Well, hello, Internet. How’ve ya been? Me? Oh well….crazy busy!
This move is trucking along slowly. We picked up the keys to a new place on Saturday and since then I’ve been over at the place once a day at minimum with a new load of boxes. I’m trying to unpack what I can when I get there so taht we’re not surrounded by boxes when we do the furniture move this weekend.
I’m utterly in love with the new place. I’ve grown really tired of white walled buildings built in the 1970s. Though I gotta admit, some of the quirks of the duplex are going to take some getting used to.
1. The bathtub. We don’t have a shower, which for me, is easy enough to adjust to. The house that I own with The Professor doesn’t have a shower either. The only problem that I’ll end up having is that the new tub is built under an eve. Whenever I get out of the tub, I have to bend at a rather awkward angle to avoid hitting my head on the ceiling. We’ll see how W does when she’s half asleep in the morning and rushing to get to work. I suspect she’ll get concussed a few times before she figures it out.
2. My lovely new Roper Bake Master stove. I’m estimating the stove is from about 1938. That’s just from the research I’ve been doing. All of the internal labeling has been baked off over the years. It’s a lovely vintage stove. The procelain is still in great condition. The internal marbeling is still fairly well intact. Three of the four burners still work with their auto ignition and the fourth lights just fine with a kitchen match. My problem? The oven. I have absolutely no idea how to light the oven. I’m pretty sure it’s a match lit oven, because even though there is a pilot light that is lit under the broiler when you turn the oven on, you get nothing but gas. There is a small hole in the front of the oven, that looks like it’s sole purpose is to insert a kitchen match. So, I’m assuming…..BOOM! Okay, so assuming anything when dealing with natural gas and a match is probably not a good idea. The Professor is coming over tonight to try to help me figure out how to light it.
I’ve left my camera over there the past few days, so all of the pictures I’ve been snapping are stuck there until I head back over today. Pretty sure I snapped some of the oven, so I’ll put some up later.
Posted by Amelia on Dec 30, 2008 in
The Great 2008 Migration The Great Northeastern Migration is quickly catching up on us. We can begin the official move-in on the 15th, so that leaves me 16 days to get this house whipped into shape. I’ve been guzzling down coffee by the pot full and trying to do at least two major projects a day.
Yesterday, I sorted through the medicine cabinet and bathroom linen closet. It’s amazing how much expired Excedrin we had up there!
Today I’ve been pulling down shelves (W is ADDICTED to shelves from Ikea!). I’m about to wash the dishes from last nights dinner and then head to the bedroom to start sorting clothes and packing up books. Then it will be onto the non-essential kitchen items.
Oh yeah. I’m gonna rock this move SO hard.
When we took the dogs out last night, there was snow on the ground and everything was still pretty crisp, but this morning when we woke up, it was raining and most of the snow had begun to melt. Sad! December just doesn’t feel right without snow. Things were dirty and brown and just down right ugly out there.
I spent the day knitting and trying to put myself into a holiday mood with crafts, even if it was ick outside. I was willing it to be more wintery out and I think I may have saved Christmas! Really! Now this evening it looks like an absolute blizzard is forming outside. There is even frost forming on the windows. Horray. I’ll happily take this weather for three weeks. Then it all needs to go away so that we can get down to the moving!
Speaking of moving, we went out to W’s storage unit yesterday. Oh my. I always knew my girl had some pack rat tendencies, but this is out of control! She had an old box of Kleenex packed away in storage! She has a box that is nothing but Space Jam memorabilia! There was a box labeled “Stupid Old Roommates Bathroom Shit”, and indeed, it was the porcelain bathroom decor set that her old roommate had left behind YEARS ago. ARGH!
I’m a minimalist to a fault. I don’t hold on to things. I tend to throw stuff out that I end up needing again in six months, and sometimes end up spending hours digging for things that I have thrown away and forgotten about. It’s just a means of protecting myself from developing weird connections to things, but it sure does make life difficult sometimes.
She has vowed to make a trip out to the storage unit once a week between now and when we move, and I plan to hold her to it. There are good things about her pack rattiness though. She has an entertainment stand that will work perfectly in The Boy’s new bedroom, as well as a box fan that will come in handy this summer in the new duplex without central air. There were some old college dorm style milk crates that we originally talked about giving to The Boy, but I’ve realized they might be better used for yarn and fabric storage for myself. Yeah. So there are good things. There are bad things like the gazillion boxes that are going to end up piled in the living room as she sorts through them, but there are good things too.
