Travels with The Rayman

Moving is the pits.  While downsizing is a good idea, it is hard, frustrating work.  I’m not kidding here.

 

 

 

Of course, there were crosses to bear.  Our street was to be slurry sealed on Monday.  Then that was moved to Tuesday.  Then it was moved to Thursday…that’s today, the day we had the movers helping us transport the final load of “stuff” from UR’s and the storage locker.  Fine kettle of fish, yes siree.    When the Rayman figured that out, he hunted down the people in charge of the slurry scheduling and told them that our movers were coming Thursday morning and there was no way they could slurry seal.  The lady in the truck was using her authority to bend the Rayman to her will…but that did not happen.  He explained the situation and said, “I’m not rescheduling this move.  We planned around your two other days and I’m not moving it again.”  So…today the movers helped us and as soon as they left the slurry people came and did the street.

 

I didn’t see this because I was in the dentist’s chair ending another saga.  My implant was placed with great fanfare.  The $7K tooth is now in my mouth, ready for chewing.

 

So, between the charge for the help today and the final charge for the tooth, we managed to spend $1,000 and didn’t have one bit of fun doing it.  Really, folks.  I’m ready for a drink.  Hell, I’m ready for food.  Haven’t eaten much of anything today and my tummy is whining.  The Rayman is showering and when he emerges, we’re off to a dinner party.  Hope I can keep my eyes open.

 

Anyway.  The house is a total mess.  Boxes here, a mess there.  Looks like a bomb went off.  So, here are my observations.

 

1. Downsizing?  Get rid of more than you think.  And do not discount the possibility that your possessions will multiply while in the storage.  More seems to come out than went in.

 

1. Moving?  Do it while you can still move (your body that is).  This is not an activity for the faint of heart.  It aggravates both the bursitis, the arthritis, the muscles.  And don’t pack things in big boxes.  They are too heavy as our tendency always is to cram them to the brim with stuff.

 

1. Keep track of your phone.  We’ve been here a week and we still don’t know where our phone is.  And this is really annoying because today, of all days, my iPhone took a dump.  It just stopped working.  No, I’m not kidding.  I restored it.  No help.  I talked to the SMEs at Apple.  No help.  Now, I get to take it to the genius bar tomorrow for help.  With a lost phone, I’ve been relying on my iPhone for important calls.  It’s so broken, I don’t even know if I’m missed a call or message.

 

1. Keep track of your wine and liquor.  You’ll need it.

 

1. Be thankful your friends.  I cannot tell you how fabulous our friends have been during our ordeal.  First, Larry, the hair, Viselli helped move boxes of wine and other assorted goodies.  Laurie, his fabulous wife, keep the dog for us which really helped us not break our necks tripping over him.  We were fed delicious dinners by Adrienne and Marc, Flo and Gary, Margaret and Bob, Patricia and her friends, Hal and Diane.  Then Mary Kay and Jay stuffed us with fabulous enchiladas.  And Claudia at URs.  Actually Claudia also let us keep our freezer at her beach house, she kept Wanda the fish throughout, she kept Beau on several occasions.  And as mentioned earlier feed us several times.  UR let us store stuff a his house.  And the Coxs, the Watts (Jim and Betsy, Karen and Dick) loaned us blankets for packing.  Neta loaned us boxes. It really took a village and it isn’t over yet!!

 

I did not post the above part of this blog in a timely manner.  Today is a week from the above information and I have more wisdom to depart (no, not my wisdom teeth.  They were extracted in the 70s).  About moving.

 

We just finished eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches on Richard’s fabulous raisin, walnut bread.  Famished is a word that comes to mind.  Famished because we’ve been unloading boxes.  Yep.  A week into it and still boxes sit idly by in the garage waiting for attention.  The garage is also beaming with broken down boxes and big bags of rolled up packing paper.  I had the bright idea that someone in the area would want our boxes that spent a great deal of money on at Home Depot and the U-Haul store.  Listed them in craigslist and not even a hit.  I advertised them at once used.  Over 100 of them.  $50.  No takers.  So, today in an act of either marketing genius or delusional behavior I modified the ad to $.05 a box or $35 for all.  Someone needs these boxes.  Please.  Take my boxes please.  If not sold by Friday (tomorrow), I guess I’ll try to give them away.  This will hurt my feelings and my pocketbook.

