It's a wrap

Popcorn ceilings were someone's idea of a good time, circa 1970. Whoever put them all in, did it to guarantee employment for the guys who install drywall and texture and such today. Our new house came complete with the requisite texture on the ceiling, having been built in 1973. We are not fond of such things, and made immediate plans to rectify the situation. Unfortunately, we did not schedule the work to be done until after we arrived, they we had to wait a couple of weeks for the work to commence.


This week, the first part of the work was completed. For three days, the upstairs rooms were wrapped in plastic for the process of hosing down the asbestos laden stuff and scraping it off, applying a skim coat, applying texture and painting the finished product. From what I have seen looking at houses in this town, there are lots of ceilings that need replacing, and some that have been replaced without the benefit of the final coat of paint. Again, not my idea of a good time. Once the work was done, I quickly finished painting both kids rooms. Now they are waiting for the paint to be dry enough to put furniture against the walls and hang pictures, but at least they do not have to move everything out of their rooms again.

We start this week's tour with a view of the three bedroom doors leading off the upstairs hallway.

Taking the center door, we head into the girl's bedroom. Sheet plastic speckled with paint and texture material rivals the beaded doors in high fashion.

Next, we pay a visit to the boy's bedroom. That plastic impedes access to the closet, but it does keep the toys tidy.

The spare room is looking lovely today as well. Should you pay us a visit, what a treat it would be to sleep here.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, after removing the cupboard over the place where the miniature refrigerator would go, we installed our full size model. Some day soon, perhaps we will make the cabinet look like it was supposed to be that way, and unpack that box. We should do it before Christmas, since the label indicates it holds Christmas dishes.

When children lack bedrooms, they nest in odd places. This room full of boxes will some day be a living room. It has couches and a TV. It has a girl's bed too. Just outside the frame to the left are two chests of drawers.

The master bedroom doubles as a resting place for the boy, waiting for the return of his own room. There seem to be musical instruments and other extraneous items as well.Finally, my sanctuary. The room where I communicate with the world. Next week, it is on the ceiling patrol's list for restructuring. At least I can fold up the laptop and visit the world from another perch. The wireless modem will move back upstairs before this room is closed off to the world for three days. What a fine ledge to collect insulators below the window. Either the car is flying, or I am below ground, take your pick.

Tempus Fugits once again

Another week has gone by, and I am still looking at boxes. I have painted one room with a first coat and in another I painted the accent wall twice. We are still waiting for the guy to come and fix the ceilings so we can really settle in. He wants the rooms empty to work, so we are in this temporary state for the moment. I have done a few things like hanging towel racks in bathrooms and unpacking some of my kitchen things which make life better. I still have not removed the cupboard over the fridge which keeps it from moving into place. I like the fridge in the dining room, it adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the ambiance. Of course if I took out the cupboard and moved the fridge, I would have to unpack the last two dish packs, which would mean that I would need to find more space in my kitchen which is full already, and I am contemplating removing a cupboard.

Outside the house, I am doing better. My girl has been to four cross country practices this week, I registered both children for school, and I have obtained licenses for two cars. One of them needed its final emissions check. Next year it will be 25 and graduate from the program, or something. The other car without a license needs an emissions check too. Up next is driver licenses. That test requires more studying than the smog test. They insist on taking my old license away too. I got to keep the plates from the cars. One is good until next July. I guess my garage wall can drive in California for 11 months if it wants.

We have done some back to school shopping, and we are learning which stores are best to shop at for various items. More painting is on the way before I get to make yet another fun drive to California. I think I get to rest for a while after that. Until something else comes up, as it always does.

Progress

Life is getting better. We connected our DSL today. Now the rest of the family can use the other computer. Qwest kindly upgraded our modem to a wireless one, so I can sit down here and peck away in peace. Of course, I could use the router which came free the last time I connected to broadband, but the modem works just as well. I even gave it a128 bit encryption password, which I did not feel I needed last time, since the neighbors were farther away. I can see at least 3 other wireless networks from where I sit, so I decided to protect mine.

