I am still unpacking and getting settled in the new place, so I will be brief.
The Random Room is filling up fast, while the Drunk Tank needs more decor. And likely a large plastic garbage can.
I changed my address with Netflix, so I don't have much else to do, except for putting up a few pictures.
I'm becoming unnerved by the number of friendly neighbors-I have never experienced this kind of neighborly attitude. Except in college in Santa Barbara, and neighbors were friendly either because I was hot (I WAS really hot, big boobs, small waist) or because I had beer, which I always did. I'm realizing that I can't wander around the house in a tank top without a bra, because some friendly person might come to the door with some cookies. This is becoming a bit inconvenient.
The only person that hasn't come by to welcome us is the child molester across the way. Seriously. Megan's Law. Eeew. I guess he can't be around my kids. I DID, however, spy him this morning from the safety of my window. He was throwing something in his trash can, like a perv. What a creeper.
When I'm not unnerved by the creeper across the street, or figuring out ways to make him move that does not violate his rights, I am still trying to get used to this place. We have tons of lights, making all our recently purchased lamps obsolete (not bitter, nope) and this place is insulated amazingly well.
I'm slowly getting used to the new sounds of my house, and I'm starting to get entirely impatient about the empty hot tub. I may start whining about it today. Although, that would detract from Sky King's quest to clean the old place, without my help. I may wait until he's done cleaning, to whine about the hot tub. Or maybe I will fake a hamstring injury...
Talk to you soon!
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Friday, February 17, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
It's Not Much, but...
Happy Valentine's Day to all those that love me.
The ones that tolerate me, or worse, feel indifferent, y'all can kiss my ass.
We moved over the weekend, to get away from the House that Mold Built. It was amazingly non-stressful. Except for the constant barrage of, "where do you want this?", I did remarkably well. And, about a dozen or so of our closest friends not only moved my entire house if shit I don't use much, but they hung around for the creation of several fine IKEA monstrosities. So all my Valentine's gifts were already collected, a few days early.
Now, it's just a matter of figuring out where to put the overwhelming amount of stuff. We have entirely too much. No, I don't think you quite understand. Our kitchen is full. FULL. And Sky King just said, "You know what's scary? I just found 3 more boxes of kitchen stuff." I stared at him, wide-eyed, and realized he was talking about the stack of boxes he was standing by. NOT the boxes hidden in the craft room. He doesn't know about those two. Yet.
Our new place is bigger, with more rooms. When we were orchestrating the relocation of boxes, we had to give quick names to the rooms so that people would know where to put stuff.
Off the kitchen, we have a room full of cabinets with a built-in desk. It goes out to a sauna room that has a hot tub in it. The cabinet room became known as The Random Room.
We have a spare bedroom now. It contains a bed and some extraneous furniture, as well as Sky King's wardrobe (damn you, 1970's house, built before walk-in closets had been invented!). That room has become The Drunk Tank, due to several friends claiming it as their own when the Summer Party Season begins.
We are still working out the name to our wifi. Unfortunately, we have a neighborhood full of wonderful, kind, generous people. Since we don't want them to call the cops on us when the inevitable over-indulgences of the summer begin, we are trying very hard to be nice. Therefore, we want to name the wifi something funny, yet not too risque'. So far, the winner is Surveillance Van #58.
So today, on the day when we are supposed to be our most romantic, I will:
Our gift to each other is the new place. It's amazingly spread out, with tons of property to run amok. It's already been dubbed, "Walker Ranch".
I hope you day is filled with tons of love, affection, and Nookie. And wine. And chocolate. Yep, that'll do.
The ones that tolerate me, or worse, feel indifferent, y'all can kiss my ass.
We moved over the weekend, to get away from the House that Mold Built. It was amazingly non-stressful. Except for the constant barrage of, "where do you want this?", I did remarkably well. And, about a dozen or so of our closest friends not only moved my entire house if shit I don't use much, but they hung around for the creation of several fine IKEA monstrosities. So all my Valentine's gifts were already collected, a few days early.
Now, it's just a matter of figuring out where to put the overwhelming amount of stuff. We have entirely too much. No, I don't think you quite understand. Our kitchen is full. FULL. And Sky King just said, "You know what's scary? I just found 3 more boxes of kitchen stuff." I stared at him, wide-eyed, and realized he was talking about the stack of boxes he was standing by. NOT the boxes hidden in the craft room. He doesn't know about those two. Yet.
Our new place is bigger, with more rooms. When we were orchestrating the relocation of boxes, we had to give quick names to the rooms so that people would know where to put stuff.
Off the kitchen, we have a room full of cabinets with a built-in desk. It goes out to a sauna room that has a hot tub in it. The cabinet room became known as The Random Room.