 

Given all the empty boxes, we still can’t get a car in the garage.  And spare bedding.  Do we have spare spreads?  Yes indeedy.  And we have spare coffee tables.  And spare books (read no place to put them).  OMG.

 

So, the other night we were to meet our friends in Avila for dinner.  At Ole Port Inn for dinner.  That was a blast except for the part where we were to go to Tom and Ruth’s for drinks and pupus before and somehow that fact got by us and we showed up the Inn while they were all imbibing at the Donnolly’s abode.  Gnashing of teeth ensued as we headed to their place at Avila “Arms”.  Drinks were a necessary mood enhancer when we finally arrived.  We were needed as the the group in attendance was the same group  of friends we went with on our sailing trip in the Caribbean.  And we were planning the trip to Hilton Head which we embark on next Thursday.  Do you see a Thursday theme developing here?

 

But I digress.  In attendance  was Pat “here, I’ll do that”, and Richard “where’s my vodka”…Michele “my cats are fabulous”, and Bryan “I’m the captain”…Tom “up against the wall %&*@” and Ruthie “the rules state” .   We had a great time.  Wine may be shipped.  Clubs may be shipped.  There will 4 or 5 days of golf.  Each condo will do dinner two nights.  We will all do a dance to the sun gods.  Trip insurance was procured in case of bad weather.  We’re set.

 

Except that the Rayman and I have to get this place in order before Nancy, the Beau sitter, arrives next Wednesday.

 

Better close and continue this chore before we run out of time.

 

 

We are on day 4 or 5 of partially moving in to the new digs.  Here I lounge in the guest bedroom because there’s not many places to roost in this place, at this time.

The floor is finished in the great room and down one half of the hall.  The master bedroom and closet are about 2/3 done but unusable for anything…a compressor, a saw, various hard looking tools loiter in the space not yet finished.  And the other half of the hall has plywood showing.  So there is the kitchen 75% complete and the guest bedroom.  Everything else is in a state of disarray.  Additionally, the area rugs are piled up in the garage waiting for the work to finish so that they may be laid where needed…just about everywhere.  Dust floats in the air like smog.  Even the bushes outside in the front yard are covered with a thin veil of dust.  Nothing goes unscathed.

I must say that I completely admire my cousin, Susie, because she went through a complete remodel of her entire house a few years back. How she did it will remain a mystery to me.  Edit that remark.  How she did it without a nervous breakdown is to be admired.  What a job.  And we are only doing the floors.

So, tonight we barbecued in the front yard some fresh, local king salmon over hardwood.  What a treat after yet another day of opening boxes, putting things away, cramming things in small places, relegating more items to the Goodwill trailer because there is just no space to house that olive dish, the glass serving tray, that crystal bowl that I have honestly never used.  In honor of Turkey, I bought some local cucumbers from the man at farmer’s market and made a yogurt dish with garlic, mint, grated cucumber, salt to taste.  Fabulous.  Easy.  Healthy.  Also tossed a salad of mixed greens, nicoise olives, avocado from the farm up the road, tomatoes from Templeton (another farmer’s market purchase), feta cheese and fabulous EVOO and basalmic vinegar from Italy, aged 10 years.  Sweet and thick.  All with with a bagette from Richard, baked today in Los Osos.  Oh, we are so lucky.

Tomorrow is golf for me.  Golf meeting for the Rayman.  A day off while the bang, bang, banging continues.  Then Wednesday, we pick up the freezer from winced it is stored, take possession of our repaired couch, pick up a change of address form from DMV, travel to San Luis just in time to meet a bunch of friends and take a train to Paso, taste wine, eat dinner and come back in a van.  Fun day in the works.  Then we pay big time on Thursday for the prior two days of frivality.  The movers and the truck come on Thursday and they gather up all that is left to be moved from Uncle Ralph’s and the storage locker.  That will end this long journey of moving for good.

