Our New Abode - Week Five, dated April 4, 2003

Monday night was our first night here. We had the bed set up earlier, but there were a few other things that needed to be moved in before I felt comfortable living here. It's gonna take MONTHS and months to get the place more or less organized, but I can at least live here now. All of the walls are painted and the flooring is done in the two bedrooms.

I've spent days hauling boxes of clothes and books over from the storage units. I thought by putting clothes in the boxes, they would stay clean. HA! Wishful thinking. So, I ended up washing most of it, as it was either dirty from dust trickling in the boxes, or wrinkled. Or a bit stale smelling. There's a dinko closet in the 2nd bedroom (we're trying to call it the storeroom - we'll see how that takes in terms of word acceptance). In our bedroom there's a hanging clothes pole and that's it. I was able to put my mom's low wooden dresser to good use, by putting it under the clothes rod. There's enough room to the side of the dresser for my two wooden dressers that are much taller (ones that Jeff and I used when we were teens - they're still in great shape). Dirk put together some wire baskets, so I can pile up sweaters and t-shirts on top of the taller dressers, as well as on top of the clothes pole (there's a shelf up there that I stuck contact paper). I still have to sort through all that, as well as the clothes I crammed into the dresser drawers.

By the way, my mother would be proud of me! All of the clothes is hanging on plastic hangers. She had a "thing" for plastic hangers and insisted that all of her clothes was hung on them. And she tried to convert others to her way of thinking. She did get me as a convert years ago, so I was safe from further conversions. After she died and we sorted through her clothes, I took most of her hangers, thinking I would be able to use them eventually. Well, I did. I didn't quite work my way through all of her white hangers (with some pink ones thrown in for good measure), but I did make a good dent in her stash. And I was glad to have them, as it was one less thing to go out and purchase. Too many things have already been added to that list.

Between the two of us, we have quite a bit of clothes. Rather disgusting, if you think about it. (I'll try not to!) However, it's nice to have all of our clothes out, more or less. Before stuff was really crammed into the closet in Spokane, or in boxes, as there wasn't enough room for it all. I got some of those plastic hanging wardrobes for the storeroom closet, for coats and such that I don't want covered in cat hair. I also bought a much larger one that's free standing and has a plastic cover over it. In there I wadded it full of skirts, pants, dresses (yes, I have a few of those) and shirts. This way the cats can wander around the storeroom (where I put it, against one wall) and I won't have cat hair all over them. That really drove me nuts in Spokane. We both don't like closets doors, as they always seem to get mucked up somewhere along the line and won't roll around very easily. Yesterday I bought a smaller garment rack (the "Deluxe Adjustable" one - HA!) for the bedroom. On it I hung my shirts that I'm wearing, the casual ones, that will get cat hair on them and I won't care. Discovered I have way more denim shirts that I ever knew. Lots of 'em, in fact.

So, the bedroom is pretty much set up. I ended up getting two long, narrow rugs to put alongside the bed. The other morning Guy fell out of bed and really thumped himself on the wood floor. I felt so bad. This way he'll have a bit more cushioning than before.  (He's one of my diabetic cats and he had a very hard life before I adopted him.) And we have a place to put our tootsies when we get in and out of bed, instead of the cold floor. And the best thing, those rugs are washable, as I know some cat will barf on them at some point.

I also hung up some prints in the bedroom, since all of the furniture is in there. In one corner I hung up 3 donkey/mule prints. I would have put up a 4th, but the print doesn't have a hanger on the back, so that will wait. So, right now there's this wierd grouping of prints, that looks a bit off kilter. But it'll look better with the 4th one added in. Above the bed I hung this nice, long print done by my cousin. I have a bunch of her artwork, as well as others by her sister and mother. The one above the bed depicts a field of dairy cattle, grazing and lounging away. It's a very peaceful print and one that looks great above the bed. I think it helps to balance things out.

I'm waiting on the rest of the artwork until the rest of the furniture is in place. I put some up in the bathroom, as well as 3 in the library area. With so much wall space, I might actually run out of prints to hang up! I never had all of them up before, so it'll be great to get them up. There's still some over in the storage unit that I haven't uncovered, so it's a good thing I'm waiting to put the rest up.

The "library" is pretty much done, as far as I can right now. That's the room that's originally the dining room. But since we're not going to set up a dining table in that room, we'll be calling it the library. There are two areas of the room where there are shelf brackets, for wooden shelves. I've filled all of the shelves (except for one long one that I still need to put contact paper on). One wall is quite long and is filled with multitudes of paper and hard back books. I like different mystery series, so I tend to keep all of the books in those series, which makes for quite a few to have on hand. The shorter wall is filled with various VHS tapes and DVDs. There are two shelves filled with books, though. Yesterday I put the last of them up and spent most of the day organizing the books on the shelves. They're now in order by author, but not alphabetical. Even that would have been a bit too much for me. HA! That was the project that I wanted to get completed before I moved onto anything else.

Once the flooring is done in that room, I'll be able to put my wood bookcases up. I've got oversized books that can fit in those, as well as my hobby and plant books. I think there's still at least one more box stashed away in the storage unit, as there's some books from the middle of a few series that I'm missing and I know I have. Oh well, it'll be found eventually.

The other day we moved the couch in. What a bitch that was. I managed to fall on my rear end while we were moving it across the yard. The sofa is so large that I wasn't able to see what was ahead of me. We really needed a traffic director when moving it. Enough of the flooring has been done in the living room that we were able to bring it over. Also got the two custom built cat perches in, which pleases the cats to no end. They immediately scampered up and admired the view out the windows. Between that and the couch, the cats have another place to hang out at night, so they're not all piled on the bed at night. With 5 rather large cats, that doesn't leave much room for two people in a queen bed. HA!

So, things are slowing getting into shape. Also brought over the portable dishwasher. That was about as much fun to bring in as the couch was. Least I could see where I was going, but I still managed to dump it off the stairs into the house as it's heavy and it got off balance. Oh well, the dent on the side isn't seen once it's in place. Now to see if it still works.

Well, that's it for now. This weekend is NW Congress, a local hobby show. My bestest hobby buddy, Karen, is flying in from Colorado for the show. She's stopping in here after she lands, so she'll be our first official guest. She wanted to know if she needed to wear a hard hat (joke, of course!) since it's a construction zone around here. HA!