We have a spare bedroom now. It contains a bed and some extraneous furniture, as well as Sky King's wardrobe (damn you, 1970's house, built before walk-in closets had been invented!). That room has become The Drunk Tank, due to several friends claiming it as their own when the Summer Party Season begins.
We are still working out the name to our wifi. Unfortunately, we have a neighborhood full of wonderful, kind, generous people. Since we don't want them to call the cops on us when the inevitable over-indulgences of the summer begin, we are trying very hard to be nice. Therefore, we want to name the wifi something funny, yet not too risque'. So far, the winner is Surveillance Van #58.
So today, on the day when we are supposed to be our most romantic, I will:
- Finally take a shower
- Put away more shit I probably don't need
- Refill all my pill containers
- Change my address in as many places as possible
- Try to put out before the kids get home from school
Our gift to each other is the new place. It's amazingly spread out, with tons of property to run amok. It's already been dubbed, "Walker Ranch".
I hope you day is filled with tons of love, affection, and Nookie. And wine. And chocolate. Yep, that'll do.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Ask, and You Shall Receive
Okay, I thought just for fun I would post something a little bit serious. Gots ta keep y'all on your toes, right?
You may remember that we are moving, to get into a house that has zero mold problems. Which resulted in this amazing search-the kind of house we wanted, in the area we wanted it, seems to be in limited supply in our area, so when a good one came up, we had to jump on it. Jump, we did, and after some finagling and negotiating, we found an amazing place, that has all the things we want, including a hot tub that will become my second home.
We had priced boxes at the local shipping store. Holy shit! Have you ever done that? $6 on up PER BOX. No joke. So, we decided dumpster diving was truly not beneath us (hell, who am I kidding? We decided Monkey Boy wasn't beneath dumpster diving.) We only netted maybe a dozen. And Sky King's dream is to have a house completely ensconced inside cardboard when people arrive to help. He did NOT want to be those people that are still pulling shit out of cabinets when you arrive to help out.
So I put a shout-out onto Facebook, to see if anyone had any boxes they would like to part with. Right away, I had plenty of offers-and most of the people even went out of their way to deliver them to us. I was overwhelmed with support, and the boxes, tape, and offers of help kept coming.
Pretty soon, we had a house full of boxes, and Sky King had packed everything he could get his hands on.
I continued to be overwhelmed by the amount of support we have been offered. We have people offering to drive an hour to help us move. Unreal. It made me think, "It's a good thing I let everyone know about my health issues. Otherwise, we would be doing this with just my husband at the helm, and a random family member to help."
Then I realized, it's NOT because I'm sick, that all these people want to help. These people are some of the nicest, truest people you could ever hope to meet. They love me, they love my family. The reason they have helped is not because I am sick, though.
They help, because I have learned to ask for help.
I realized this just a moment ago. Yes, I'm fortunate-I have awesome family and friends. My immediate family is nearly as crazy as me (especially that little girl). We have a place to live, we have income coming in. Many people are not that lucky. But I think one of the biggest successes, one of my biggest accomplishments, is learning to ask for help and then being able to accept that help. My fellow Spoonies could learn a thing or two. (Humility is still a ways away, sorry.)
Where in your life could you learn to ask for help?
You may remember that we are moving, to get into a house that has zero mold problems. Which resulted in this amazing search-the kind of house we wanted, in the area we wanted it, seems to be in limited supply in our area, so when a good one came up, we had to jump on it. Jump, we did, and after some finagling and negotiating, we found an amazing place, that has all the things we want, including a hot tub that will become my second home.
We had priced boxes at the local shipping store. Holy shit! Have you ever done that? $6 on up PER BOX. No joke. So, we decided dumpster diving was truly not beneath us (hell, who am I kidding? We decided Monkey Boy wasn't beneath dumpster diving.) We only netted maybe a dozen. And Sky King's dream is to have a house completely ensconced inside cardboard when people arrive to help. He did NOT want to be those people that are still pulling shit out of cabinets when you arrive to help out.
So I put a shout-out onto Facebook, to see if anyone had any boxes they would like to part with. Right away, I had plenty of offers-and most of the people even went out of their way to deliver them to us. I was overwhelmed with support, and the boxes, tape, and offers of help kept coming.
Pretty soon, we had a house full of boxes, and Sky King had packed everything he could get his hands on.
I continued to be overwhelmed by the amount of support we have been offered. We have people offering to drive an hour to help us move. Unreal. It made me think, "It's a good thing I let everyone know about my health issues. Otherwise, we would be doing this with just my husband at the helm, and a random family member to help."
Then I realized, it's NOT because I'm sick, that all these people want to help. These people are some of the nicest, truest people you could ever hope to meet. They love me, they love my family. The reason they have helped is not because I am sick, though.
They help, because I have learned to ask for help.