The most interesting thing about all this is our life without television.  We have not watched TV since this process was started back in July…about the 29th.  On our trip to OR, we did not bother.  Our only source of news has been the internet.  Rayman reads the headlines on Yahoo.  He keeps up with sports on ESPN.  I do NYTimes when I have the time.  And I must say, we are very happy to not have TV.  It is a time killer.  And it keeps you all upset reporting on things you cannot control.

The fog is thick tonight.  And it is very cool.  Great sleeping weather.  We have not brought our lights over and there are very few lights here…it’s an older house and outlets are few and far between.  No ceiling lights except down the hall and kitchen.  So, that is why I write from the comfort of the bed.  That plus it seems so civilized.  Didn’t many great minds of the ages compose in bed?

My new kitchen is going to take some getting use to.  It’s not the best design for me.  The kitchen sink is across the room from the stove top…with an island in the middle.  Don’t know how I’m going to adjust to that configuration yet.  And I don’t like the brand new dishwasher.  Not enough choices and the racks don’t move smoothly.  Oh, dear.  Such a kitchen diva, I am.  I’m sure I’ll need to write about it in my book which I haven’t spent one minute on since mid-July.  Must get back to it.  That will require that I get back in the kitchen to create some havoc that I can write about.  Shouldn’t be a problem!!  I feel dinner parties in my near future.

 

 

 

 

 

Well.  I’m a very disturbed person tonight.  It’s 11:16 p.m. and I just spent an hour on a blog and save it to draft and disappeared it.  Unbelievable ending to an unbelievable day.  My biorhythms must be off.

But I digress.

This story needs to be told from the end rather than the beginning.  So here goes…again.

Monday morning I drove over to the new house, which I will henceforth refer to as “the place.”  As I pulled up a man approached me with a paper door hanger and he explained to me that the city was resurfacing our street on Friday and all vehicles must be off the street on Thursday night.  Well, I explained to the man that we were moving in, a POD was being delivered tomorrow and picked up on Saturday.  The man then explained to me how the cow ate the cabbage.  OMG.  So, I jumped on my phone, called the POD people, explained the situation and they agreed to squeeze us in and pick up the POD on Thursday.  Well, that was dandy except that the movers were only available on Thursday p.m.  OMG.  So a call was made to the movers and luckily they had just had a  cancellation for Wed. morning…phew.  Just by the hair of our chinny, chin, chins.

So…as promised, let me retreat to the end of the story.  It was 10:15 and I was waiting for the Rayman to return to Uncle Ralph’s house.  He was at the place waiting for the garage door repairman to fix the garage door.  What?  Yes, folks.  This is how it went down.  After a full day of unloading boxes, rearranging boxes…we decided to order fish tacos to go and take them to Uncle Ralph’s house to eat.  As we were backing out of the driveway, the Rayman hit the garage door remote and all hell broke loose.  The door started weaving and heaving erratically.  He stopped the door, we jumped out and after an inspection decided we were in big trouble.  All our stuff was in boxes in the garage.  And we couldn’t shut the door.  The rollers had popped out…amongst other things.  So, while I was googling “garage door repairs”…the Rayman came in and notified me that while attempting to fix the door, he needed a ladder but in order to open the ladder, he needed to move the golf cart…which he did.  Then he put the door in manual mode and door fell on the golf cart.  Here’s a picture.

Serious discussion ensued after I forcefully requested he keep away from the situation and go pick up the tacos.  So, while he was gone I managed to reached Terri, the woman who answered the phone at the garage door repair number.  After explaining the situation, she left the phone and I heard her call Billy.  “Billy, I have a lady on the line with a serious safety problem and needs someone to fix the garage door tonight.”  Then I heard her say, “Yeah, yeah.  Okay then.”  She came back to the phone and told me that Billy couldn’t make it as he had plans.  The she said she would call John.  In the middle of paging John, she exclaimed, “Oh, no.”  Then she came back to me and said, “John can’t do it.  He broke his foot yesterday.”  About that time her other phone rang and Billy was on the line.  Yes, he could do it but it wouldn’t be until 9-9:30 p.m.  And that is how I arranged for the repairman who drove up at 8:45.  He told us the door needed repair and he could do it right then and there.  And that’s why the Rayman didn’t return to Uncle Ralph’s house until after 10 p.m.

