It’s supposed to be one of the most stressful things. Now, that the painters are gone, I’m not feeling as much stress. However, the house is upside down.
I’d moved 13 times as a child so it’s been funny to be feeling as if I’m moving again.
I’ve lived in two different states in the Midwest when I was an undergraduate and for my first round of graduate school. During my higher education years, I moved only five times total across seven years.
My ex-husband and I moved to the state where I’m from and where I live today. After I’d finished my first graduate degree, he and I moved states and into an apartment. We lived with my parents for a month while we looked for an apartment. A year later moved into a townhouse while we worked with a realtor and then we bought this house. We lived here together for about 4-years, and he contributed to this mortgage for a year.
When I was with my ex who is an alcoholic, I was in FL about once a month. Sometimes I was gone 10-days so I felt like I was living partially in FL with her in her townhouse.
I’ve finally stopped physically moving.
However, it feels like I am, in fact, moving. I have gotten rid of a tall bookcase, three chest of drawers, a bulky end table, a nice futon and mattress, a lamp, a chrome island with a cutting board top, three high back oak bar stools, and lots of shelving. There are also many odds and ends that I’ve also let go of completely.
Now, I’m doing the work of getting kitchen items back into cupboards. If there are some items that I’ve not used in 3-years, they’re going to the thrift store. I don’t want to store things in precious cupboard space.
It’s really dirty too. Moving always is, and I’d forgotten that. I have been going through tons of dust rags and wiping grease out of corners of my freshly painted cabinets. One of the latter swelled shut and pulled off some paint. I’ll have to patch that area before I put new bumpers on all the cabinets.
I’m not sure when I’ll be done, but I’m glad that LA is coming over this morning to help me hang more art. This move is likely the last one that I’ll do unless I wind up in a hospital or some rehabilitative care.
It’s starting to get really, really old. I told the Crew Boss for painting that Thursday is the final day ever and that there are no more days for my kitchen. I had to tell them the same thing about Wednesday, the 31st, because all the painting was dragging out and I had to get furniture upstairs again. I was being driven mad.
I think that I also have to consider that July has been bizarre. I found on the 6th that my former sister-in-law was murdered. My Aunt died on the 27th; although, we knew May 3rd that given she wasn’t seeking treatment, that was a foregone conclusion.
Anyway, with these deaths, it makes living like this very difficult. This:
It’s like moving into a place that you can’t move into because there aren’t rooms that you can use. I have trouble cooking which is my daily therapy because I have to go downstairs to get skillets and the like. I also have dust and shards of paint everywhere.
Brookyln is coming over this morning to help me hang artwork in new and fresh places. She’s also going to give me feedback about arrangements. I haven’t had her over at my house in years.
That will definitely help. It’s like a barren environment here.
I told LA that she was a bad friend for not renting me a large airstream for the pets and I this month ;). I can’t wait for workers to not be at my house. I’m also excited for the end result and no longer living in a construction site.
I went to kickball last night and had a good time connecting with my team. I didn’t go play flip cup, because I don’t want to drink very much while I’m processing the murder in the acute stage. I also have my feelings with regards to not being in my previous family anymore.
I’ve gotten so many of my friends and also my family members to donate to the fund for her orphaned children that she leaves behind. I think that I’m doing as well as I possibly can with processing this event and what it means in my life given that I am not involved with my ex-wife’s family anymore. I’m feeling better with regards to this tragedy.
I’m not Zen about my house. How do people live in a house while it’s being painted without going over the edge?
It’s really hard to live with tented furniture that was limited anyway. I’d only left my bed, my dining area table, and the desk and it’s wires. Yesterday, because the floors were taped, plastic-covered and papered, I felt like I was living in “ET” when the hazmat scientists start to study the creature.
So, I had a lapse in judgement. I didn’t pay too much. Well, a bit.
I bruise easily. However, these are pretty bad. If I knew where my oral arnica was, I’d take it, but things are piled in linen closet and other places so most things are blocked, and I only know where my topical arnica is. I applied it, but I imagine that I’ll look bad for a week or so.
I’m reading “Where Men Win Glory,” and it’s great. Last night after kickball, feeding my pets, and walking my dogs I wanted to read in a chair. Not in my dining area, but in a chair. I wanted to get a fabric chair upstairs from the basement. I have a staircase and a baby gate that is retractable at the top of my stairs.
Best laid plans…
I got the ottoman for the chair upstairs fairly swiftly and slunk around the ladder, the staging area, and traipsed through the paper and plastic that my dogs and cats have dug up and moved around, but the chair that goes with my ottoman is an entirely different story.
I got it out of the hoarder piles and around my upturned loveseat and existing table in my basement. Recall if you’ve read previous entries that movers emptied my upstairs so my basement isn’t usable. It’s like a Jenga Tower which has fallen.
I moved the chair around stacks of boxes and such and then got it to the base of my staircase. I thought that inverted and pulling it up each stair was good. I got it up all the stairs. Then it got caught on one of the plastic hooks on my gate.
I needed a Phillips Head Screwdriver, but those were in the laundry room closet. All of my large storing and my laundry machines are downstairs. Downstairs was blocked.
I was sweating so badly. Although the chair is fabric, it was really difficult to get it back downstairs because plastic tenting kept attacking me in my stairwell. It would stick to me too or would trip me. I imprisoned my shoe under the chair and almost fell until I shimmied the shoe off under the chair. It was now 8:30 and I’d done cardio with my son, ran errands, kicked, ran and scored two runs in kickball. I was a sweaty and angry mess.
