Our Pleasant Little Palace

We Moved!

It's crazy! We're crazy, I sometimes think. And then I realize we're right on schedule in our lives, and craziness melts into secure sensibility. I know that doesn't sound logical until I explain it this way: We're racing headlong toward retirement and hoping to have rental property bringing in an income before our final paycheck is deposited. This condo is just one step toward our goal of independence.

Now, I'll share a little bit of the nitty-gritty of our move. I'll skip the packing process, the last long-haul cleaning session, the emotional detachment pains, and the final farewells, and only focus on the chaos of unpacking...

Above: It's Day 7 and I'm standing at my bedroom door surveying the living space beyond. Look! My new tires arrived at 8:30 this morning. Awesome! There were only three possible parking spots for them: On the dining room table, on a sofa, or right in the front entry with everything else in transition. It was a no-brainer.

Side note: A couple of mornings ago I exited my new master bedroom and smiled at this scene, except it was more cluttered and the walkway was much tighter. I’d just entered an organizer’s paradise. I could sort and stash and clean until perfectly contented. Being an organizing/cleaning machine, it was pretty thrilling! Um, I'm getting over the thrill at a very fast rate, but I'm also enjoying the accomplishment, so maybe I'm not...

Reality announced it takes tons of effort to condense a massive palace into an itty-bitty mouse-sized nest, and that's my task. I thought I was accomplishing it fairly well before the move began, but once boxes started piling up in our new space, and after putting things away for a couple of days, I realized I hadn’t deleted nearly enough stuff from our lives before we started loading trailers. And so the job goes on and on and on…

 

Above: Now I'm standing in the dining area doorway looking toward the front door. Um, I need to find a new landing pad for the toilet plungers. Maybe even get rid of one? The wire rack is holding things that are heading to good will, long and short-term storage, or the trash. The shelf is heading out the front door to live in the little storage closet on the patio.

But success is coming! This is the dining area after 6 days of constant work, and so far it's the area closest to completion. Sorry, but I don’t have a before "disaster zone" photo, so I'll take you on a visual tour: Picture 2 wire shelves against the back wall, both piled to the ceiling with boxes. Every other space in their vicinity was also inundated with boxes; the table, the floor — every inch in every direction. In advance I planned the shelves as a "staging area" to hold things until I assigned them permanent parking spots. It worked great and held the chaos in check.

The last step will be adding wall decor, but that won't happen until the box invasion has been halted and all things cardboard have been banished from the kingdom. I'll plan 2-3 days for moving pictures and decor around. I'll smile, frown, nod approvingly, grimace, scheme, measure, and move things again. Finally satisfied, I'll tap nails into studs and molly bolts into sheetrock and finish the magic.

Other than stuff occupying every corner of our Pleasant Little Palace at the moment and disguising it as a hoarder's haven, and everything painted the same color (Everything! Walls, trim and ceiling), we're doing remarkably well. It feels good to pause, look around and see progress, take a breather, and sit down while not yet exhausted, and blog again!

Bye, for now!

My Surreal Life

I love real life enough to oppose living in an unrealistic dream world. Today I said surreal for the first time in memory, because for the first time ever that's how I felt. Surreal is a word I've never uttered out loud before because I personally don't like it. I've heard it so much it usually feels overused and abused. Come on, we don't all live in LaLa Land all the time! Anyway, after it escaped my tongue I took a minute to look it up just to be sure I wasn't misusing it. I pity people who use words incorrectly. The best example I can think of at the moment is notorious, as in this sentence: She is notorious for her incredible cupcakes. Everyone unfamiliar with the meaning of notorious starts drooling and wondering how they can wrap their lips around one of those cupcakes. Not me. I start wondering how many people she has deviously chocked to death or poisoned with them. (If you're wondering what I'm talking about, look up notorious.) 

Back to surreal. I peeked into my garage and watched box after box leave its comfy little nest high above my head and land in the 4-wheeler trailer. (With help--none actually flew or landed alone).

It was a beautiful day for packing our lives and start hauling everything to a storage unit. Actually, not everything went--just look at the poor 4-wheeler and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Yes, it's there. Drowning behind the gift wrap and buried beneath all that stuff that didn't make it onto the trailer. Overhead is what I've called the garage attic. Surreal is what I call moving after two previous failed attempts. Seven years ago we received an offer on our home, but the following day the bottom fell out of the world economy. The hopeful buyer couldn't follow through and no one else in the universe was able to borrow money for homes. We settled back in and enjoyed more time in out happy little village. Last year we again thought we'd change our address, but both my hubby and I took unexpected turns in the hospital. We pulled our home off the market to recover. This year we're actually moving the boxes I packed right after Christmas more than a year ago. Yep, that is very strange and surreal. Please don't wake me up.