Does snake bit having meaning to you?  After first incurring a $2100 bill for our water heater debacle in the old house, and owning the new place for exactly 48 hours, we were now in the position to shell out an additional $800 for garage door repairs.  OMG.

Oh, well.  We figure it could have been worse.

The other thing of note is that I had arranged for Beau to visit his sister and when I was leaving the house I noticed something sticking in the back tire.  So on my way to pick up the Beaumeister, I stopped by the tire store.  Yes indeedy.  The tire was leaking as a result of the thing that was sticking in it.  Well, the tire store does not take appointments which meant I had to wait for the repair.  So, I ducked around the corner to the Urgent Care storefront and asked if someone could remove my splinter in the palm of my hand  (I had acquired it on Monday and I have no idea where our drugs are, the needles are.)  Well, folks, this required the filling out of forms, my blood pressure was measured (110 over 70), my temperature was taken (98.1), my pulse was measured (67)…all for the removal of a splinter.  Then a Doc came in who was perhaps 100 pounds overweight.  I learned that internationally he has only traveled to Canada, his wife love the heat so they live in Paso and he grew up in Wyoming.  By that time the splinter was gone and so was I.  I picked up the car and drove over to fetch the dog…only the car started making a weird sound.  So, I asked Jay, the dog sitter, to ride around the block with me so he could listen to the sound and advise me on what it could be and what I should do.  He agreed and we drove around 3 blocks and the noise never presented itself.  It felt like I had gone to the Dr. and the symptom then disappeared.  Embarrassing comes to mind.

Now the reason that the dog was farmed out was because the movers arrived at 8:00 a.m. to unload the POD.  And floor guy was arriving at 9:00 a.m. and the place was abuzz with activity.  5 people total…plus me and the Rayman.  While we were essentially directing traffic, the floor guys were tearing up the parquet that was under the carpet pad.  This activity resulted in loud noises and dust galore.  Rayman had cleverly stuck the golf clubs out of the way in a cabinet in the garage that the movers saw fit to block with boxes and by the time the Rayman discovered his predicament, it was obvious that the boxes needed to be moved as we were planning to take Friday off and play golf.  Never mind that I had suggested he put the clubs on the back of the cart.

But I digress.  I am here to report that the floor guys had an eclectic taste in music as they played a radio all day.  Bam, bam, bam…”Lay, lady, lay”, bam, bam, bam.  “…lonely hearts club band”.  And so it went.  As I unpacked boxes and tried to organize the kitchen, the dust permeated everything.  So, in not wanting to wait, I made more work for myself.   We should have waited but who knew.

We have the guest bedroom set up but the dust and the smell of burning wood (? who knows what those floor guys are really doing) is so off-putting that we decided not to stay.  And that’s how we ended up at Uncle Ralph’s house again.

So, it’s Thursday morning.  Rayman is at the house.  I’m getting ready to leave and wondering…what the heck is in store for us today.  The bedroom dressers are outside by the slider of the master bedroom waiting for the floor to be done.  The dining room furniture can’t be placed yet because the moulding has been removed for part of the area.  We’re all sharing the master bath for our elimination needs because the other bathroom is full of flooring.  The plywood that was ordered came in half sheets rather than full sheets so the floor guys are waiting for that problem to be rectified.  The living room “area” has a huge pile of old parquet chips that must be removed…and the beat goes on.

We’ve just checked into a Quality Inn in Weed, CA.  Quite the garden spot but after our experience in the 19020s stone cabin, I’m not whining.  Much.

