moved

It was a looooooong process.  I decided that I didn't want movers inside the old house or the new house, so we moved EVERYTHING ourselves.  Well, everything but the things in the garage and sheds.  Anything that could be moved right from the outside to the outside or the garage to the garage I let the movers do.  But that left the entire house for us to move.  Four bedrooms, two offices, TV room, living room, kitchen, attic, and basement... ALL of it.  To a slightly smaller house.  It took a whole week, with mostly 12 hour days.

I certainly got a lot of exercise.  On the last day, my watch told me this.

Honestly, I'm sure I did more than 26,821 steps that day.  And the watch doesn't count the furniture and boxes that I lifted.

Looked like the Beverly Hillbillies.

Me following to make sure nothing falls off.

I have to say that I felt pretty good doing it all.  It wasn't until about three days after we settled in that I felt like I was going to die.  Yesterday I was so exhausted that I did not want to get out of bed.  Of course then I wondered if it was covid-19, but seeing that I didn't get any worse, I figured not.  I mean, I literally have not been anywhere but between the two houses for the past two weeks.

Even Ivy was exhausted.

I did finally get the kitchen organized.  It looked like this for a couple of days.

Our paper towel island

It did clean up nicely.  Ivy seems to approve.

When the house was being built, we decided to do the closets ourselves.  We used some temporary clothing racks to hang things.  Mine was also too tired to play nice.

It actually fell over twice. 

The basement is a hot mess.  It's full of things that either don't fit or that we are playing keep or don't keep.  We probably should have done that before we moved it all, but things were so crazy.

Kind of like what my old attic looked like.

Emotionally it was hard, but being so busy made it easier not to think about.  I did have a few moments here and there when I got weepy.  The last morning I woke up in my old bedroom, I took a long look at my view.  I will miss it.

The first morning from my new bedroom, I took a long look at my view.  I have much closer neighbors, as you can see.

If it's possible to be in love with a structure, then I'm in love with that garage.  It belongs to the neighbors behind me.  I keep saying I want to buy it from them.

The neighbor to the side of me has a lovely weeping cherry tree.  My outdoor patio set and bird feeder complement it nicely.

It has become my afternoon tea spot.

There's that garage I want.  And that orange thing is our kayak. Don't know where to put that yet. 

I was going to post pics of the outside of both houses, but I can't seem to locate them.  I'll get around to that.

Hope you are all doing well.

brief update

I don't even know where to start.  When I woke up January 1st, I never expected March 24th to be like this.

I'm sure nobody did.  Yet, here we are.

As I type this, New Jersey is #2 in Covid-19 infections.  I feel like I'm walking a mine field every time I step out of my house.  Like many places, we are restricted from many things.  Most everything is closed, and places that aren't closed are open limited hours.  I fear for many businesses and wonder how many will be able to come back.  One of my closest friends opened up her own bubble tea store in January, and it was doing quite well.  She had to close it up a week ago.  She hopes to be able to reopen at some point, but who knows.  She still has rent to pay.

All of the restaurants are doing "contactless" takeout or delivery.  I think some are doing ok, but I'm sure there are others who are struggling.

Liquor store deliveries are doing well though.  My father was right when he used to say that liquor stores can survive any crisis.

Both my kids are online schooling it now.  My daughter is on her last paralegal course.  She was going to start job hunting about now, but I think that will be postponed.  My son's college is online, and the local juice cafe where he worked is closed for now.

I've been in the grocery store a couple of times, and honestly, it makes me nervous to go in.  It's a production when groceries come home or when we get deliveries.  We spritz most everything down with alcohol.  I had one load of groceries delivered, and I picked up another online order at the store, but now it's hard to reserve a slot for either one since they all seem to be booked up for awhile.

On top of all this, we are still in the process of moving.  Since I'm really hesitant to have movers in the house and touching everything, we have decided to try moving everything ourselves.  It's not like I've never done this before.  Sometimes I feel like I've been moving furniture all my life.  But it sure would be nice to be about ten or fifteen years younger right now.  The house we're moving to is 8.4 miles away.  We've been back and forth about 1,273 times (give or take a few miles).  I have an Apple watch, and it records my daily steps.  They've pretty much doubled in the past two weeks.  I think I now average about 14,000 steps a day.

On the upside, if you recall the photo of my attic from the last post, it looks like this now:

Of course the basement of the new house is starting to look like this:

Last week we had some really nice weather, and it sure did bring all the people out to walk.  I've always been a walker, and I see the "regulars" out on my walks.  There was a point on one of my walks last week when I was thinking, "who are these people??"  I see a lot of families with very small children, and I think about how I'm glad I'm not cooped up with very small children.  Being cooped up with a puppy is bad enough.

Two seconds after saying, "no paws."  It's like having a two year old all over again.

I'm not sure if her groomer is still working.  If not, she is going to be a hot mess very soon.

My friends and I do goofy things on Facebook to keep spirits up.  We've all been doing more cooking and baking and then sharing pictures of what we make.  It's fun, but you can tell that everyone has this underlying feeling of tension and nervousness.  We joke, but we are all scared.

I hope everyone out there is doing well and coping well.  

moving

I'm still here.  I've just been monumentally busy.

See, I'm moving.  Moving from a house I've been in for 27 years.  Do you know how much crap one can accumulate in 27 years?

A lot.

My attic AFTER I cleared out what I'm not keeping.😱😱

Everything has to be out by March 31st.

So between home inspections, fixing things, clearing out things, wanting to just set things on fire, and dealing with all the emotional upheaval (not just my own, but my kids' upheavals as well... this is the only home they've known), I've been busy.  To say the least. And I haven't even mentioned the issues I've had going on with the house we're moving into.  We've been renovating it for that past year.

When the dust settles (figuratively and literally), I will go into more detail about everything.  If I don't wind up at the bottom of a pile of boxes.