I realized this just a moment ago. Yes, I'm fortunate-I have awesome family and friends. My immediate family is nearly as crazy as me (especially that little girl). We have a place to live, we have income coming in. Many people are not that lucky. But I think one of the biggest successes, one of my biggest accomplishments, is learning to ask for help and then being able to accept that help. My fellow Spoonies could learn a thing or two. (Humility is still a ways away, sorry.)
Where in your life could you learn to ask for help?
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Movin' On Up
Since I seem to be the constant bearer of joy around here (sick, sicker, waiting for more sickness, sickness makes me sick, etc.) i thought I'd share another joyful gem. I'm incredibly generous after a dose of pain pills, aren't I? (Oh, and I'm almost out of pain pills...this week just keeps getting better!)
One of the things those San Francisco wonder Doctors both mentioned (as did my new Rheumy, and my acupuncturist) was that people with Lyme Disease cannot be around mold-I can't remember why-hell, I'm lucky I remembered this much. Oh, and the two docs I work with regularly told me I have a severe mold allergy, on top of it all.
What does this mean? It means we have to move. YAY! Everyone loves to move, right?
Luckily, (in more ways than one) we rent. We sold our home at the peak in California (2004ish) and joined the renting ranks just in time. We have been renting ever since. We began in my parents' home. They generously shared their home with me, my husband and 2 kids, and a cat. Right before we all killed each other over proper toilet paper roll etiquette, we moved into the ghetto.
It was a fun bunch of duplexes, near our localYucky Sneeze Chuck E Cheese, and there were regular incidents that exposed our children to a side of life we hoped to protect them from. At the time, though, we had debt. We gave up cable, cell phones and extras for 2 and a half years. In the process we also got rid of the last of Sky King's student loans and paid off both cars.
Then, things turned around for us a bit, and we moved to the party house. It's a beautiful A-frame with large open rooms that look out onto a sparkling pool. The neighborhood was decent (if a bit busy at commute time when people use our street to cut through on their way home) and we weren't concerned about the schools, as our kids go to a charter.
One of the flaws in this beautiful home is a sincere lack of insulation. And when I say "lack", I mean, when you install another electrical outlet outside to accommodate the Christmas lights, it is highly likely that someone inside will see your fingers working outside, though an interior outlet. And, because of the beautiful exposed-wooden-beams-peaked-roof, there is no insulation on the ceiling either. Which also means no room for heating and A/C ducts. So, the obvious choice was to run those ducts through the cement slab. Duh!
When you run duct work through concrete slabs, might I suggest you check the water tables first? Because if the area has a high water table, and the ground gets saturated easily, that porous cement will fill with water. And so will the duct work. One clue that the water table is high? If you have to turn off the sprinklers in 100 degree heat, because the lawn won't dry out, you *might* have a water table issue. Another clue? Rusty sidewalks. From all the minerals in the water that doesn't evaporate, no matter how hot it gets.
Now, we reported the "sloshing" sound coming from the heating vents. Seriously, it sounds like the drum beat from "Jumanji". Any moment, I expect to see a half-naked Robin Williams being chased by a Rhino through the living room. And not in a good way. (Is there a good way?) Someone came out, and said he'd report it back to the owners. That was two years ago, so I am starting to lose faith. And instead of paying $300 to find out we definitely DO have mold, we are just going to go with the concept that yes, we have mold. Now we have to find a place to move.
This is no small task. There are some seriously demanding people in our lives, and it has always been the understanding that we have the Party House. (Kind of like college, but it costs more now-same amount of peeing against fences, though). And in order to convince the kids, the house has to be pretty much better than the one we are in.
We began a few months ago, looking to see what was out there. We had a few requirements: Pool, boundaries for the right High School for Monkey Boy, hopefully a quieter road so Princess could ride her bike around. Bonuses would be: a spare bedroom, a hot tub or master whirlpool tub (hot water therapy for me), and interesting architecture-we didn't want one of the many modern McMansions that have popped up in the last decade.
Finally, we found it. :::cue angelic music:::
It's a ranch-style 2 story. 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms. Large deck for entertaining, huge lawn, quiet street with a few families with kids. (My kids might actually get to play hide and seek 'til the street lights come on!) A vast lawn, a beautiful pool, and a sauna room complete with 8-person hot tub. There are a couple compromises: the master bath is teensy, the master closet is a total joke. It's an acre, that someone will have to mow. But the kids are excited, Sky King is, too. And the troops have rallied to get us in there.
I gotta say. I always knew we were loved, you know? But since this thing, this Lyme, people have come out of the woodwork to show their support. I had two different groups hand-delivering boxes yesterday. Two! And, one of the groups showed up carrying breakfast, all ready to help pack and clean, too! I have more people out there with boxes (we will see you all today, I'm sure, once Sky King is properly caffeinated
I have been moved to tears a few times in the past couple days. And that's not just because I'm PMSing. Seriously, people. If you are in my real life, you have set the bar mighty high lately.