Oh! And Happy Chanukah to everyone!
So Sunday evening. W is at work for a couple hours so I’m trying to get a blog post written and a little work done so that when she gets home we can have dinner and watch some trashy television together or something equally domestic.
I received a very cut and dry, scripted email from the customer service folks at Microcenter. Basically it just reiterated the same thing again. They were sorry. They would look into it. They had spoken with the local manager and would get back to me when they figured out what was going on. I’m starting to feel as though not much is going to come of the “excellent customer service” that I was so excited to see. Call me jaded, but we’ll see what happens.
We’re in the hardcore phases of apartment/duplex/house searching. Friday night we were supposed to view a great little house with a perfect fenced yard, and the damn landlord didn’t show up for our appointment. Probably for the best as we discovered while standing in the front yard of the house waiting for the idiot landlord that there was a domestic happening in the house on one side and the house on the other side had music playing loud enough that it was shaking the windows. We wouldn’t have liked the neighbors one bit. We’re a pretty quite family.
Yesterday was downright disasterous. I lost my driver’s license. The Boy™ and I got into a gigantic argument. And the cherry on top was a letter from my mental health clinic. I missed an appointment on Monday. It was my own damn fault and I fully acknowledge that. But I guess I went over my limit of missed appointments, and now I cannot be seen at the clinic any longer. I’m devistated about it to say the least. It drove me into a damn deep and heavy panic yesterday and I struggled through most of the evening with it. I was in a total panic. It’s pretty common knowledge that our area, and most other parts of the country from my understanding, are experiencing a shortage of available appointments for services. There are waiting lists at most clinics. Some clinics will not even make a medication management appointment for you until you have been seeing a therapist regularly with their clinic for three to six months. Without medication, I am not well. I generally end up hospitalized within a couple of weeks of discontinuation. It is an absolute disaster for me and for my family. The letter I received had a list of clinics that I could attempt to make appointments with. I’m going to start the process of making phone calls tomorrow.
I almost forgot to write today! And with it only being the third day of the NaBloPoMo thing that we’re trying to do, it would have been a crying shame if I screwed up this early.
As everyone knows by now, we’re going to be looking for a new place when our lease here is up. We have to give a sixty day notice, so technically, at the end of November, the search has to begin in earnest. I hate leaving that stuff to the last minute, but it seems that’s the way things work. Landlords don’t post things as vacant until a month prior to wanting to lease it, but tenants have to give notice two months in advance. Seems a bit silly, does it? To have to give notice prior to when you know if you will have a new place? Leaves me feeling a bit out in the cold, so to speak.
I’ve been emailing with a woman who has a duplex in the Standish neighborhood. It has a great fenced back yard and is a block from a library. It’s also a block from a high school that has a reputation as not being the greatest, but all in all it’s a decent neighborhood. The duplex is “ok” on the outside. I’m really hoping the inside blows W away, because that will make up for the outside being just “ok”. I’m pretty lax when it comes to housing really. Actually, I think I’m too lax. I don’t pay attention to much. If it has four walls, a roof, and a stove, it’s pretty easy for me to ignore everything else. Until I realize that there is only one electrical outlet in the whole house or the floor tilts so horribly that everything rolls around. Or that the neighbor has a confederate flag hanging from the back of his pickup. (All things that have actually happened) So, luckily W is on the exact opposite side of the spectrum. She has a much more stringent set of requirements for our future home. Hopefully we’ll be able to balance each other out.
EDITED: Thank you to Jumi for pointing out that my half-asleep ass originally referred to the confederate “rebel” flag as the Union Jack. Much appologies to those from the UK or the Commonwealth realms.
Posted by Amelia on Oct 19, 2008 in
The Great 2008 Migration We drove past an apartment last night that we fell in love with. It was absolutely perfect for us. Literally walking or biking distance to downtown Minneapolis, an onsite dog park, big kitchens, walkable to some of the best restaurants and bars in the city, as well as the Aveda Institutde where I can get reasonably priced, decent haircuts. Only to find out this morning, that we most likely do not meet their low income guidelines for a family of three. Grrr. So it’s time to start researching more apartments and moving options. I found Relocation.com today and was really impressed. There are direct links to apartment searches, information about moving overseas, storage units, and any number of other services we might need while we’re preparing for the move. Exciting!
