Furnishings

Hey Bill S.! If you make furniture, and would be interested in making some for me, email me with your details (pricing, styles, etc.). Or if you know someone who makes cool stuff, lemme know. I've been looking at Morris-style chairs and think that might be perfect for my sunroom.

In There

I am in the "where did I put that?" stage, though there's still more than a little of the "where am I going to put THAT thing?" left to do as well. The clothes are put away--though I need a better solution for several categories of items. The kitchen stuff is put away--though there's still a lot of crap around, and I have yet to actually cook a meal here. The dining room table is still in the corner, with tools on it. No pictures have been hung, so that stuff is all still in boxes or leaning against walls. There are three or four boxes of stuff to unpack, but it's mostly crap. There are also 35 boxes of books, but I don't have the bookshelves settled yet, so no books will be shelved until I know where the shelves are going to live. But I pick away at it, and next weekend, after the budget stuff is done, I'll spend some time on it, and I don't think it will take all that long. I've tried to live here a little while in order to decide where some things will go (bookshelves, pictures), and that's proving to be a useful strategy, even though it also means that there are piles of crap everywhere.

Anyway. The real adventure was on moving day, when the woman who works at the front desk in the old building came knocking on my door at 9:45 am on moving day, with these two guys in tow. It turned out that their movers were coming at 3 pm, and they had originally planned to move into a studio apartment in the old building until a one-bedroom opened up--and the front desk person suddenly remembered that one WAS going to open up, namely, mine. But only if I was willing to get every last thing out of there that day--no leaving the plants until the weekend; no leaving the cleaning until later; no change of address completed yet. No matter; I'd get my security deposit back! I scrambled around, and my friend A--she of the wine the night before the move--was able to park her kids with a friend for a couple of hours and come haul my crap for me.

In addition, the movers were really quite fabulous--they had to haul all my crap up several flights of stairs, and they still finished a half an hour earlier than they had estimated. I tipped them a bunch extra, because, hey, my security deposit had fallen into my lap. So a couple of days later I realize that part of the cord from my Ott light had become detached, probably in the moving truck. I called the movers yesterday, explained the situation (after praising the movers to the owner, to whom I was speaking), and he said, well, not likely, but I'll ask. Sure enough, 15 minutes later he calls me back to tell me that one of the guys had found the cord and brought it in, and that guy then proceeded to drop it off at my place on his way home that day. So, yay, everybody wins, once again.

I'm really not going to have time to put stuff away until next week, though; I have social stuff to do for the next few days, and a bunch of work at work next week, and a meet-and-greet with the other condo owners next week (hosted by my downstairs neighbor, which I think is rather nice of her). I'll try to get the big bookshelf settled this weekend so I can unpack the books at my leisure, and I'll have some time next weekend to set up the office/second bedroom, start thinking about where pictures might go, move the table out of the corner, actually cook a meal here, etc.

It's definitely a little strange, and I whimper a little when I think about how much is left to do; I really could use another week off to take care of everything, and, if I weren't so crushingly busy at work, I would have done that. The big stuff is done, true, but, just as there are tons of little stuff to take care of when you're moving out, all that little crap is the stuff that is also a pain to put away at the other end. On the other hand, it's not exactly what you would classify as a genuine problem, so, despite the apparent lamenting above, I'm pretty content. I make my lists (and cross things off!), I'll measure windows and move the bookshelves and figure out where stuff goes, and little by little it'll look less like a moving van threw up and more like my usual mess.

46 Things

ohmygawd.

Yeah, okay, so I have "achieved" a hundred boxes, more or less, but not a LOT less. My friend A came over tonight to help me schlep the stereo and the duffel bag to the new place, and then helped me drink wine while I packed some more boxes. And then I stopped, and just drank wine and water (and did not turn the latter into the former) and she and I caught up, and tomorrow morning I'll have a couple of hours to do the last few bits. Will it be Enough Time? No fucking clue.

And?

Don't fucking care.

I have the keys to the old place, legally, for 46 more days. Even bringing only one thing per day, there's no way I'm leaving 46 things--nearly every fucking thing is in a fucking box already. So I'll get up and fill the rest of the boxes I have, and I'll dump the bedding in a bag, and maybe I'll do a load or two of laundry if I wake up early enough, and I'll finally get around to figuring out how to drain the rowing machine . . .

And then the movers will show up, and I'll let other people haul shit so my back doesn't give up completely.

