'm going to have some major issues right around the time I'm officially moved out of the old house, probably when I leave it for the last time and have to give up the keys.

No matter how badly I wanted a bigger house, no matter how badly this place has been getting on my nerves over the last few years, there's one serious issue about it that makes it really hard. My dad did so much around this house for me. As I told the Dread Reverend, I can't look at any part of this house or yard without seeing my dad's fingerprints all over it.

He painted my living room. He had new carpet put in the two bedrooms. He had the kitchen floor put in. Though I designed and paid for the bathroom remodel, it was someone he knew who did the work, and he was here while the guy did the job (because I had to be at work).

He had my upstairs fixed up, having carpet put down, the ceiling fixed and fluorescent lights put in. He had new stairs built to the upstairs.

Outside is even worse. He did everything out there for many years after I moved in. He had my beautiful deck built. He planted most everything that's planted around the place, the shrubs and ground covers and ivy. He built and put up the fence down one side of the yard. He built the lattice 'wall' on the side of the porch, and the gate.

That is difficult to leave. I know the new house is the right thing to do ... it's a better house for us, more room, more things we really wanted and needed (a basement, fireplaces, etc.). I can't stay in the same little house my whole life just because my dad did things to it to fix it up for me. And, maybe most important of all, my dad didn't want me to stay here. He told me many, many times that he wanted me to have a better house, that this place "really wasn't very nice" - he wasn't being critical, he just meant he wanted me to have a better place to live. That's why he wanted me to take his house, although I opted not to, because it wasn't really the house we wanted, and there were too many things about it I didn't like or didn't suit our needs. But the point was, he wanted me to have a better place, and I'm sure he'd like the new house.

My boss was very critical when we had that go-around about the house that week, when they showed up with a real estate agent the same day I finally got the buyer to keep his word and agree to buy it. I felt as if I was being evicted, and I wigged out about it. Initially he was not sympathetic, saying he'd lived in so many different places that to him a house was just sticks and wood. Later he finally understood what I meant ... it's more than that. At least he understood that's how I felt, even if he'd never had the same experience. When you've lived in some place for 14 1/2 years (the only place in my life I've lived in longer was the house I grew up in, and that was only about 15 1/2 years), when you have roots and history there, it's different. It's not just sticks and wood anymore. It's sticks and wood with a rich patina of history, of happenings, of ... to borrow an over-used cliche, the very fabric of my life has been woven through the sticks and wood of this house for a very long time. You can't be ripped forcibly from that without doing serious damage.

But it can be done, as long as it's done gently, and I am sure it'll all work out great in the end. It just has to take some time.

And the good news is, there's plenty about the new house to love, so I don't think it's going to be an unbearable transition. It is a trade-off, but it's also a trade up. I get some of the things that were most important to me, that I couldn't get here ... fireplaces (yes, that really was that big a deal to me! I rejected perfectly good houses because they didn't have fireplaces), plenty of space for our hobbies (I can get creative again!), plenty of room (we can get rid of the storage unit and have valuable things I own out where I can see and enjoy them instead of an unheated garage someplace), and not feel like we're living in an efficiency apartment, but a house for a change.

It'll all be good. It'll take some time to adjust, but it'll all be good.

The News Is: House Stuff (Duh)

Things are progressing. We didn't close on my old house last week, which I'm really miffed about. But it's finally all in place - I have the check for the sale amount in my paws, I just have to drop it off at the title attorney's office Monday morning. Due to the holiday (grumble, grumble), he can't do anything with it till Tuesday, so I'll probably get my final settlement statement on Thursday.

I can't close on the new house till I get that final settlement statement on the old house. It remains to be seen whether or not I'll get to close on the new house Thursday as well, thereby getting the keys on Friday and moving next Saturday as planned ... or whether they'll make me wait to schedule closing until I have the settlement statement, which means we won't close till Friday or the following Monday and I will have to delay moving by a week.

On the one hand, I really don't want to do that ... and on the other hand, it wouldn't be the end of the world, as I'd have another weekend to pack and try to get things ready here.

Packing. Oi. It's kind of icky. We have a lot packed. A lot of what's left can't really be packed (large items that don't lend themselves well to boxes, like large wall decor, bows and arrows, etc.) or can't really be packed now (the entire kitchen, our clothes). The place still looks like a complete disaster area, and I'm concerned ... and probably rightly so. I suspect this upcoming week is going to be a royal pain in the hindparts, trying to frenziedly finish the packing up ... just in case we do get to move this coming weekend.