 

 

I’m not sure I adequately described the stone cabin.  It was very old.  No air conditioning.  The bed was in a niche in the kitchen.  The niche had a window at one end and was shaped in a U configuration.  To “board” the bed, I had to step on a step up to get into the U area.  The mattress was without box springs and it fit exactly into the niche.  Rayman refused to sleep there.  The picture over the “bed” is pictured above.  So he relegated himself to the creaky old hide-a-bed in the living room.  The carpet was dirty.  Additionally you had to take two steps up into the kitchen to get to the bathroom.  Without light, you could easily break something as you fell because you missed a step.  On the plus side the kitchen was well stocked with many fabulous utensils but who wanted to cook there?  it was too darn hot.

But I digress.

We’ve spent 4 days in Corvallis and it was fun.  Cute little city.  Did meet a woman on the side of the road (dog walking).  She was holding a sign that read, “Honk of you don’t want Wal-Mart”.  We talked awhile.  She is an army of one trying to roust people from apathy to action.  Hope she is successful.  She appreciated our positive comments re: her endeavor.  But that was yesterday.  Oh, we also drove up Marys Peak (uhm).  Here’s some pictures.

 

Opps.  That’s a picture I snapped while standing at the cash register in Sunnyside Up, a breakfast joint.  Is that a pun?   Thought it was funny.

 

We’ve had a quite a day of it today.  After bidding adieu to dear Ryan, we headed south to our new adventure.  Our new home.  Today is Friday and it is the day that the money is to be wired to the title company.  It is also the day to check up on our wood.  Wood flooring was ordered and we wanted it to be delivered to the house so it could acclimate to the new environment.  Phone calls ensued.  By talking with the wood man, it was discovered that our street where the new house is located is under some kind of construction and the wood could not be delivered.  Plus, the wood store owner hadn’t been able to reach the owners to gain entry.  So…here we are zooming down the highway trying to figure out what in the world is going on.  Calls are made.  Messages are left.  Mr. J is not taking to this situation the way I would prefer.  Final, final.  The city of Morro Bay requires a permit for our POD to be delivered and parked.  The street is being dolled up and resurfaced.  They may do the resurface on Friday.  The POD doesn’t leave until Saturday.  Really, people, does this kind of thing happen to you?

 

The other thing is the Beauzer.  I decided that we should stop in the doggie park in Ashland on our way to Weed so that the Beaumeister could stretch his legs and romp a bit.  We had bread, peanut butter, jam with us.  We could eat while there.  But first an iced coffee was in order so as to wash down the sandwich.  As usual, we got lost twice.  Once trying to find the Starbucks.  The other when were trying to find the dog park.  Then as I was making the PP&J sandwiches, Rayman and Beau gained entry into the park and immediately Beau rolled over in a big pile of poop.  Rayman was beside himself.  When I brought the sandwiches, Beau was on the leash.  Rayman was upset and there I was in the middle.  So, I got on the phone, found a place in town that sold pet “wipes” and drove there and bought them.  Then I made a small request.  “COULD YOU PLEASE GET IN A GOOD MOOD?”…the rest of my diatribe is edited for privacy concerns.

 

So, as I sit in our room blogging the status is that it may be okay to move into our house that is located on the exact street the city is working on.  The dog is chewing a bone as he lays on the bed and the Rayman is looking for the closest river access so that we can all just go and “COOL OFF”.

 

One last thing.  When we arrived and loaded our bags onto a trolley for easy transport, I asked the Rayman, “What’s our room number?”  He replied, “They are in the front seat.”  The beat goes on.

Here I am in Corvallis.  It’s  been an interesting time here, a beautiful little city.  Not too hot so we’re taking walks, shopping for new stuff (junk), arranging for phone, gas, water, sewage, garbage, electricity services.  Much time spent on the phone.  Amazing that it took me 51 minutes, mostly on hold, with AT&T to get a land line ordered.  Really.