Now, more than ever, I'm having to rely on others. And for me, that has been one of the hardest parts of this illness. I was never good at saying "No" or asking for help. And now, (especially today, after overdoing it yesterday) I need my friends and family more than ever. And I know you will all be there. You've proven it already.
Keep an eye out for the invitation to the house-warming! Oh, and bring a swimsuit. We are all too old for some sort of "suits optional" debacle.
One of the things those San Francisco wonder Doctors both mentioned (as did my new Rheumy, and my acupuncturist) was that people with Lyme Disease cannot be around mold-I can't remember why-hell, I'm lucky I remembered this much. Oh, and the two docs I work with regularly told me I have a severe mold allergy, on top of it all.
What does this mean? It means we have to move. YAY! Everyone loves to move, right?
Luckily, (in more ways than one) we rent. We sold our home at the peak in California (2004ish) and joined the renting ranks just in time. We have been renting ever since. We began in my parents' home. They generously shared their home with me, my husband and 2 kids, and a cat. Right before we all killed each other over proper toilet paper roll etiquette, we moved into the ghetto.
It was a fun bunch of duplexes, near our local
Then, things turned around for us a bit, and we moved to the party house. It's a beautiful A-frame with large open rooms that look out onto a sparkling pool. The neighborhood was decent (if a bit busy at commute time when people use our street to cut through on their way home) and we weren't concerned about the schools, as our kids go to a charter.
One of the flaws in this beautiful home is a sincere lack of insulation. And when I say "lack", I mean, when you install another electrical outlet outside to accommodate the Christmas lights, it is highly likely that someone inside will see your fingers working outside, though an interior outlet. And, because of the beautiful exposed-wooden-beams-peaked-roof, there is no insulation on the ceiling either. Which also means no room for heating and A/C ducts. So, the obvious choice was to run those ducts through the cement slab. Duh!
When you run duct work through concrete slabs, might I suggest you check the water tables first? Because if the area has a high water table, and the ground gets saturated easily, that porous cement will fill with water. And so will the duct work. One clue that the water table is high? If you have to turn off the sprinklers in 100 degree heat, because the lawn won't dry out, you *might* have a water table issue. Another clue? Rusty sidewalks. From all the minerals in the water that doesn't evaporate, no matter how hot it gets.
Now, we reported the "sloshing" sound coming from the heating vents. Seriously, it sounds like the drum beat from "Jumanji". Any moment, I expect to see a half-naked Robin Williams being chased by a Rhino through the living room. And not in a good way. (Is there a good way?) Someone came out, and said he'd report it back to the owners. That was two years ago, so I am starting to lose faith. And instead of paying $300 to find out we definitely DO have mold, we are just going to go with the concept that yes, we have mold. Now we have to find a place to move.
This is no small task. There are some seriously demanding people in our lives, and it has always been the understanding that we have the Party House. (Kind of like college, but it costs more now-same amount of peeing against fences, though). And in order to convince the kids, the house has to be pretty much better than the one we are in.
We began a few months ago, looking to see what was out there. We had a few requirements: Pool, boundaries for the right High School for Monkey Boy, hopefully a quieter road so Princess could ride her bike around. Bonuses would be: a spare bedroom, a hot tub or master whirlpool tub (hot water therapy for me), and interesting architecture-we didn't want one of the many modern McMansions that have popped up in the last decade.
Finally, we found it. :::cue angelic music:::
It's a ranch-style 2 story. 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms. Large deck for entertaining, huge lawn, quiet street with a few families with kids. (My kids might actually get to play hide and seek 'til the street lights come on!) A vast lawn, a beautiful pool, and a sauna room complete with 8-person hot tub. There are a couple compromises: the master bath is teensy, the master closet is a total joke. It's an acre, that someone will have to mow. But the kids are excited, Sky King is, too. And the troops have rallied to get us in there.
I gotta say. I always knew we were loved, you know? But since this thing, this Lyme, people have come out of the woodwork to show their support. I had two different groups hand-delivering boxes yesterday. Two! And, one of the groups showed up carrying breakfast, all ready to help pack and clean, too! I have more people out there with boxes (we will see you all today, I'm sure, once Sky King is properly caffeinated
I have been moved to tears a few times in the past couple days. And that's not just because I'm PMSing. Seriously, people. If you are in my real life, you have set the bar mighty high lately.
Now, more than ever, I'm having to rely on others. And for me, that has been one of the hardest parts of this illness. I was never good at saying "No" or asking for help. And now, (especially today, after overdoing it yesterday) I need my friends and family more than ever. And I know you will all be there. You've proven it already.
Keep an eye out for the invitation to the house-warming! Oh, and bring a swimsuit. We are all too old for some sort of "suits optional" debacle.
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