Unpacking. Still.

Blessings, Darlings!

You remember that I moved?  Back in November?  My computer tells me we're now into the second week of May.

We still have a whole bunch of unpacking to move.  We do not travel light. We are book people.

Actually, MY books are unpacked. I have a few boxes of papers that are not unpacked .... okay, maybe 10 or so of them.  But the husband .... he has boxes of crap in the bedroom to be unpacked, boxes of equipment to be unpacked (most of which I have just neatly stacked so I can move around the office and lab better), and over 50 boxes of books to unpack.

But yesterday one of our clients sent an e-mail, waving money and asking the Chubby Hubby to work on a new project.  For which the CH needs to get at his books on SNMP.  Which are, as we say a lot around here, "in a box, somewhere."  So the CH mentions that he wants our Spawn to find the books.  Which were last seen 'on the floor by his desk' before we moved. 

Spawn and I, after we finally cut back the pampas grass, head to the detached garage to go thru' the pile of CH's boxes of books.  Nothing is labeled "floor by CH's desk".  (Yes, I had boxes of my books labeled "floor by the couch". I found all MY books.)   I send the Spawn to drag the CH to the garage.

"Okay, there are boxes labeled 'Lab 1'.  Those are from the bookshelf unit that was by my desk. I would have packed the books by my desk in those boxes."  Ours not to ask why.  I have the spawn move all 'Lab 1' boxes to the front parlor, which has no furniture, just boxes of CH stuff, and tell the Spawn to open them there and look for the books in question.  It takes us some effort to go thru' the 50 boxes to get all the 'Lab 1' boxes identified and liberated, but we do it, Spawn schleps them, and finally finds the right box.  CH is now thrilled, as the box has a whole LOT of books he really used often.

But, had he just labeled the damn box "books from floor by my desk", we'd have put that box in the office IMMEDIATELY when we moved, and he'd have had them all along.

OTOH, CH wanted us to open EVERY ONE of the 50 boxes, rather than try to figure out which label was most likely to succeed.  So I think I scored efficiency points.

Frondly, Fern

Moving, Continued

Blessings, Darlings!

This is the move that will never end.  We're still  moving.  We were supposed to be out Monday - 4 days ago. 

Part of the delay was a dead truck - the alternator had to be rebuilt in our driveway.  Part of it is that we have a home business with delicate lab equipment that takes lots of bubble wrap packing - and we are doing all this ourselves.  Three people means it takes lots of time.

We THINK the inside of the house will be empty but not cleaned by the end of today.  But we'll still have to empty the shed, pack the stuff in it, then dismantle and pack the shed. 

We're just moving things off the truck and into the garage at this end at this point.

But at dawn this morning I watched Momma Deer and her spawn come up from the woods and walk across the neighbor's lawn - made me hungry for venison just looking at them!  And the Blue Ridge Mountains are lovely any time of day.  AND we see real stars, lots of them, and Bob saw a shooting star the other night.

Frondly, Fern

Moving, Day 2

Blessings, Darlings!

This is a long-ass post, because I'm having long-ass days.

Yes, I know I didn't blog about Moving Day 1. I'm combining it here.

You know how they say that battle plans last only until the battle begins? So, too, for moving plans. 

The Chubby Hubby had this aggressive plan on which rooms we'd move each day, what time we'd leave by, etc.  The CH lives in a fantasy world.

I figured we'd leave to get the truck by 8:30, be home with it before 10:00. Uh, no. We didn't leave till 9:30 because CH wasn't ready.  But we got there and I discovered that we could have gotten there at 7:30, a fact the CH hadn't told me.  Fine, we're now running late.  I have to be at the house by 2 because cable guy is coming between 2 and 5, and the electrician is coming at 4 - but the husband plans to be there WELL before 4, with the loaded truck, to meet the electrician.

So problem 1 - we ran late.

Problem 2 - as we drove to get the truck, the battery light lit up in the car.  The car I was going to leave out in at noon, to drive to the country.  Where I know there are places on the road which have no cell phone coverage (middle of the Potomac river bridge is just one place).  So after the CH heads off in the truck for home, I drive the car to the mechanic - the one we give so much business to that we call him our Corporate Partner (this is what happens when you are keeping older cars on the road), and explain the problem.  And that the Check Engine light is on as well, because the engine is running too lean.   I asked him to look at things and give us a call, giving him the CH's cell  number.  Spawn picks me up from there and we meet CH at home.

