Ready, set, rock!

More pictures:

Dining Room

Living Room

The chicken prison

the back yard

the guest room

I met with the realtor last week.  I signed on the dotted line.  It's for sale.  It's real.  The chickens are now confined to a small area of the yard (poor girls.. they don't like it one little bit!).  All that's left to do, really, is wash the windows and clean out the garage.  Yesterday we made 3 trips to charity, one trip to the storage locker and Peter's car was full to the brim.

Speaking of Peter's car being full.  He took his super-duper pressure washer home as well as a few boxes, but mostly his car was full of something else.  Go ahead, ask me what it was full of!  It was full of... (drum roll please....)

Rocks.

Not unlike The Long Long Trailer starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, where Lucy is stashing rocks in every nook and cranny of their honeymoon trailer. I've been collecting rocks for years.  

Before me, it was my mother and father.  It's probably genetic.  When I was a child they would collect rocks as souvenirs from all their adventures - most entirely legally, but I know of one story where they hid rocks in the wind shield washer vessel under the hood of their car.   All the way home they prayed it wouldn't rain so they would not need their washers. When my mom and dad moved back to Missouri in 1989 they hauled all these rocks back with them.  They moved from one house to another back there and moved the rocks.  When my mom moved in with me in Vancouver, she brought the rocks (much to my brothers consternation as he was the one who helped her with that move).  When we moved to Salem, we brought her rocks and my rocks - now permanently inter-mingled and combined, the subject of who's rocks are who's too blurry to sort through.  Now, I'm moving them all north with me.  Stupid rocks.  I've been moving them one or two rocks at a time but it's getting crunch time.  So the remainder all went this weekend.  Although, I do think he missed some around the corner in the back...  (I'll sneak them up when he's not looking)

Peter, bless his heart, gathered up all the rocks adorning my landscape and drug them out to the sidewalk and proceeded to power wash them all on Saturday.  Without a word of complaint or mention of my insanity.  In fact, when asked, he thought it was perfectly normal to collect rocks and move them criss-cross around the country.  He did mention, when his car was all filled up, that he felt like he was driving "uphill" because of all the weight in the back.

I doubt I'll stop either.  I like rocks.

3 Bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, 1650 sq feet. For Sale.

The Kitchen



The Master



also Master Bedroom



The Office



The other side of The Office



Laundry Room

 The other rooms are mostly ready...  just finishing up with the straightening and putting things away.  But, I'm ready, bring on the home buyers!

86 days

I'm exhausted.  This moving thing is hard.  Really hard!

I've lived in this house going on 7 years.  Do you have any idea how much junk a person, a FAMILY, collects in 7 years???  It is amazing the stuff that piles up.  I wonder if the receipts in the bag in the corner have been having sex when I haven't been looking and multiplying like bunnies.  How did I end up with 7 sets of lamps - what have they been doing when the lights go out - and why are they all so ugly?

This past weekend another load of stuff went to the dump  (that totals 5 trips).  I rented a 5 x 10 storage unit and it's half full already.  The painting is nearly done.   I knew the weekend was going to be hard.  There was still so much to do despite the fact that Peter spent a week here in March.  The new carpet was coming today and all the painting needed to be finished, furniture needed to be moved, there was HUGE work to do.  On Friday evening, instead of working hard, I was sitting on my butt having a glass of wine (or two) when Peter called.  He called earlier than usual.  I was suspicious. It was odd.  He never calls "off schedule."  Well he does, he does a lot of things to keep me off kilter, but something was still odd about his phone call.  Indeed, during our conversation he walked in the front door.  How nice.  How wonderful.  How thoughtful.  Do you actually suppose he can keep this up for another 50 years?  I wonder.  He's setting very high standards for himself.

Since there were now two of us working on painting and packing and moving and such, an amazing amount of work got done.  Too bad he had to go home last night. 

The carpet layers came today and replaced the flooring in both upstairs bathrooms and the carpeting in my room and Jill's room.  I was able to work from home today to make sure the workman didn't go through my underwear drawer or run up my cable bill.

I met with a representative from a professional mover today to get a quote on a professional move.  Needless to say, I'm now considering driving a u-haul van.

The carpet layers are coming back tomorrow to do the downstairs - then they'll be back Friday to finish up the upstairs rooms. Which means this evening Jill and I had to clear out the downstairs of all the furniture - put our bedrooms back together to make room to sleep  (I slept on the floor last night.. don't want to do it twice) and we had to re-set the toilets - as the movers don't do THAT part.  Not that I'm complaining - they moved matresses today - which isn't in their job description.

 I'm continuing to work from home this week to accomodate the new floors - I have more appointments with moving companies. 

I'm tired and I need another glass of wine.  Now I shall try to figure out how to crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees and not spill my wine.  Wish me luck.