Boxing Day

Usually when people say they have no food in the house it's something of an exaggeration, but, in my case, I'm down to club soda, an unopened bottle of wine, some dried cherries, some chocolate, garlic, baby carrots, currant jelly (for glazing things), and the stuff I'm going to dump (capers; outdated salad dressing; some really old mustard).

I inch closer to the everything-is-packed state, but I'm beginning to think that it's one of those conundra--each time I hack at it, I get half of the remaining amount of packing done, which means I'm NEVER GOING TO BE DONE. Which had better not be true, as the movers are going to show up in, let's see, 60 hours, and nothing slows down movers like having crap that's not packed. Friend came by yesterday with his vehicle, and we managed to haul all of the clothes, all of the food, and the cleaning stuff; once we got to the new place, I put away the food and clothes while he vacuumed. That's a little bit of a misrepresentation, because we ended up making a second trip for the rest of the clothes, plus a bunch of them are in a pile in the bedroom, or still in bags, because I don't yet have a place to put the socks and underwear and t-shirts (I've had built-in shelves and drawers for 12 years, and, before that, I had less stuff, plus I either had a dresser or shelves).

So, really, I don't have that much more to do. Tonight I packed three boxes and a duffel bag, plus threw out a bunch of stuff, and then my back/hip was rather excruciating, so I went and found some dinner. I'll try to do a little in the morning, and then finish the rest on Wednesday night, along with a load or two of laundry. I think I'm even going to disassemble the bed on Wednesday, just to make Thursday more relaxed--get up, make some tea, wait for the movers; if I still smoked, I'd have a few cigarettes as I wandered around, checking to make sure i haven't forgotten something in a corner somewhere.

Truthfully, though, it kinda doesn't matter much if I do forget something, as the landlord wouldn't let me out of my lease early. Yeah, pain in the ass, but it also means I'm not giving the keys back until the very last minute, and it means that Friend and I can move the plants next weekend, and it means that if i do forget something, it's not that big a deal. They're letting me use the security deposit as the last month's rent, so I actually don't have to shell out anything. Woulda been nice to get that extra bump--to pay for the movers, for example--but whatevs. A few more days of hassle, and a few days of unpacking, and I'll have a fab new place to live.

It's disorienting, for sure, for multiple reasons: the last time I moved, for example, my marriage and my life were disintegrating around me; I've been in moving mode for two months, ever since I decided to look for a place to buy; and I've done a whole bunch of this whole thing by myself. Friend put in a full day on Sunday, for which I am extremely grateful, and I know that GirlFriend will take me shopping for whatever I need after I'm done moving (she was out of town this weekend), but I've been packing and hauling and boxing for weeks, and I'm tired. Exhilarated, excited, happy, but also tired. But also exhilarated, excited, and happy--and I'll be more of those, once everything is actually in the new place, rather than sitting in piles around me here.

Closed

Well, as of about noon, I own a sunroom; the bank owns the rest of the place, but they're going to let me live there if I throw them a bunch of money every month, and, little by little, I'll be able to claim actual ownership of more of it. I didn't get back to the place until later this afternoon, but it was kinda cool to wander through the place by myself and try to soak in the sensations, such as they were.

Mostly, I'm just glad that I'm going to live someplace that's a nice place--plus, compared to where I've been living, it's huge (probably about 1400 square feet)--and all for a monthly amount that isn't any more than I'd be paying in rent for a nice apartment in this part of the city. (And, actually, it's still going to be less than Chuck and I were paying for rent in the place we shared four years ago.)

The plan is to move next week (!!!), which means I need to spend the next week packing the remainder of my stuff. Despite the absolutely insanely cluttered state of my apartment right now, I'm about 75% packed, I think--maybe even a bit more--so a few more concerted hours of effort should get me all the way there. Really, I don't have much choice--it is imperative that everything be packed before the movers show up. I'm moving on a Thursday, and I'll take off on Friday as well, so I'll essentially have three days to unpack my crap and put it away, which should be enough to get a bunch done. I realize that i have no idea where some bits are going to go, but I also know I don't have to decide everything now. I also know there are some things I want to do that will take some effort--build a mini-shelf in the kitchen, in a narrow space next to the counters, that will serve as a place for the mixer and the food processor--and that I may not get done right away.

Anyway. There's a ton of stuff to do, and I'm insanely busy at work, so the blogging is going to remain light for the time being, most likely.