I call Comcast to verify that the cable guy is coming.  It takes 20 minutes to get thru' to a human and do this.  Husband was on the phone with someone else during all this, I've forgotten who or why. I run out to get rope and a lock for the truck.

Time to load truck.  Well, it turned out that spawn had packed about 20% of his room and the pantry, rather than the 80% I had assumed he had packed.  What had he been doing over those days?  I have NO idea.  I had the library fully packed, and the living room and my office 80% packed before running out of room to put the full boxes.

Notice that CH hadn't packed a thing? That the office/laboratory/business hadn't been packed at all? Sigh.

I help load the truck as fast as I could from 11:30 till noon, when I had to leave. Very little was on truck.  But I leave two men in charge.  No problem, right?

I get to the house early, so I take a side trip to find out where the Aldi's is.  Success!  I even find a faster route than the obvious one back from the Aldi's.  Get to the house a little before 2.

And I wait.  I clip coupons. I plug in the laptop (I brought it and a small TV so I could be damn sure cable and internet worked before cable guy left), and listen to music. And I go online thru' an unsecured ethernet connection someone in the area has, to see what's on sale at Rite Aid and Food Lion.  I also have lunch.

I wait more.  Around 4 the cable guy arrives, I explain what we want, he marvels at the kluges others have put in for cable wiring.  He gets to work.

Husband calls - they are running late.  They leave the house around 3:30, for a two hour drive. Electrician is due at 4.  He tells me what he wants done.  Fine.

Cable guy keeps working. I keep waiting. At 4 CH calls - ooops he forgot he can't take a truck on the parkway. He's taking Rt 1 instead.  Will be later than his already late estimate.  Whatever.

Electrician gets there at 5 ish.  We go over what is needed.  He'll report it to the business owner, I'll report to husband, they'll talk tomorrow about the estimate.

Husband gets there around 6.  Cable guy is just finishing up, I'm signing the finished work order.  Husband and son haven't had lunch yet.  I offer food, husband wants to unpack truck while there is light.

We start unpacking. One bookcase promptly falls apart.  It gets dark.  I send the guys in to nuke some dinner.  Spawn makes his in oven instead, takes 45 minutes.  He does little unloading during his wait.  I unload and unload and then nuke some dinner for me.  We finish unloading a bit before 9, leave out around 9. 

I take a seriously needed shower, and several ibuprofens. 

That, my dears, was day 1.  About 1/2 of planned objectives met.

Day two begins.  I do dishes. I start packing, since now I have room to put full boxes again.  Get my office and the living room to 90% done. 

The guys slowly start packing.  Then they break to vote and pick up repaired car.  The one no one called us to give us an estimate or approve work on.  Which now has a rebuilt alternator, and a bill of $600.  They return.

I head out to vote and hit the store for more prepared meals, and a veggie tray, and OJ, and to fill the car.  Come back and pack and make boxes for CH.  It takes CH 16 boxes to pack his first bookcase.  We start loading truck.  My knee - the one with torn cartiledge and arthritis - soon tells me that I can't do the stairs a whole lot.  I go back to packing.

Husband's schedule says that the library, my office, the living room, and the kitchen will all be done being moved by end of day.  It is 3:35 right now - I've barely started packing the kitchen.  We are consistently making 1/2 of the estimated progress each day.

But we're at least at 100% of painkiller.

I must get packing and lifting and loading. 

Frondly, Fern

Not In The Stars

Blessings, Darlings!

I've been married a LONG LONG time - since 1980 (just after Mt. St. Helens went off, for those keeping records).  But it's not been easy.

I'm a Sagittarius.  There are many things we Sag's are. Obsessively organized NOT being one of them.  We're a fire sign - we want to get the show on the road, and deal with issues as they come up.

Or, in practical terms - I started packing as soon as we were faced with moving, some 6 weeks ago.  I started in the room I knew we'd move first.

My husband, on the other hand, is a Virgo, and a Virgo VERY near the Leo cusp.  Virgos are organized.  Okay, my experience is that Virgos are micromanagers. A micromanager on the Leo cusp means a micromanager who thinks that the world revolves around himself.

