tired but accomplished

Apr 30

Posted by: Rachel in: blog, caleb isaiah, current events, just another day in paradise, me myself and i, ramblings, rants, who wants to read this?

Please excuse my prolonged absence, but we have been working hard to get things in running order here. Organize the chaos if you will. I am happy to say that we got an enormous amount done today. It is beginning to look like we live in a house with separate rooms instead of a giant storage building. Our bedrooms look like we are Amish folk. Our bedroom has a bed and a dresser. That’s it. We have so much more closet space (to give you an idea, the closet in the “master” bedroom at our old house…plastic hangers had to be turned at an angle so that the door would close, and it was slightly wider than my shoulders). Many things that did not fit in the closet before now do. Plus we have an extra bedroom with a large closet. Scott put on three deadbolts today. I have never lived in a house that didn’t have any deadbolts! Only knobs with a twist lock on the inside. A lot of good that does for the two doors that have glass windows in them. I was a nervous wreck about Caleb too. Terrified he was going to wake up during the night and we wouldn’t hear him. Why he would go outside I don’t know, I’ve talked to him a million times about how important it is to NEVER go outside without us…trust me…we had that huge pond behind us at our old house and a highway in front of us…not only have we talked about it since we moved there just before he turned one, we also put up safety gates across the back doors. The front door posed problems for most adults to open. But you can only “talk” to a three year old so much, especially one who would live outside if we’d let him. So I am happy to have those locks up. Make sure no one goes in or out unnoticed.

We turned in our keys at our old house last night…wasn’t that a treat. Some of you might remember the stove incident (here and here), well the same daughter (our landlord is very elderly, so her two daughters were handling everything) came over to look at everything. We explained which problems were pre-existing when we moved in. Told her about the heat pump Scott put in AT COST to replace the propane and window unit. HUGE improvement there. New thermostat, fixed a problem with the ice maker. Painted. Patched about a million nail holes. Pressure washed the deck. Etc, etc. We had assumed we would need to repair the ground where our dog dug a few holes and such. We filled in the holes what I thought was reasonably well and put down enough grass seed to cover 2000 square feet (which was WAY overkill) and a bail of hay to cover it. Silly me, I didn’t think you were supposed to put down enough hay so that it looked like a barn stall floor and you couldn’t see the ground underneath, but that was how much the nit-picking daughter expected. She brought her mother’s nurse along to “help look for issues.” She started walking around the yard complaining about every little dip and cranny, asking why they were there! Most of these were nowhere near our dog, and were there when we moved in! Picking up rocks from the ground and asking about them! Uuuuhhh, this lovely little planet we live on called Earth has some naturally occurring ROCK in it! I know, who’d a thunk it, it is the latest news in from NASA. She asked the nurse for her opinion; “All I know is when you mow an uneven yard it tears up your mowing deck.” Really? Well maybe you can buy me a new lawn mower, as I’ve been mowing your uneven yard for two years. What do you want us to do, re-bury the septic system???! So anyway, you get the point, she nit-picked every little thing. We had to go back and fix more things before she would agree to return the deposit (money we needed for our rent here). She is trying to rent it out to someone else unsuspecting, and when her mother passes away, she will kick the person out so she can sell everything. We set an old dog crate out at the road and told her if it wasn’t gone in two days, we would come back and dispose of it. So she says, “Now how does that work, will someone know it is free if you put it out there? You think someone will just take it? I just don’t know about that.” The damn thing was gone in less than two hours. Before we even had a chance to finish our second round of repairs. I am just glad that it is over with. I can just focus on making a new home here. It is always such a good feeling once you no longer have “the old place” and cleanup hanging over your head. I know this because I have moved from home for 17 years, to dorm 1, to my parents, to dorm 2, to apartment 1, to apartment 2, to apartment 3, to awful place, to previous house, to here. I speak from experience.

I think Caleb and I will go on a walk around the neighborhood tomorrow! I promised him today, and we forgot. He did play outside for a bit while Scott and I moved things to the storage building. A few more days like today, and we will be all unpacked!