A piece of good news ... the sellers finally finalized what they were doing with the issue with the water in the front closet. They had two contractors out to look at it, neither of whom could find anything wrong. Sorta good news - I mean, obviously something happened there, but at least it's not some blatant horrible repair, like a big hole in something. Both recommended some ice shield be put in the area, and - the really good news - the sellers pre-paid to have that done, and as soon as the weather's a little better, a contractor will come out and do that for us. So that's nice - the problem should be fixed, at no cost to us. Can't complain about that.

You know, I go through phases of being sad about moving out of my house, and then cycling around to thinking, "Who are you kidding? You hate this place." I ran onto a photo the other day of the place some years ago, when my dad was still coming over here doing things all the time, and it looked so nice - it was a picture of the front of the house, when the dogwood was still alive and all the shrubs were trimmed up nicely. It reminded me of how the whole place looked in years past, when I had it fixed up fairly decently inside and out ... the rooms not overjunked with stuff (this was back before I joined the SCA, and before I started knitting - yeah, back when it didn't take an entire apartment to house my hobby stuff), the place basically neat and well-kept all the time.

I sometimes wonder if my slack-assed housekeeping and yard maintenance attitudes that have developed over the last 8 or 9 years are just going to carry over to the new house, and I'll junk it up as badly as this one.

But really, I don't think so ... I can't explain it, but I lost all interest in maintaining this place at some point, I just didn't care anymore. It was like, no matter what I do to it, there were still so many issues I couldn't fix that it just seemed a drop in the bucket, and not really worthwhile. Maybe that was the wrong attitude to have, but ... there it is. I mean, for one example - the place was so small, and we have so much stuff because of our various hobbies, that it got to the point where there just wasn't anyplace to put things anymore. When I would stack something else onto a side table or the kitchen table, and think "there I go again, adding to the clutter and mess" - it wasn't pure laziness, it was in part that there simply wasn't any place else to put it.

But with the new place, I don't see that happening. I'm starting out with a clean slate, and one all of our stuff should fit tidily into without it being such a mess. There will actually be places for everything. Starting out that way makes me want to keep it that way, inside and out.

Even the yard, and my 'gardens' - my back yard at the old house was pretty much a 'clean slate' and you'd think that would have encouraged me to do something, but it never really did. I'd look at the dull rectangle that was mostly in shade, and just couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with it. Even when I tried fixing up the pond area, it never really went well (it was too small to effectively do much with, at least with my limited skills), and I never could figure any good way to tie it in with the rest of the yard. It was just it's own stand-alone half-finished corner garden.

Ironically, at the new house, I plan to do something different with my hoped-for gardens. I'm not focusing on the back yard. I'm letting the back yard just be, the big rectangle of a yard dedictated to the kids' play area and whatever the Dread Reverend wants to do with it. I'm focusing my efforts on the front yard (curb appeal!) and the little side yard, which is the area dedicated to becoming my private garden. And since these areas have different shapes, and the front already has a base of basic landscaping (the ubiquitous evergreen shrubbery), plus interesting areas to work with (two trees, a lamp post, a front walk, a front porch for goodness' sake!), I'm much more excited about fixing them up.

I don't know. Maybe I really did just get tired of the old house, and lost interest in trying to fix it up. But one thing does occur to me ... I always had the feeling that no matter how much I did to this house, it was always going to be a cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter neighborhood of nearly identical houses, all lined up like base housing or something. It was never going to look 'really great.' I could do tons of work and spend tons of money, and it was always just going to be so-so. There were two houses on my street where the owners obviously took pride in their homes, and had their front yards nicely landscaped and pretty, and I always enjoyed seeing them. But ... nice as the little yards looked, these places pretty much just looked like every other place on the street. It's kind of like having a condo, or a trailer in a trailer park, and you can do all the fixing up you want, it's just going to look like you took a row of graham crackers and put some Redi-Whip on one of them in the middle of the row. It's still a graham cracker.

The new house has character, that's what it is. It doesn't look like the other houses on the street, and with a little sprucing up, it'll have it's own beautiful, unique look to it.

I don't know ... maybe the 'cookie cutter' theory is a lousy excuse for doing nothing. I don't know, but it is what it is, and my feeling on it is: (a) it's too late now, I'm certainly not canceling the home buying just to stay here and try to force myself to make this place something it's not, and (b) it'll be whatever it is at the new house. If I maintain my interest in wanting to fix the place up nice, then happy happy joy joy. And if I don't, I'll at least have the bare minimum of required decent-looking shrubbery out front, and I'll grumble about trimming it and mowing the lawn, and we'll still have a house that's three times bigger than this one. With an Imaginarium. And a pub. I think it'll all work out.

