Zatera Ul

One week of moving fragile and awkward items, MFH taking a load over and unloading after work every day.

One week of me packing up a room a day, while MFH worked late every night and continued to take a load a day.

One U-Haul loaded to the top, constrained by time, but by then I had enough packed up to more than fill it. Our poor friends discover just how many boxes of books we have. OLC fell asleep in her car seat when I dropped MFH off to pick up the truck, and slept almost all the way through loading. Note to self: don’t have furniture that you can’t bear to get scratched until you move into your forever house. Our furniture got some new scratches and gouges during this move, but nothing for me to cry over because everything was all scratched up already.

One more week of packing and moving by car all the things that we didn’t get to before. I survive mostly on oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that I had baked before the big move. The car has been working hard, and needs a couple of trips to the shop, but these turn out to be nothing major.

One ten-hour day of me cleaning the house from top to bottom, while MFH and some friends moved a few more loads.

Another half day’s work of little mop-up tasks.

Now we’re done moving, just have finish unpacking and arrange everything. Altogether it was over twenty carloads, plus the one load with the U-Haul. Probably a good thing that we didn’t try to move everything at once. I didn’t throw away much while I was packing, mostly excess scrap lumber. I put a cabinet that we had in the garage out by the curb with a Free sign, and someone took it. But then we made up for that by taking in a discarded bookcase at the new place–never can have too many bookshelves. Now that we’re moved, I’m seeing more things that can be thrown out or given away.

OLC is doing well with the move; the new place has swings and a slide right outside. She has always liked to slide, but her love of swinging is something new. She skipped the baby swings and went straight to the big kid swings. Only a couple of falls so far.

Last night when we finished up the last few things at the house, we said “Bye-bye house” with her. She was born there.

I was curious and did some googling today (yes, that is a verb in our household) and found that one of my scientific papers from my graduate student career has been cited in Wikipedia. It makes me feel good to know that my years of toil in the basement of the physics building produced something useful.

Another thing I’m looking forward to with the move is not having to keep up with the gardening any more. This house has flower beds all around it , more all the way down the slope out front, on the boulevard, in front of and behind the garage, and there’s also a small vegetable garden. For a while I was going out for an hour or so every morning just to pull weeds. It’s very difficult to do anything out front when I have to watch OLC like a hawk to keep her out of the semi-busy street. Now, I’ve almost given up on it and just do a little weeding here and there as I follow OLC around the yard to make sure she doesn’t get into the street or the alley.

This is the sign that I thought of putting out front:

Wilsons’ U-Pick Weed Farm
$5 a bushel

I’ve been feeling pessimistic about the general direction of the economy lately. It didn’t help that the newspaper had a long article about affordable housing in the Twin Cities suburbs, and how people with incomes very near MFH’s were qualifying for subsidized housing. If we had another child, and I kept staying at home, we would definitely qualify. As I told him, not seriously, “Dude, where’s our handout?”

The apartment that we are moving to is affordable within MFH’s income. Heat is included in the rent, and it is three miles from his work. Essentially, we’ve maximized square footage per dollar while minimizing cost and commute distance. The house we are moving from is more than we can comfortably afford on his income, particularly with high heating and commuting costs. The apartment is actually a little bigger than the house, but will cost several hundred dollars a month less.

We got our keys today, and moved in the first carload. We’ve made it up the big, long hill of the roller coaster, and now we’re easing over the top. I am out of practice for moving; we’ve been in the house for three years, which is the longest I’ve stayed in any one place since I left home for college. Anyway, it’s going to be a big change, going back to living in an apartment and having to rattle around more quietly. Also, dealing with a much more restricted lifestyle: can’t set up my plywood soaking tub in the bathtub (won’t fit), can’t let the cat out, can’t play with my MAPP gas torch, can’t have a live Christmas tree. Can’t even have an extra freezer. Blah, blah, blah. On the other hand, I get a whole bedroom for personal space, instead of an oversize closet. And the apartment has certain modern conveniences that the house doesn’t: dishwasher, air conditioning (not that I will ever use it unless I’m pregnant), and 300% more closets. And linoleum and toilet seats that are much less than 20 years old. Each place has its pluses and minuses.

I was disposing of some old medication in the downstairs bathroom, and the low-flow toilet there took two flushes just to get pills down.

We’ll be beginning our big move to Eden Prairie next week (we have some overlap with our leases). I’m starting to start to pack.

This Mother’s Day column by Vox Day is one that I keep going back to re-read, when I get too worn out by the constant battle to maintain a level of civilized life in my home. He’s got it right that motherhood is not all cupcakes and cherubs.

I got so tired from building the compost bin because I did all the sawing, drilling, and screw-driving by hand. Not that it takes any great strength to do any of these operations with hand tools; even drilling holes with a hand drill is surprisingly easy. It was the cumulative effort over a long day that got me.

A side benefit of building the compost bin is that I used up a fair amount of our scrap lumber. Less to move.

I spent all day yesterday building a new compost bin, with the help of my young assistant. It is mostly finished, just needs front slide-in panels and maybe another row of mesh around the top. I moved all the compost into it this morning. Today I am very tired.

I’ve quit my job; my last working day was last Friday, and on Saturday I crammed all my work stuff into the car and hauled it over to the office. So that’s why I was so busy last month. I gave my notice at the beginning of the month, and then spent all of May trying to finish up all the things I wanted to get done before I left. I feel satisfied that I accomplished the things that I wanted to accomplish, and left my project in good shape. I left because I had prayed for a long time about when the right time to leave my job would be, and it seemed that the end of May was the answer I got.

My work there is finished.

The process of quitting was a little like dying, though. A few months ago I read through most of Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying. She noticed that the dying tend to be in the process of detaching themselves from the bustling affairs of the nondying. I felt that the last few months. My coworkers had have to think longer-term about their projects and the new projects they were trying to start up, while I was winding down my contributions to a single project and looking ahead to a whole new freedom.

I have plenty of projects to occupy my time. First of all, I need to get my household in better order; we will be moving next month. With the drop in income, I’ll be spending more time plugging the money leaks at home. Then, I have a few ideas in mind for starting a microbusiness of my own. Actually, I have very many ideas bubbling up in my mind like a pot starting to boil over. The past month of turning down the creative heat so I could finish my job well was rather painful. But I am free now.

I have another project in OLC. She wants me to read and read and read to her. She is picking up new words very quickly now. Also, she has figured out that words I’m reading are the words on the page, and she has decided that she wants to learn her letters, too. First she picked up O, all on her own, and in the past week or so has followed that with A, T, and Q. It looks like she is now learning M, N, S, K, and B. She studies her Dr. Seuss alphabet book quite seriously. Both MFH and I were quite surprised when she pointed to the Q and said, “Q!” though. MFH learned to read at a ridiculously early age, before he turned three, and it looks like his daughter may turn out the same.