Moving
Taking inventory of all your stuff, throwing away the junk, packing your stuff in boxes, stacking the boxes in the common areas, et cetera… Moving is a chore. Dad rented the U-Pull truck at 2pm on the last day of January and drove it home. Together, we moved the couches and… I forget what else. That afternoon, I went to work, and he tightly tucked in the large items and boxes of books. When I came home, we loaded some more stuff but couldn’t get to the rest of the house until the bed was in there, and that had to wait for the morning. At 7 am, we were up and moving again. By 10am, we still hadn’t left the house. Dad called on a friend who didn’t hesistate to help. Both men did the heavy unloading while the kids and I “helped” – and that means we moved the couch cushions, one at a time, in teams of two.
That was on a Thursday. Friday, we went to work like normal and left the house filled with boxes. I got the kitchen up and running on Friday, but most of the work was done on Saturday, when the bedrooms, music room, office, and living room were cleared and ready to be lived in.
A week went by, and here we are: high-speed is up and ready to deliver news and information, books are up-to-date, and it looks that we have settled in nicely. The kids and I went for a walk earlier last week, looking for the park, but I got tired of pulling them (I was walking in circles, trying to find the way out of here). We’ll try again when the weather clears.
And speaking of weather, the arctic blast that has been devastating the Northeast is treating us very nicely – except for the dripdripdripdripdripdripdrip in the middle of the night. Our first week here was a bit chilly – albeit this house is a cooler house than the last. And temps in the low 70s are nothing to complain about.
It sure is great to have room. Open room. Air. Calm. Kids’ playing and screaming in the yard, and my scrubbing pots and pans and a quiet attempt at crocheting a bathmat. And a washing machine! No hauling three kids and 50 pounds of laundry! No taking three hours on a Tuesday morning doing laundry. Just a tiny load here and there. Blessings. All for as little as a grand and a half per month. Really, it’s worth it. When Isis runs back and forth in the yard, chasing the kids or just chasing her nonexistent tail. Or when the kids get the homeschool supplies by themselves from their very own hallway closet (we have two). Or when the kids and I practice our vocal ranges and I practice the hymns all because the music room is on the way other side of the house and has doors that actually close !! Or when I can shower in a different bathroom than the one that one of the kids is pooping in. When I tell people the price, they cringe. But we live here all day, not just in the evenings. I, myself, cringe at the thought of ever living in a medium-density area again or thinking back to that miniscule matchbox that we used to call home. Oh dear. Paying almost a grand for that place was a rip-off. I’m glad that we have this place… even if we only have four lightbulbs throughout the house.