Rant Recant (in part); New News

I have to retract part of my rant. It turns out I screwed up, when I got the alleged 'invoice' that was the sellers' agent's fax cover sheet with some scrawled number on it, that was only the first page of the .pdf document ... there were two more pages that I failed to notice, which were the actual invoices. Okay, duh, my bad, consider me flogged.

But the invoices weren't much help, in that the furnace guy said he couldn't find anything wrong, that the problem the inspection turned up didn't exist when he checked. So I'm not sure what to think of that, but it is possible - it is the kind of thing that could have, possibly been temporary (although it was truly a bit of a fluke). But I've got enough on my plate, I'll leave that go till we're settled in, and then maybe this spring or even next fall before cold weather, I'll have it double checked, just to make sure.

And, when I conveyed to my buyer had badly he was screwing me over by not having done anything about this closing, he decided to waive the title search, which meant next to nothing needed done, and we should be able to close on Denison today!

That doesn't speed up things at the new house, but at least that will be out of the way. It's a bittersweet moment, the one I've been both waiting for and dreading - selling my house. But that's a post for another time, as it's too complex for 7:00 a.m.

And, my agent called me yesterdy and was friendlier than she had been in awhile, even criticizing the sellers for dragging their feet and taking so long with this repair issue. She said she'd light a fire under them yesterday, but I haven't heard any more from her since.

I still have no news on what the sellers are doing about the closet repair. I'm about to complete the last two things I needed to do - close on my house sale, and pre-pay my new house insurance. Then it's just, and only, waiting on the sellers and this closet issue.

The one thing that makes this less angsty is the lender tells me they couldn't have closed this week anyway, they weren't ready on their end. So despite all the delays, it looks like it would have been next week regardless.

I know, next week will come, and the flurry of activity will have me in a tailspin, then we'll move in, and next Saturday night I'll be sitting in my pub with a fire in the fireplace, surrounded by unpacked boxes but with friends, getting completely liquefied on rum and diet Coke, and it'll all be a bad memory.

Still Waiting ...

Warning: A minor rant.

Why do people have to be so diffcult? (that was a rhetorical question).

When the house inspection turned up a few issues, the sellers initially jumped all over volunteering to take care of all these things. I was overwhelmed with gratitue, and even asked my agent to tell their agent how grateful I was, how I appreciated their efforts.

But in the last week they've only done one thing I didn't ask (or need) them to do, and haven't ponied up on the rest of the deals. Then when I ask them to do what they said, I get flak from their agent, saying 'Look, my clients have done a lot for you.' Really? What? Failed to disclose important defects, then promise to fix them, then not do it?

There was an issue with the furnace which they volunteered to have fixed, and to provide me with a copy of the invoice so I could see exactly what the problem was and what was done to fix it. When they finally sent it yesterday, it was a fax cover sheet from their agent's realty company with the words "furnace fixed" and an amount I could barely read scawled on the bottom. Nothing else. As I pointed out to my agent, in a couple weeks I have to live with this furnace - I'd like to know what caused the problem, and what was done to fix it. That doesn't seem too much to ask. I initially volunteered to have the furnace looked at myself, for that very reason - I told my agent, if I have someone come in and I'm there, then I'll know exactly what was what. But when the sellers jumped all over offering instead, we opted to let them take care of it. And now I have no information on what the problem was or even how it was fixed ... for all I know it could have been their cousin's uncle Bob who came in and mumbled over the thing for five minutes and declared it fixed, whether it was or not.

There was another repair issue - the water in the closet from the frozen gutter - they said they'd get an estimate on it, then either claim it on their homeowners' insurance, or credit me the estimate amount at closing. That was a week ago yesterday. Over the weeked my agent advised me that the sellers' agent told her that they'd stuck a dehumidifier in the closet, it was all dried up, and so the problem was resolved. I said, umm, no? (especially in light of the fact that three days after the inspection they decided to enlighten me as to the fact that that 'happens every winter' - so obviously it's not resolved).

That's not what they said they'd do. Reluctantly my agent (more on her later) contacted the sellers' agent back and reminded him of their promise, and now - a week later - they are supposed to be finally dealing with this issue.

We could have closed this week - this week - all my ducks are in a row. I'm a horrible procrastinator and hate making phone calls, but I did everything I needed to do to have made a closing possible in two weeks from the date our offer was accepted. But I'm waiting on other people who won't do what they said.