Yesterday, my son and I took a walk/ride to the end of the next street. It runs out at the edge of a green space mandated by the local high voltage power lines. I guess that is one of the benefits of having a major power generation facility in the middle of the river downtown. Another one is cheap locally produced hydropower. At the end of the street we found a place that he described as AWESOME,and wished he could share it with his friend who he rode bikes with the whole day when we were loading the truck last week. At least he rode bikes for the part of the day when they were not watching Underdog. Here is part what he found and what he did with it.

There seems to be a whole course with jumps and such that someone has created just behind a few houses. We have not seen anyone else using it, but there are plenty of tracks to indicate that it sees use. I did not get any pictures of him catching air, but he certainly did that many times.

New arrivals

This first one is a bit of old news. This is the paper we saw the morning after we arrived in Klamath Falls. A little more than 24 hours after the big accident, we drove past it. It was still a mess, but at least the road was open for us. Yesterday's big news, a big truck on a little street. . .

I had a car in here once, but now all I see is stuff.
Maybe it came from that truck. Now we are busy unpacking boxes. Kind of like Christmas, except nothing is new, and we put it all there ourselves. It is always funny to discover where things were packed, like the remotes for the DVD player and the TV in the box labeled "Kitchen"

Old toys, new places

This morning, my boys mowed the lawn using the old Silent Scotts that we used as kids. It was not easy, because the lawn had not been mowed in weeks, but it had benefited from a steady supply of water from the sprinklers. Here the job is done and the boy and dog are cooling themselves on the freshly cut grass. The girl is busy text messaging her friends.

It all depends on your point of view

Some funny things have been going on at my house. My people had been putting their things in brown boxes for a while. Fortunately they left my dishes and toys out. My people loaded up my car and trailer and took it away. I had to go visit another dog, so I missed what they did, but when I came home, the car and trailer were empty and my biggest car was gone.



Then a few days ago, they started putting things in the car and trailer again. Now, you need to understand that when the car and trailer go places, so do I. This time, I kept a close eye on events, so I would not be left behind. Then, a man drove a big white truck backwards up the driveway and two other men started taking everything out of our house and putting it in the truck. I inspected the proceedings, thinking I should ride in the truck instead of the car, but I was tied to one of my people, so I could not stop acheive my goal. Someone kept tying me up by the car, but not letting me in it. Then at the end of the day, what joy (as I thought at the time) I was allowed to sit in the front seat of the car and supervise operations. I promptly fell asleep.



When I woke up, all the smells had changed and the house was gone. I had to get back in the car, and we drove and stopped again and again. Each time I stopped, all of my people were there, but not my house or my big car. I was confused. We stopped at a big house and we all slept in the same room. I had a hard time deciding who to sleep with. I jumped from bed to bed a lot. The next day, I had to get in the car again. It was a long day. We stopped and started just like the day before, each time the smells were different, but my people and my other car were there. At the end of the day, I finally was allowed to get out of the car and stay out.



Car rides are not as fun as I thought they were. Then we stayed in a big house that had lots of dogs in it. They were not all in our part of the house though. We had a nice part with several rooms for me to wander in, and a bed to sit on and look out the window. My people kept coming and going, and some lady came in and took our towels. I wonder if I will ever get to see my house again. I am really uncertain about the car ride thing, if this is what it gets me. As payback, I refused to eat anything that does not come from my people's plates.



Then we went to see a pretty house with a nice yard. My people even let me run around in the yard without a leash. It has lots of grass which is fun to roll in and wipe my face around in. My people even started taking their things out of the trailer and bringing them into the house. Sometimes they tied me to a tree in the front yard as if I would run away. Then when the trailer was empty, two of my people drove away. I was bored. My favorite person was working on a door, and I found a delicious green treat in the bottom of a cupboard nearby. I made an exception to the not eating anything that my people were eating rule and I ate it. My favorite person got really excited.. She made a couple of phone calls, then she put me in the car and took me to a place where they fed me some yucky stuff that made me empty my tummy all over the floor. Then they poured some black stuff down my throat that made me really thirsty. They poked me with a needle before they let me see my favorite person again. I am not going back there, no matter what. I guess I should eat my food from my dish after all.