Or, in practical terms - my husband has NOT started packing.  He didn't want to start packing until
  1 - we had a new place lined up, totally.  Lease signed and all
  2 - we had a floor plan
  3 - we had EXACT MEASUREMENTS on the floor plan, down to where every electrical outlet is.
  4 - we had decided, based on all the above, exactly where in which room every piece of furniture would go.
  5 - we had decided, based on all the above, exactly in what order we'd move each room/type of item.

He finished all today, just after noon.

By the way - the order 'we' finally decided on is the same order that was apparent to me 6 weeks ago.

Since I didn't wait for his needs to be met before I started packing, I had data available for him on how many boxes it will take to pack a single bookshelf, or a full book case.  He had the notion that it would be maybe one box.  Nope, for his books, which he has two or more rows of per shelf or are big (aka Encyclopaedia Brittanica) it's at least two boxes per shelf.

He thought everything would go into boxes, and we'd need a whole lot of wardrobe boxes.  I pointed out that wardrobe boxes are a pain in the butt to handle, and that bagging our hanging clothes/coats with contractor's sized 55 gallon garbage bags would be far easier to deal with, as well as far cheaper. 

I have not killed him, as we spent the entire morning when I could have packed several bookcases planning things in excruciating - and to me unnecessary - detail.  He did not kill me over the past few weeks as I packed even tho' he did not want me to.

Marriage.  Not the sissies.  Especially if your stars aren't aligned well.

Frondly, Fern

Packing

Blessings, Darlings!

Even before we agreed to a date we'd be out of the house by, I had started packing.  As I previously noted, we have 24 bookshelves alone, and then there's the in-house 3 month supply of food, clothes, the BUSINESS, the KITCHEN (my condiments alone are daunting to pack and move), etc.

The food, of course, is a bit of a dilemma.  It's a lot of stuff to move.  We can't eat ALL of it in the next 4 or so weeks, but we CAN reduce it.  And I could 'rotate' commercially canned food by donating it to the food bank. 

But if we greatly reduce our stored food, that greatly reduces how prepared we are after our move.  And the town we're moving to doesn't have the vast array of supermarkets that I use here, or a BJ's/Sam's Club/Costco, or an Aldi's, and CERTAINLY no H-Mart!  So stocking up again, at the low prices that I could get by hitting the vast array of store loss-leaders I'm used to is going to be right out.

So, a compromise.  We're eating our way through about 4 cans a week, sometimes up to 8, and I'm not replacing most of them.  I'm doing just-in-time purchasing of things we use up, like cream of mushroom soup, only buying what I need for planned meals. 

Some food will certainly be donated rather than moved.  Commercially canned tomatoes, mostly, along with scattered other items. 

It's been great to have the food when our income was so low, but, boy, I dread moving it all.

Frondly, Fern

The Posh Life

Blessings, Darlings!

So, the Chubby Hubby and I are preparing to move - we should sign the lease early next week.  I'm sure that the property manager is waiting to  make sure that the deposit check doesn't bounce before moving on to that stage!

In any move, there are lots of costs that aren't obvious.  Obvious costs are boxes, movers, trucks, etc.  Less obvious is lost income (since we have a home based business that will be moved, and lost income as we take the office and lab apart, move it, and then put them back together).

In this move we'll also have to get a washer/dryer, since the house doesn't come with them.  We'll get 'em used, rather than trying to go thru' Freecycle, because we can't store them before we move and we're not in 'prime Freecycle area' after we move.

But then there are all the other costs.  I THINK we'll avoid the "get new towels to match the bathrooms" cost.  We have towels of darn near all solid colors by now!  We won't need to get drapes/window shades in this house (one of the others was without them .... but DID have a washer/dryer).

But the CH, saying we're moving nto this really great almost new rental, wants us to get the dining room chairs, an overstuffed armchair, and at least one loveseat reupholstered.  Well, I can agree that they ARE old - older than our spawn, who is 22. And the cats HAVE used parts of them to scratch on.  I'm talking about YOU, Ms. Brianna, who is staring at me looking VERY demure as I type.

I do believe I went pale at the suggestion.  I don't know exact costs for reupholstering, but I know it's not cheap.  It might not even be frugal - we might be able to buy new chairs for the cost of reupholstering the old ones!

I tried to make a counter-offer: let's move, see what all our costs are, THEN investigate reupholstering.  That was rejected, as the CH doesn't want to move crappy-looking furniture into the new place.