Speaking of which ... my buyer is dragging his feet as well. I told him two weeks ago that we hoped to close on the new house by the end of this week, and they wanted me to close on the old house first, so he had two weeks to get the closing lined up. He said 'no problem.'

Guess what I found out yesterday. Nothing's been done toward making that happen yet. The title attorney hasn't even been contacted yet to start the procedure (like doing the title search, for one thing). Lovely.

So there's no chance we can close this week and get the keys by Friday as we'd hoped. We planned to move next Saturday, the 21st, and had people already lined up to help us that day. But if these people don't get their heads out of their collective asses and get things moving, we're not even going to be able to do that.

I undertand how frustrating these processes can be, but it's doubly frustrating when I did everything I was supposed to do, and did it quickly, and now I'm waiting on other people who are just screwing around not bothering to keep their word. Growl.

My agent's giving me grief too ... it's like, once an offer was being considered she 'turned,' and hasn't really seemed to be working for me since. Several times she's made comments that directly convey more concern for the sellers than for me. When I thought the whole deal was falling apart because my buyer was backing out, and I told her I needed a little time to try to resolve that issue, she got all spiky and one of the first things she threw at me was, did I understand how that was going to effect the sellers if I backed out of the deal now - these poor people who had their house on the market two years, and now thought they had a sale, to pull the rug out from under them that way would be cruel of me. Never mind that I was facing being stuck with two mortgages I couldn't afford - she didn't care about that, only about how the sellers would feel.

Same thing's been going on with the problems with the house. Her whole take on it seems to be, from her comments to me, that I'm just nitpicking, and I should just ignore all these semi-major issues that turned up in the inspection, chalk it up to "there's going to be something wrong with every house," and move on. Never mind the fact that they misrepresented or didn't reveal at all several important things on their property disclosure. I'm not stupid - I know there are going to be little things that come up in any house. But these weren't "little things." And, the sellers promising to do things, then not doing them, has delayed us past the point of my being able to do anything about it myself, as my agent reminded me recently I only have 'so many days' to address issues that turn up in the inspection. Well, if I hadn't been waiting for other people to renege on their promises, I could have had these things done by now!

Sigh. Okay. I know it'll all work out eventually - in a month this'll all be water under the bridge, and we'll be moved and settling in. But ... it's still very frustrating in the moment.

Packing Sucks

Okay, packing officially sucks. Especially when you don't plan out well in advance where you're going to stash the packed boxes.



Our living room is now an Official Disaster Area (R). Of course, it's also a tribute to just how damned small this place is ... there is no place else to put these packed boxes! You'd think they'd somehow take the place of the stuff that's packed in them, but, ummm ... no.

I am ready to admit that we have far more stuff than the average couple. Okay, fine. So shoot me. I have hobbies. I have a life. I have stuff.

Fortunately, I now also have a bigass house to live it in. My only and worst fear is that we'll manage to junk the place up as badly as we did this one ... you know, expanding to fit the space. I vow to be extra vigilent to never, ever let that happen.

(Remind me to post about this one year from now, and see how I've done).

I mean, I don't get it ... what does 'everyone else' do? Where do they stash their stuff? When I look at pictures of pristine houses in Better Homes & Gardens, and there's nothing in them but the bare necessity of decor ... what do these people do after work? Do they just sit on their pristine sofas and watch their pristine TVs-in-an-armoire? There's nothing personal out. There are no half-finished knitting projects laying about, no stacks of magazines to read and clip articles from, no haphazard notebooks with gardening ideas in them. Where are the bills laying about to be paid? Where are the guitars and bodhrans? Where are the bottles of booze and soda pop and shot glasses? Where are the goofy "Niagara Falls" ashtrays or "OBX" drink coasters? No laptop computers laying on the living room floor, no phones on chargers on the kitchen counters, no remote controls for God's sake!! No phones, no boats, no motor cars! Not a single luxury!

Are these pictures of the houses of real people??

That's it ... I'm sending in an article to BH&G when I get moved ... How A Real Person Decorates Their Real Home. Day-core for the fiber-enthused masses.

Bah. Those are fake homes. I should quit looking.

So anyway ... I packed for several hours today, finishing 1 or 2 boxes downstairs, then finally getting the courage to tackle the upstairs, and doing about 18 boxes up there. I ran out of finished (taped and ready) boxes, and decided to call it a day. I mean, it has been a day ... I was up at 6:30 (on a Saturday!), took Tyler to the groomer's, ...


