New Home. Old Home. Warm Home. Cold Home…

Here's the good news. The good news is that we are in. The house is ours. Vicky and I have a new home!

I drove down to the house Friday night, surprised to see my agent, Cathy, already inside. We hadn't been given keys. In fact, the seller's agent was screaming for $5000 more! (Turns out the seller didn't know about that and, anyway, it was too late so I told her, the agent, she could screw herself.) Cathy was in there because a door had been left unlocked. She had already called a locksmith to come out and re-key the locks. This wasn't how I'd been let into my first home but this baby was costing me over three hundred thou - re-key the mother!

The next morning, the movers were at the apartment pronto and moving - I mean, MOVING! These movers could move! And they could move while they moved! Now, I'm not one to plug companies on My Side but I think this calls for an exception. Millennium Moving! I paid a pretty penny but it was all worth it. (Of course, your mileage may vary so take it for what it's worth.)

By Saturday night, the movers were done but Vicky and I were still moving. We were moving the boxes around, putting furniture in place, and just unpacking!

Vicky got an idea of how she wanted to re-paper the shelves. She brought one of the kitchen drawers to me, holding it in the air by one side - and this is where I started to get an idea about what I was in for! She started to tell me - and the drawer came apart in her hand! It just came right apart! Oh, No, I thought; I've worked on sets that are put together better!

I could hardly sleep that night.

I rose early Sunday morning. Vicky and I had a full day planned, a full day of moving. We still had about 1/5th of our stuff still in the old apartment. We got an early start, bring SUV-filled load after load from the apartment to the house, and sweated as the house filled with the afternoon sun. (Oh, the pets love it!) We started talked about getting the shower-head installed - we were stinky! But we kept going until, around 9pm, my back gave. Mind you, I'd lifted nearly everything and carried it to the car or in to the house all day up to then: the tvs, the boxes, the PCs, and everything else. My arms had gone long before. Now, my back was twisting into a pretzel. Thankfully, there wasn't much left (or so Vicky led me to believe), so she took me home with that penultimate load and went back to grab the last of the stuff.

I was going to lie down but the pets would have none of it. By the way, my white cat, Alacrity, has to die… a grizzly death, preferably. When we brought him to the house, he peed on himself in the carrier. As I tried to grab him with a towel, he veered in and out of boxes - I tripped - I banged my head in the edge of a table - I fell into a wall unit - I fell onto the concrete garage floor (covered only with a thin carpet)… so, he's dead. Anyway, Suki had to go out. Harley needed to be cuddled.

Eventually, I got upstairs and took my first shower in our new home.

The rest of the night's a blur. Vicky got home at nearly midnight with dinner. (She needs to stop doing that.) We went to bed.

And I woke up this morning, sore, hurting, tired, and cold. Good thing we have central heat… we should set that...