My Border Collie Impression, or Home at Last

It's been a while since I posted, and a LOT has happened.  I closed on the second property, and we moved on April 9th.

M has her pink bedroom and everything is in place. It turned out really well, and she has a lot of room. A couple of my friends helped me and M paint it before we moved and we knocked it out in two nights.

I've been working like a mad dog to get stuff unpacked and put away so that I can breathe. After the movers left, I had to have a garage door guy come and fix the garage door, an appliance guy come and switch the direction the fridge doors open, and a guy from Sears come and (re)install the washer & dryer because the movers tried but they didn't know what they were doing - and since the washer seems to have "lost a valve" in the move, thank goodness I'm so compulsive or there'd have been water everywhere the first time I tried to use it. 

Then I started opening all the boxes. Due to the delays, etc., the day of the move, a friend had boxed up a whole pile of stuff that I'd set aside as stuff I'd wanted to take over in my car... Including M's teddy bear. It took me two nights to find the bear. You can imagine...

Not having complete control over the move - at the last minute - really challenged me. At least I understood what was going on...which helped marginally, but the stuff that got packed without me continued to trip me up. The first night, dirty and sweaty and sore, I couldn't take a shower because I could NOT find a towel, and I was so exhausted at that point that I just lay down but couldn't sleep. That was awful… I felt beyond wrung out and yet my mind just wouldn’t let go. The next day I found the damn towels and then things began to fall into place.

Once I could cook in the kitchen, get dressed for work in the morning, get on the Internet, and M could watch Nick Jr., we felt like the big stress was over.

I spent last weekend carrying the mass of stuff that the movers had "dumped" in the garage down to the basement, and then put the big storage shelves back together and put all my camping gear and that kind of stuff away down there and now it's not just a big pile that drives me crazy every time I look at it. It's all orderly and symmetrical, and I could actually find something if I needed it. (yay!)

Then I swept out the garage and moved the spare refrigerator and the shelving to their spot near the door into the house, and put together my new garage tool cabinet, and put the tools away that have been living in a big Dell box for six years. *sigh*

I think soon I will be able to put up the Bulldog system I bought - which is this fantastic pegboard system for hand tools for the garage. (All these manufacturers of organization products have me in mind when they sell this stuff, y'know)

Oh! And I went down to the Container Store and designed and ordered Elfa for my bedroom closet and shelves for M's bedroom and bookshelves for the living room. They will be installed on May 8th. My bedroom closet tried to commit suicide the other night (the sound of which scared the bejeebus out of us!) by the rod and bracket pulling out of the wall and falling. So I decided my plans to get the Elfa were "moved up." I was actually going to wait on that.

I have an office again, so the computer and printer is no longer in my living room, which makes me happy, and M has lots of room, and my kitchen has all new appliances - I feel so rich! I have never "heard" so quiet a dishwasher before!

Now, if the weather would just warm up, we could go to the nursery and get a bunch of plants so I can make my patio a green oasis, and put some greenery in the house.

When I was conscious of the realization that it has been six years since I had my own place, I felt myself get really sad. There is still grief to process from that whole episode and I had to push it down then in order to deal with all of the stuff that I had to get through these past six years. I know it will come sneaking back in like wisps of fog, now that I am here, and settled, and I can sort through it. Which is okay… it’s time.

Six years is a long time to hold your breath.