... went in to work for 2 hours, where I felt like I was having an early Monday, as everyone was there - even the boss. Who knew?

Then I came home and have been packing off and on ever since. And it's now 5:00 p.m.



And my back hurts. Yeah, I think I'm done.

Although I also think I'm clever. This ...


... is an ingenious idea. In this box are random knick-knacks and items of decor. I don't want to go strewing these about the house till we move in and get settled, and decide what areas need something, and what they need. I don't want to just clutter the place up willy-nilly with my old junk. So I'm packing all items of decor like this. That white paper on the outside is an inventory of what's in the box. It's taped over completely with clear packing tape, to protect it from any potential weather and keep it from getting torn off the box. And all 'decor' boxes are going in the basement.

Then, once I settle in and begin to get an idea of what items I'd like to see out, and where, I can easily find them without rooting randomly through dozens of boxes. That's the plan, anyway.

I'm not inventorying every box, just the 'random decor' boxes ... though every box has a label as to where in the new house it's to go (living room, kitchen, bedroom, Imaginarium) and then a little tag line underneath giving a broad overview of its contents (books, baking stuff, linens, books, shoes and accessories, books).

Yeah ... I have an unGodly number of boxes of books. I didn't realize how many were still here, as I donated about 12 or 15 copy-paper-boxes of books to the library in the last year. Sheesh!

I am currently astounded at the sheer number of boxes I've labeled "Imaginarium." It looks like 95% of what I own is headed up there. I keep looking at the pictures of that space, and thinking, "It's so huge! What am I going to do with all that?" Well, if the number of boxes headed that way is any indication, I'm having no trouble filling that space entirely.

It's a little disconcerting. Am I going to have nothing in the main living area of the house? What in the hell all do I have to put up there anyway?? Well ... many, many books. Boxes of sewing stuff, as well as stuff for embroidery, weaving, knitting, quilting, etc. So I guess that's not so crazy. I mean, who of you fiber freaks could look around and say that if you had to pack up your entire house, less than 50% of it would be your personal fiber-freaky stuff? (Okay, more hands than that, please!)

I'm consoling myself with the fact that I do in fact have other household items I just haven't packed yet. There are linens. There are bunches of kitchen stuff. There's the TV, DVD, VCR, stereo, movies, DVDs, CDs ... bath towels, the entire hall closet, and the medicine cabinet in the bath ... phones on chargers, laptop computers, remote controls ... all that kind of normal living stuff. It's not all yarn and books!!!! Really, it isn't. Mostly.

Oi. I'm too tired to type. And anyway, I don't care ... it's worth $90,000 not to have my washer and dryer in my friggin' kitchen anymore.


P.S. The real kicker is that I haven't yet convinced myself that we're actually moving ... my brain is telling me this is all just a weird exercise in inventorying, and after awhile, I'll unpack it all and settle back in. I'm sure I'm going to be quite shocked in two weeks when I wake up in a strange bedroom and can't find the bathroom. Or the washer and dryer.

Voice of Reason in my Wilderness of Worry

Thanks for your comment, Rhys. And you're right. Especially about this place ... it was getting to the point where it was going to start needing a lot of maintenance and repair - expensive stuff. I hadn't thought about it because I had no real intention of doing it. ;o) I just didn't feel inclined to spend that kind of money on this house.

And the stuff at the new house isn't that big a deal, fortunately.

I'm sure once we move in I'll feel much better.

The living room is starting to be taken over by boxes. And we've only just started ...

Ups and Downs

I knew this would probably happen at some point, and it did, but not for the reason I expected. I figured I'd go through a mild house-buying freak-out at some point simply because of the amount of money I'd just committed to - just the usual paranoid, anxiety-ridden fears. What have I gotten myself into, what if it's too much for us, what if something goes wrong, should we have looked longer, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

That didn't happen. I wasn't thinking any of those things ... until the inspection.

The inspection turned up a few more issues than I'd have liked. Now, to be fair, most of them were, in fact, quite minor. It's just that you don't like to hear any of this when you've just committed to a rather large mortgage.

The only expensive-looking thing was that the inspector said the furnace was 23 years old and had rust inside, and may not last much longer. He estimated the cost to replace it at around $2,500. While I was initially disappointed to hear that, it's not the end of the world. First, it might last much longer than he anticipates (I've known furnaces that were 30 or more years old). Second, I purposely didn't spend all my money when buying the house, so I'd have a fund for things like this, so when it happens, we can pay for it. And third, if it happens to die within a year, the Home Warranty will likely cover it. So all around, not that big of a deal.