So, with all these secretarial type activities, I decided to work on my website which at this moment (last night) a complete and utter disaster.  Don’t ask me why.  I can’t figure it out.  Can’t crack the code.  Can’t get er done.  Frustration was so high, that yesterday I logged into the Sandvox software user’s former and cried out for help…something to the tune of, “I’m desperate in Corvallis.  If anyone nearby could help me figure out this program so that I could get my website organized, please email me.”.  And guess what?  Someone did.  He lives in Portland and does web designing and was familiar with Sandvox.  So after a series of emails, he convinced me that Sandvox was a lousy program and that I needed WordPress, another program that is used by vritually everyone not named Dianna.  So, I entered into an agreement with him and for $200 he would re-do my website in WordPress and furnish me with the user name and password once his work was done and bill paid.  So…here I sit waiting for to hear from him.  I am very excited.  One of the interesting things he did was to let me join him on his computer through the magic of the internet and watch him work.  OMG.  He moved around so quickly it made my head swim.  I can see now that I have been quite foolish trying to do this on my own.  It took me weeks to do what he did in a few minutes.  And since time is money, I have pennywise and pound foolish.  OH, well.  Enough self-flogging.

Ryan, number one son, is sick with a cold.  We sit here waiting for him to arrive so that we can go to breakfast.  I’m looking forward to blueberry pancakes!!  Ray and Ry ordered them yesterday and they were fabulous.  My mouth waters.

Other than the stone cabin with no air conditioning, this trip has been a normal one.  Read boring to blog about.  We’re staying at a Best Western in Corvallis and it is very comfortable.  The Beauman likes it.  He hasn’t even barked.  We have a first floor unit with a fenced patio so he can go out to sniff.  It also has a couch, three chairs, a table, microwave, refrig, huge TV.  Oh, and a king bed.  Nice.

So…I guess all this to say I will announce a new website in a few hours.  Same name.  New look.  Can’t wait!!

It is July 30th at 7:49 p. m. and I am in bed. Feeling the pain. The back pain. The groin pain. Earlier the headache pain. Vicodin to the rescue. And plenty of wine with dinner to cleanse the mind of memories of the Great Move of 2012. OMG.

 

Let me state that no one should have space under the house because it collects things like old skis, old golf clubs, Xmas trees, old boxes. Old tools, like axes, rakes, stuff we no long need or want because we have our gardener, Vicente, and he has all those things in his truck which he has been driving to our house since 2004. It took us about 20 trips to empty that space. A trip is defined as a slog up the stairs and down the stairs. Up and down, up and down. Where we insane to keep all this? In a word, yes.

Okay, so every move must end like this with a list of incriminations to oneself, don’t you think? The incrimination department is overloaded because we really went above and beyond to stimulate the economy in the boom times. Evidence abounds. One must not, however, get carried away (with reciminations, that is). After all, Rayman’s mom died. My mom died and we ended up with gobs of stuff. Mom’s bedroom furniture (I sold it on craiglist) made an early exit. Then the 50-inch Sony WEGA set with wi-fi also got sold using craigslist. The big red couch is now sitting in the consignment shop along with those plaid chairs that the Rayman always disliked but put up with. The lone barstool? To consignment. The TV amoiire, to Goodwill. The coffee table in the media room? It’s in the storage locker in Morro Bay (I think). Ditto for the game table which has not been the scene of a game since it was acquired about 8 years ago. But I digress.

It took us several weeks of packing boxes. This move was a product of other moves in our past. We bought mostly small boxes because fully loaded, they weigh less than a medium or large box. And we numbered each box until the very end when it went something like this. “I’m just writing what is in this box because it is the dregs of what is left in the kitchen.” Rayman responds with, “Okay. Whatever.” Up until this point, we were up to box 170. No that is not a typo. 170 boxes. And more without numbers. Then when we got desperate to finish, we resorted to plastic bags, 13 gallon size. Purses in a bag. Shoes in many bags. Pillows in bags. And the list goes on. Then there were waste baskets filled with stuff. Toilet plunger in a waste basket. A regular cornucopia of storage remedies were applied to the wound. Would the bleeding ever stop? Toward the end, many things met a sorrowful death. “I’m throwing this away.” “What is it?” the Rayman queried. “Hell if I know so it’s going.” Or the Rayman would say, “I’m sick of this. I’m just throwing this away.” “Okay by me”, I snorted.