Quick update: We're buying a tiny condo. It's so small that it wouldn't take much squeezing to fit 3 1/2 of them into our present home. That is a weird thought--having too much for way too long, although we've been very blessed to share our space with children and grands who needed landing pads for various reasons over the past few years. Anyway, now we're heading toward retirement and hoping to have less and easier space to fuss over. I will miss my little spinach patch, deer wandering by and chomping on my roses, kids laughing in the park behind our home, sitting around a firepit on the back patio and toasting marshmallows as the sun sets, and pool tournaments resounding in the basement. I won't miss sixty-acres of carpet to vacuum or ninety miles of driveway to de-ice during the winter. 

I'm already dreaming of sticking plastic flowers in a planter by my new front door just so I can watch them fade under natural UV lighting. Just kidding. I'm not that old yet. But I am considering wallpapering something. It's been ages since I've hung wallpaper, and since wallpaper is speeding back into style faster than a bullet train, I'm excited to decorate with it again.

I suppose my sparkling little dream bubble will burst and nightmares will push in around the edges as we settle into our new place--as all six of us occupy our cute little three bedroom, two bathroom condo. Scrunching together may tempt a couple of our nestlings to fly the coop. On the other hand, it might be us old birds who spread our wings.

Hmmm. I'm feeling a vacation coming on. Maybe two or three in quick succession to make up for last year's memorable "hospital stay-cations."

Final words before my hubby and son drove away with our first trailer piled with treasures: "If anything falls off, keep driving! Don't stop! Don't go back! Retrieve it only if a cop is nearby so you're not cited for littering!"

Hey, anyone want a box of something?

Catch! 

Who knows what you'll end up with.

Come to my garage sale when I clean out the storage unit.

Wait!

I've just changed my mind about that garage sale. I just remembered I've promised the kids I'll leave them something when I die...

Hee, hee, hee...!

First Cry

I cried for the first time this morning. In the shower. With warm water soothing my neck and aching shoulders. While thoughts of "what if" of an unpleasant kind, and "it's going to be okay" of the reassuring kind, flowed through my mind.

For the first time in 12 years, through weepy wet eyes, I realized the little inset tiles in the guest shower did not contain a deep green color, but charcoal gray. How did I not see that years ago!?! Or even two months ago when I went through the entire house with a magnifying glass?

Oh, life is strange, surprising, and keeps rolling on despite tile colors and the reason for abandoning my own shower to use a different one. It's a short story, really, that sent me across the house, and goes like this:

Once upon a time--actually, this morning--I awoke to low gray clouds, a definite switch from the sunshine I expected. I should have recognized the omen, but no, I proceeded with life as usual. I stepped into the shower and turned on the water full blast to get it heated up. Instead of a gentle flow coming from the end of the hose and shower head near my bare toes, a thousand angry geysers of icy water sprayed from every possible angle above my head. I was shocked into awareness of the panic-inducing situation, and the long-standing awareness that me and leaking water have never gotten along!

Yelp! Hyperventilate! Scurry out! Mop and fume...

Relax, I advised myself once the water was off and while cleaning up. 

Calmed down by many degrees (the house hadn't fallen into a dark swamp, making calm a possibility), I texted my husband and my realtor. My husband, on the road today, offered no hope of help because I couldn't reach him, but my urgent message caught my realtor's attention. (Of course, it did--he's got the listing.) He called the home inspector who had examined every inch of my home yesterday and left a little business card on my kitchen countertop. The inspector (I picture him tiny, like a mouse, at this point in the story) admitted  he'd attached a pressure gauge and probably hadn't replaced the shower connection correctly when finished. Yes, my exact conclusion after the massive leak was fixed and I knew no broken pipes were spewing destructive waterfalls behind tile and sheetrock and flooding my basement and ruining my home. The incident left me wondering how many other things the inspector messed up. I've gone through my house since then and searched deeper, feeling like Sherlock Holmes as I looked for something out of place, odd or suspect. Nothing strange has turned up yet.

The end. But not really.

We listed out home less than two weeks ago and received an offer almost immediately. Today I cringed when heavy pipe wrenches crossed my tile floors, and cried when my bathroom resembled Yellowstone. Lately my whole focus has been on filling out forms, sharing banking details, signing papers and scheduling things like inspections, appraisals and walk-throughs. And I'm still cleaning like crazy. I feel like a goalie holding a rag and mop while defending every wall, cabinet, floor, etc. I'm ready to spring into action and block everything even remotely destructive. Nothing is getting past my body! 

Hey, put that marker down! Take your shoes off! Don't slam that door!

Ahhhh, the life of a someone who is selling their home. Tomorrow I'll laugh over today. Already I'm starting to chuckle. I wish I had a picture. If you don't know it yet, let me clue you in:

Crisis + Time = Humor

(Sometimes it takes a LOT of time, but I don't have time to waste right now, so I've got to get on with getting on so I can start packing.)