But, being of sound mind, I bounced the issue off of my coven-siblings at ritual last night.  They told me that with a staple gun and hot glue I can do a reasonable job of reupholstering myself.  While I think that they over estimate my attention to detail, I think that will be what I try.  The CH has not rejected the idea, and I'll start by doing the chair whose seat is the most torn up.  That way, even if I screw up terribly, the 'only' things lost are costs for a small amount of material and my time.

Harvest Time

Blessings, Darlings!

As all y'all who have been reading this for a while know, it's been a long, hard slog the past few years.   Money has been pretty non-existent. Well, non-existent in a first world way, at least.  All clothes except undies and socks come from Goodwill.   The only thing I go to Starbucks for is coffee grounds for the garden.  Haven't bought books at all, one meal out a month at most, if things around the house get repaired it's by us or not at all unless it's the car, etc.  Bills have been paid a bit late on occassion, but always paid in a reasonable amount of time.  Spas? Facials? Nope. Movies? Nope. Vacations? Nope.

Not exactly living the American Dream of the American Lifestyle, but there is NO question that we are living richer than most of the world, right?

It's paying off.  Not that the business is pulling in mega bucks, tho' consulting is doing well.  But, you know we have to move, and move fast.  Landlords/management companies pull credit reports on prospective tenents.  We applied to rent a WONDERFUL house, and the agent renting it immediately told us we were the #1 prospect (and 2 other families applied the same day we did) because of OUR STELLAR CREDIT RATING.  The weeping, the stressing, the juggling needs/wants/desires, everything has worked to make us, if not financially secure, at least look great to potential landlords.

I hope we get our #1 choice in houses.  Once we are settled after we move (in any place we move to!) we get to work to amass savings for later house/land purchase.  And of course, we will keep knocking off the debts the business has.  But at least the hard work has shown SOME results.

Most amazing has been the magical working aspect.  I have NEVER before held back from micromanaging magic.  I have declared what I wanted and worked for it.  This time, since the awful day in December that the landlord's bank slapped foreclosure papers on the front door, I stepped back and did magic aimed "at the highest good of all involved".  One of the results: living 10 months rent free.  Holy cow - I'd NEVER have worked for that.  That monetary aid alone allowed us the opportunity to work on bringing out a new product rather than just doing consulting. 

I did it this way because I knew I was too emotional to see all options, and too pissed at some of the people and institutions involved to focus well.  But it paid off incredibly.  I'm still in awe.

Frondly, Fern

I'm a bad blogger

Blessings, Darlings!

I know - I've been missing in action, and not blogging.  But it's because life has had SO VERY MUCH action.

I've been canning and drying food.  I've been balancing paying creditors while my husband (and thus our business) has been working on bringing out a new product line instead of doing consulting which actually brings in cash.  Yeah, new products will pay off 'someday' - but Baltimore Gas and Electric wants their bill paid NOW.

And - get this - our landlord stopped paying the mortgage a year ago April.  The house we rent has been foreclosed on.  We just got our formal notice that we have to move. By law we have 90 days.  But we will lose consulting income during a move, since we have a home-based business.

Right now we don't even know what state we want to move to. Stay in Maryland? Move to Pennsylvania? West Virginia? Indiana?

I'm a bit overwhelmed, and part of why I've not blogged is that EVERYTHING I typed seemed too whiny to publish. 

In good news, the spawn has officially dropped out of college, but has finally gotten a job.  Part time, slinging chicken at Popeye's.  It's a good thing.  And the garden is producing huge amounts of tomatoes and cucumbers, as well as marvelous grapes.  I just planted fall crops before we got notice to move, dang it ..... ooops, heading towards whining.... The torn meniscus in my knee is doing better, I'm working out on the exercise bike and regularly increasing the resistance.

But ... having a ton of canned food isn't a great thing for moving.  So I'm stopping the canning and dehydrating instead, and we're going to push eating canned foods at every meal up to the move. Which is a shame to have to do when veggies are still cheap and available!  Fresh beans are 79 cents a pound this week, and we're eating canned beans instead of saving them for when fresh beans are $2/lb or unavailable.  Le Sigh.

Well, that's the summary.  I've got all sorts of ideas for what I'd like to be posting here, but time's going to be scarce for the next few months.

Anyone have a house with some 2200 square feet of living space available to rent, for $1500 to $2000, east of the Mississippi and from DC on north?

Frondly, Fern