“What is this?” “Oh, that’s the rusted out steel whatchamacallit that I’ve been moving around for 15 years thinking that sometime it would come in handy. Never did.”, Ray demurred. “Well, out it goes”, I announced cheerfully yet with a certain tone of I-can’t-believedness. And so it went.

We ended up with the biggest POD they had, filled to the ceiling with our Lets-keep-this-furniture-to-see-if-it-works. And about 100 boxes thrown in to fill the gaps. And we rented a big storage locker in Morro Bay (henceforth referred to as MB) that is filled to the top with boxes and bedspreads, and god’s-know-what-else. And Uncle Ralph’s house. It looks like Beacon’ Van and Storage. One bedroom is filled with pictures and fragile stuff. And behind his house are bikes, vacuum cleaners, a whale sculpture, all the succulents from the yard, fence art, dust mops and swiffers, cleaning agents, flammable items. It looks like Camp Poodie.

And we paid $178 for GOT-JUNK to pick up our, well, junk. This was the heavy duty junk, the there-is-no-question-this-is-junk pile. Included were about 750 hangers, an old Sony Trinitron 27 -inch TV. ETC. I have already forgotten what was in this pile. But it was definitely junk.

This all lead me to thinking about what we do. We buy future junk, don’t we? We go to the mall, find just the right junk and then buy it. So, you better really, really like the junk you’re buying because once you leave the mall, no one is going to give you anything for it. I tried to sell hiking boots (worn twice and tossed aside because they rubbed my pronated ankle bones), our red couch, our TV amoire, my old antique Jenny Lind spool bed that had been in the family since the early 1900’s, my draperies, my drapery hardware, my golf cart that I bought and didn’t like…no body wanted anything but the golf cart. This experience resulted in my saying, “You guys should have moved a trailer to the front of my house because we have made about 43 trips here with donations”, to the Goodwill donation trailer attendant. Really. They should have. All the thousands and thousands of dollars we spent on all the junk was essentially worthless (disregarding the tax write off). So there you have it. Our lives reduced to this. You work hard, you buy stuff, the stuff becomes worthless, you donate it for a tax write off and then you go shopping. Did I mention that the Rayman bought a new golf club bag today and dropped the old one off at the Goodwill trailer this p.m.? The beat goes on. History repeats itself.

Let me also say that I am married to a saint. He worked his ass off. We both did. But he worked harder. I packed boxes, he lifted boxes. Oh, I lifted them too but he lifted more of them. He was the first one to rise and the last one to quit. This a.m. (we were to be out yesterday) there were still a few things left in the garage. In our defense, we stopped at 6:30 p.m. because Ray’s brother from Virginia was coming through on his Harley with a friend (another man motorcycle guy) and wanted to stay. Well, we had no place to stick him so we rented a Best Western room in MB and took them out to dinner and stayed out unti 9:30 entertaining. OMG. We couldn’t believe it. What are the chances that the timing would work out exactly that way?

But i digress and will continue to do so until I tell you this story. When we actually loaded the POD and the U-haul truck (required for the spillage which was destined for the…wait, wait. Let’s back up. We organized things so that the will-keep junk and furniture destined for the new house would go in the POD. The no-sure-if-this-will-work junk and furniture was loaded into the truck and destined for the MB storage locker. Those two things were parked side-by-side. While in the passion of loading, along comes the Cayucos Sanitary District officials who proceeded to park on the street. I think there were four trucks (they have too many trucks) They were researching a drainage problem that a neighbor below the northern most house on our street had complained about in a letter. So…the very day we had hired three movers to load the POD and truck and 2 workers we hired to move all the garden furniture and potted plants up to Uncle Ralph’s …there appeared an armada of trucks filled with investigators to muddy the waters if you’ll forgive the pun. Oh, and they turned on the water from the hydrant and created our stream through the back yard. Yes, siree. Never a dull moment.

I must retire now. It’s 8:48 and my lids are drooping…along with a few other body parts. Time to go to bed early so i can get up and play golf tomorrow…first time in 2 weeks that we’ve had a day without packing. Oh, joy. But, don’t despair, there is more to come!!