I texted my neighbors who are like family to me. They said that I could borrow a screwdriver. I got the clip off without breaking it. The screws were really long. I made a mental note to use my electric screwdriver when I was no longer blocked out of my basement and could get tools. I pushed the chair all the way back down and removed the gate clip and it was really hard.
I went back downstairs and realized that I would have to slide the chair sideways with the legs toward the banister. That worked until I had to hoist under it from the top of my stairs. Heaving and hoeing finally got it upstairs and I got it into the corner by my living room window and successfully avoiding buckets of paint and a ladder.
I still couldn’t read though.
Now, I had to screw back the gate clips. Well, the screwdriver was set to left. I unscrewed my work and nearly fell backward. Then it was too big for the screwhead. I got the other one that we have and discovered that the nut is missing to attach non-drill pieces. That was something that my son was famous for during his whole life. He would take things out of my tools and they wound up in the _______ chasm of loss. My drill isn’t usable as a screwdriver anymore and the other electric screwdriver is too big for very small screw heads.
Finally, I just screwed them in by hand enough so that the top of the gate was somewhat secure and read for an hour in the damn chair! I have the bruises to prove it.
Yesterday the cleaning woman came and washed walls and baseboards. I’m going to go back over a few areas with a carwash microfiber and rag soaked in alcohol after I walk the dogs. They paint and redo the cabinets today. The movers come back tomorrow.
I’m letting things go and moving things around.
Desk #1 belonged to my maternal grandfather. It has an ancient Co-Op Calendar taped in it from 1912. It was probably made in the late 1800s. It’s going in the spare bedroom.
Desk #2 belonged to my paternal grandmother. It has two drawers and one pullout desk. It’s probably from the 70s, but I like it. It’s going in my room for my clock. Yes, I like a digital clock and don’t sleep with my cell phone around me at all regardless of Airplane Mode.
The sofa table is going behind the long couch in front of the window. It used to be in my bedroom where Desk #2 is going.
Dresser #1 belonged to Indianapolis _____. He’s referred to this way because my son had a stepbrother figure with the same name for about 6-months. My ex-husband has had two serious girlfriends in 17-years. The former _____ moved, sadly, with his Moms when my son was two-and-a-half. His dresser remains and my ex-wife repainted it and it looks funky. I don’t want any dressers. It’s going to be donated.
Dresser #2 was my Mom’s. It’s cool. It’s made of heavy old wood and has three long drawers. I need to get it to the non-profit recycler, but don’t know how. I’m not sentimental. I do remember her having probably 20 plants on top of it when I was 19 all the way through when she went into a nursing home. Both my parents had green thumbs.
I will have a sundried tomato accent wall. It used to be a deep maroon, but I don’t have the special paint anymore, so it will be sundried tomato now and the hutch won’t go there anymore. It’s going across the living room to where the piano used to be. LA has the piano.
My former mother-in-law gave us an armoire. It’s red. I like it. I don’t like it near the dining area. It’s going in the kitchen across from the pantry. That will be a tight walkway, but I’m letting my hanging spice racks go and probably not rehanging the black floating shelves. After removing both the spice racks and the shelves, I realized that they never really stay clean and oil, spices and vinegar needs to be out of sight.
There is a five shelf particle board bookshelf outside for the city trash folks to pick up today. I am doing a professional book purge. I have two graduate degrees. The first one was 74 hours and the second one was 85 hours and terminated in a doctoral degree. I have a lot of professional books, but don’t use all of them. The said bookshelf also held test kits. I’m not sure what to do with those, but will likely go through my office closet and store them and a few books that I still reference for reports there. I don’t want anything in my office anymore with the exception of the crate for my ex-wife’s dog, and will put back up the window perch for my cats. I’ll still work at the desk here where the main modem is.
The headboard is going!
The daybed will be under the window that you see as you walk down the hall toward mine and the spare bedroom.
I’m starting to think that this house is mine. I won’t have any energy here with the exception of my own upstairs and then I can go through the basement and store my son’s things thoughtfully. This paint is a renewal.
Yesterday the movers were here and basically emptied the upstairs. Even the echoing of my typing is wild in my office. An empty house is weird, and I should be used to things looking like this as I moved 13 times as a child. Unfortunately, in this room–my office–they’ll have to work around cords and get behind the desk which has been pushed away from the wall.
Downstairs is alarming. It looks like a hoarder’s paradise. The scheduler for the moving company said that her crews are Tetris experts, but it is really very strange. I can’t really walk in there and I don’t even want to get my cell phone charger this morning, but if I could slink around last night to put the cats to sleep, I can do anything! Part of me didn’t want to give the cats their Greenies and leave them down there last night to sleep. They were perfectly fine this morning.
I have to take hooks, anchors, picture hangers, the cat perch, the window perch and shelving that is wall mounted down after I blog and walk the dogs.
The hair is another story.
When the cleaning crew comes today to wash the ceilings and walls, I have to say that I’m properly embarrassed about all the pet hair. How long have corners and some parts of walls, where the hutch was for example, been this way? Who lives like this?
I told a friend on the phone yesterday that now I know why people travel when their house is getting painted. It’s a whole process. The movers came yesterday, the cleaning crew and cabinet crew come today, the house is painted on Thursday, and Friday the movers come back. It will be August 1st before art is hung and furniture is rearranged too. I don’t trust myself to do this process alone. I’m so glad that I have Brooklyn. She likes hanging art and is going to be brutally honest with me with regards to what I should get rid of and where furniture and the like should go. I’m looking forward to having a freshly painted house; although, the hair that I’d been living in is gross.
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