snow???

I look up from my third cup of coffee and it's snowing. The weather forecast didn't mention any possibility of snow (or any other form of precipitation) an hour and a half ago. (checking--or now, either.) It's pretty to look at, but my plans for the day don't include driving on snowy roads, so I'd better move my "get things done before things close early for New Year's Eve" list even earlier. And the Jeep is parked at the old house--car switching time.

resting up for tomorrow

Tomorrow another round of moving furniture with my helpful hunters. With luck, that will bring it down to things I can fit in the Jeep and that I don't need someone to carry the other end of. I'll still be a long way from finished. But I'll have My Own Bed back! Sleeping on a not-firm mattress on the floor takes it out of me at fifty-five.

partial office

(More crappy phone pictures.)

I had wanted very much to get my office usable today.

But the other file cabinet that holds up my desktop is still at the old house.

Until that gets set up most of the stuff that's already here can't be unpacked and arranged. The weather today is pouring rain and winds with gusts up to 45 mph--not a good time to move drawers full of paper removed from their cabinet. Not, actually, a good time to drive at all. I'm staying home by the fire and consoling myself by making cookies. 

(ETA: or maybe I won't--my neighbor just brought me a rum cake hot from the oven.)

tree

I went out this afternoon and cut a tree of my own for the first time since I was grown. I went for years without a tree at my place, and my parents (where I spent holidays) had an artificial one after my mother got allergic to them. I said I'd never have a tree that wasn't a cedar, so I couldn't buy one. When I bought a house in North Carolina, I had my first tree of my own: very small, and cut without permission from somebody's hedge of variegated pyracanthus, where a cedar wasn't going to last long. Then, when I moved back to Kentucky, one of my friends and I would go tree-poaching. We'd find a fence row with a lot of little cedars in it, and she'd drive slowly back and forth, and we'd decide on one, and I'd hop out with the pruners and nab it and throw it in the back seat. Then, after she died, I couldn't bear to go tree-poaching without her, so I haven't had one until this year. You can see even with my phone camera that it stood up to a lot of wind--I tried straightening it up in the bucket, but it wouldn't cooperate.

timeline

12/17/08: approximately 3 PM I get around to printing Christmas cards, or so I think

12/17/08: 7:30 PM I order a new printer

12/18/08: printer ships

12/19/08: printer arrives 5 PM

12/20/08:approximately 3 PM (must be the magic hour) I set up printer

12/20/08: 7:30 PM Christmas cards are printing--should they be called New Years cards now?

plants at home

So, the plants looked at me until I took their pictures with the awful phone camera. This bunch have been squished against each other for several years as I put off re-potting them and giving them more room "because we're going to move soon." The plant stand was built by my father years ago out of things he had around.

This one has been hanging over the kitchen sink for nearly ten years. Now, it's still in a kitchen but it can't grab my hair as I wash dishes.

The metal cabinet was left behind in the house my parents bought in 1952, and they took it with them when they built the new house in 1960, to store things in the basement. In the mouse-dominated house I'm moving out of, I begged it from them and put another coat of paint on it. It was pure white when I did that almost ten years ago. Now the wall behind it is pure white (not blue.) It yellowed faster than I would have expected.

The living room plant is large and fierce.

It likes to reach out and grab things. 

But the sun is in the other direction, so I hope it will leave the chair alone.

hearing sleet

The forecast for mixed sleet, snow, and freezing rain kept me busy yesterday and today making sure everything I might need was at the new house--suddenly I remembered all the batteries and my favorite flashlight and the kerosene lamps were still at the old house. I cancelled my father's already rescheduled doctor's appointment in case the freezing rain arrived on schedule (it didn't) and I brought in enough wood for a day for both stoves yesterday before the rain started. I did seven loads of laundry today, instead of my usual pre-storm cooking frenzy, because I'd already cooked a lot, and there were a lot of sheets and blankets that had been moved dirty. Now I'm sitting here listening to the sleet on the windows. It sounds like insects bumping against a lamp.

I still haven't found the camera. Otherwise there would be pictures of the newly moved houseplants looking confused with their leaves pointing the wrong way.

wireless back

The wireless is working now. I got the voicemail option taken off my phone service, which even though I never set it up was accepting calls that I couldn't delete. For some reason the internal modem on the Powerbook would wait for the beepbeepbeepbeep to end, but the modem in the wireless router wouldn't. In that respect at least, life is back to normal. Still haven't found the camera. Still working too hard moving things--this morning I realized I washed my sheets without any detergent because I started them right after breakfast before my second pot of coffee. Need more sleep. 

still wireless-less

Still plugged into the wall in an uncomfortable chair. No luck getting the wireless working. Spending hours every day moving things from one house to another and then when I get them unpacked moving them from place to place here. How will it all fit?

I packed the camera in a nice soft cushiony place. I haven't found it yet and I've unpacked most of my clothes. 

first coffee

I forgot to pack the filters.... Fortunately there were paper towels. 

in!

I don't expect to get much sleep tonight, but my father can find the bathroom without a guide, and I will be able to find breakfast.

Terror

This morning I went to the new house and got the mattress on my father's bed and made the bed. (The bed is cherry and was made by my great-great-grandfather; my great-grandfather was born and died in it; my grandfather was born in it.)

Here's the foot board and my father's chair with a blanket on it. 

After I did this, I went home (er, back to the old house) and fixed my father's lunch and called the appliance movers. They said "What about tomorrow?" and I said "All right." (Right before Christmas seems not to be a busy moving time!) Now I'm terrified. Tomorrow we and the refrigerator and the dryer go to join the bed and the washer and the freezer and a few other things. 

I hope I remember to take everything that's totally essential. I know I'll be making at least one trip a day to move more things for at least a month. How long will it take me to get the computers and my desk operational in the same place I'm sleeping? 

minor chaos

Today I cleaned those metal shelves in the background and moved them into the office. Boy, are they ugly! But I won't see much of them when they're loaded with books. I didn't have time to carry those boxes in the foreground down to the basement where they belong. 

I also spent ten minutes carrying wet wood indoors so it will be dry again by the time we want to build a fire. I tried to find time to do that a month ago before it started raining, but time was not to be had. I couldn't carry nearly as much with it wet as I could when I was unloading it dry. Must bring garden cart over soon! Tarps still needed for covering loads of stuff, so I can't cover the wood yet.