By Shadow





Note from Mom: We have arrived safely, closed escrow and moved all our things out of storage into our house. The moving truck is still scheduled for Tuesday delivery.



What Shadow ate was rat poison that the former owner of the house left out in case she had rats or mice. Shadow will be fine, but she gets to take a pill every day for a month and go back for a checkup when the pills are gone. People should not leave things like that lying around for those of us with small children and dogs. The doctor said I did exactly the right thing bringing her in within an hour of ingesting the poison.



Today I am at the local county library which doubles as a WiFi hotspot. I might even check out a book while I am here. I have signed up for DSL at home which should work sometime later this week.

Moving week

The final week is here at last. The schedule for those of you keeping score:

Today, Sunday: Church this morning, potluck at church this afternoon, pick up daughter this evening when the youth group returns from Spirit West Coast where she has been for the last five days instead of packing.

Tomorrow, Monday: Final laundry, pack both cars and the trailer before the moving truck arrives. Visit the post office to send things to my siblings and put in a change of address. Escrow closes on our current house.

Tuesday: The movers arrive. If I have sufficiently convinced them that we are packed and ready, they might even bring the truck along. Otherwise, they show up, start packing, and maybe the truck comes later in the day, if we are not so blessed, it shows up the next day.

Wednesday: If the movers brought the truck yesterday, we could be on the road early this morning. If not, we are still loading the truck today with high hopes for a noon departure.

Thursday: Today we finsh the drive. When we arrive in our new home city, we will stop by storage and trade a car full of stuff for an empty car so the five of us can all fit in one vehicle for the afternoon festivities. Five, you ask? Two parents, two children and a dog. She will be in the car for all the traveling until we have keys to our new backyard. Our goal is to arrive before our 3:00 PM appointment with our realtor for our final inspection of the house before we sign papers at 4:00 PM. Since they have not given us the final deposit amount for the new house, all the proceeds from our old house will be on deposit in our savings account, which adds a trip to the Credit Union to obtain a cashier's check to the plans for the day.

Friday: We close escrow on our new house, obtain the keys and unload two cars and the trailer. Then we drive over to our storage unit where we left a few things three weeks ago, load that into the cars and unpack that stuff in our new house too.

Saturday through Monday we breathe, enjoy our new house, visit Walmart and Home Depot for all those essentials like paint and toilet paper that we suddenly need.

Tuesday: The moving truck shows up to unload. If they are lucky, we will not have spread the four carloads and two trailer loads of stuff so far that they have to move it to get into the house.

For my regular correspondants, I will be online here until the moving truck leaves. I will send one final message before I unplug the modem to take it back to Time Warner on our way out of town. I will have WiFi access to email each evening on the road. Once we are in our house, I do not know when we will be connected again. I have been getting a bit of a run around regarding service. I will take the computer from time to time to visit hot spots and check mail. Even the local Burger King advertises a hot spot. I expect to be up and running again at home in a couple of weeks, but that depends on the quality of the wires, as we found out at Mom's house. Our new house was built in 1973, so the wiring is not exactly up to today's standards. I will keep everyone updated as best I can.

Teenage drivers

First she wants the car keys. Then she complains that Mom's car is not sufficiently cool. Then she complains that the car allocated for her use eats too much gas. The latest gripe was funny though, she did not want to drive, because she did not feel the freedom properly with me in the car. Of course, since she does not have a license yet, she has few other options. Driving with Dad being the only other one I know of. Anybody else over the age of 25 want to take my girl for a spin in a cool car? I seem to be unable to do so.