And as far as major house maintenance goes, that's about the worst we'll have to worry about - the roof, windows, and hot water tank are all newer, so that's an expense we shouldn't have to think about for a long time yet.

I then discovered that there's a chance my truck won't fit in the garage. This time at the house we were the first ones there, and pulled my truck right up to the garage door - and said "Holy crap, that door looks tiny." Some measurements confirmed it's a full 12" narrower than my door at home, and will only give me a couple inches clearance on either side of my truck.

That was a little more disconcerting, as I never expected that. I knew the house only had a one-car garage, but the Dread Reverend said he didn't care about having his vehicles in a garage, and as I was the only one who did, that was fine. But I naively assumed that all one-car garages were created equal, and if my truck fit in mine at home, it'd fit at the new house. I was shocked to learn that might not be true.

This bums me out, as widening the garage door is probably not going to be cheap. It may have to wait a year or two. But, I reasoned, that's really not the end of the world either. I mean, it's not a major 'repair' that must be done ... it's a convenience. I can park in the driveway until we get that issue resolved. And, I don't know that it won't fit - just that it'll be tight. I may well be able to get it in and out of there after all, with a little practice. (she says uncertainly)

Okay, fine.

Then the inspector found water inside a coat closet by the front door. Okay, now we're pushing my patience. The furnace alone I could live with. The furnace and the garage was a bummer, but I was dealing. This was a bit much.

To make matters worse, the sellers, upon having this brought to their attention, advised, "Oh, this happens every winter." Not what I wanted to hear. My inspector thought it was due to ice damming because of the extreme weather we've had - an isolated incident. Then I learn it's an ongoing problem that will definitely need addressed.

It was around then I began to panic, thinking "What have I gotten myself into? I spent all this money on a house that has this much wrong with it?"

But good news came and my sanity retrned. The sellers voluntarily have decided to have someone come and give an estimate to fix whatever's causing the water in the closet. Then they are going to see if their homeowner's insurance will pay to have it fixed, and if not, they are going to credit me the entire repair cost at closing.

Well. I can't ask for more than that, and I'm quite relieved. Knowing that problem is going to get fixed immediately, and at no cost to me, is quite a load off my mind. The worst the problem should be is some type of gutter, flashing or isolated area roof problem, but it doesn't matter - it will get fixed, it'll get fixed right with a warranty, and it won't cost me a dime. So I have nothing to worry about there anymore.

Now the problems that for a few days seemed to be growing so insurmountable have shrunk back down to reasonable and bearable again, and I'm back to being very psyched about the house! I'm back to being excited about moving again, and looking forward to living there. And that's a good place to be ... especially since we'll be moving in only a couple of weeks. It's looking like the weekend of the 21st will be the big move weekend!

We haven't done any more packing since Sunday, which may have been a mistake. I figure we should have been doing some work during the week as well, but I just haven't been up for it. If we don't get in gear soon, we may be scrambling at the last minute. But I think I'll do some tomorrow night while the Dread Reverend is up seeing the kids, and then there's the whole weekend, which like it or not will be devoted to packing. Now our main problem is figuring out where to put all these packed boxes that isn't incredibly in our way.

~happy dance~ It's going to be a great house!

Packing, packing, packing.

Yep. We finally started packing today. We did about 25 boxes in a couple hours, and barely made a dent in it, but it's a good start. I got my entire bedroom closet cleaned out, and two shelves of books. So it was good progress, and really - it seems overwhelming, but what have I been complaining about? The house is small. Though we have a lot of stuff crammed in it, there aren't that many places to pack up. Doing a whole closet is actually a big deal, as I only have a couple of closets.

I doubt I'll be doing any more knitting or crafty stuff until awhile after we've moved. Which bums me out, but there's too much else to do right now. But the good news is ...


... the Imaginarium! The fiber arts haven, the creative eyrie. At some time in the future my posts will start to be all about fixing up that crafty-area-on-crack, as well as (of course) the rest of the house. But what can I say. I'm highly distracted at the moment.

I'm a hands-on person, and won't be able to make any real progress in organizing the Imaginarium until after I've moved in and gotten to spend some time in the place. And it well may be that it'll take several tries to get it right, arranging and rearranging things until I get it the way I want it, that works best.

But once I do, I'm confident my projects will take off and soar, as I'll have the place and the resources to work on them ... for a change!