Unloading

We've been in the new house about 9 days.  Today the last of our possessions from the 2nd and final POD(S) was unloaded and are now stacked to my chin in various places around the house.  Just when we had kind of broken through the previous wave of stuff to make the house look almost liveable, all the rest of our stuff got dumped in on top of it.

My conclusion is still that we have way too much stuff, though the two guys whom I paid to unload the POD today were very gracious and assured me several times that no, we don't have that much stuff.  They've certainly moved a lot more.  I didn't have any cash to tip them, but I gave them cold SOBEs from the fridge as they left.

I don't know how to write about the last couple of weeks.  There has been so much going on.
I have been completely overwhelmed by the fabulous family, friends, and neighbors who have let me cash in favors all over the place.  My family did more to help me purge and pack and entertain the kids over the past month than I could ever hope for. My friends have watched my kids, watched our plants, and watched our pets when asked on zero notice.  People have come through with us on favors and advice and tips that made my world much easier.  It kind of contrasted from the rather painful exit of our old house - which I left in kind of a hurry and didn't get to clean properly, then was lambasted by the new owners about my filthiness.  Our real estate agent on that end happily passed on the vitriolic comments from the buyers of our old house, how they were demanding pest bombs and $1,000.00 for professional cleaning.  She was calmly assuring me it was all my fault and advising me that now I get to pay to clean the house we left before she washed her hands of us completely.  The whole thing ended up as a very painful and unhappy situation on the selling end.  

Contrast that to our new house, where people have been friendly, gracious, and helpful!  The real estate agent for the new house has been like a sister, calling to make sure I haven't blown a fuse, and dropping by REALLY  NICE housewelcoming gifts.  New neighbors have assured me that THIS IS the best side of the freeway to live on, to raise a family on.  People here are much friendlier, and there are a lot more kids.  Yippeeee!  That's just what I was hoping to hear!!


Thing 2 is already fast friends with a little girl in her class who lives about 8 houses away.  She has had to totally make new friends each year of school as it seems each year only her and one or two other kids from the previous year end up together, so I wasn't quite as worried about her.  Thing 1 has never had to make new friends each year, as most of her group of friends has moved together each year, so she is unfamiliar with the starting over thing.  She confessed very unhappily last night that she's really struggling and is not happy.  She wants to move back to our old town.  She's generally shyer is less interested in the typical girl-princess-pink sort of stuff.  She's not quite athletic enough to just go hang out with the boys, and has been caught in limbo in between.  Today, however, she reported she had had a very good day, met a new friend, and seemed happy.

It seems one of the casualties of our move was most of the contents of our liquor cabinet. This happened in two phases.
First, in an act of complete desperation, as the packers were loading up our stuff in the old house (or should I say as I saw they were NOT putting our stuff on the truck) I started giving them stuff just to try and get it out of our house, particularly the alcohol in the fridge.  Also this stray bottle in the fancy green and gold cardboard cylinder that was sitting on the counter, whatever that was.  I do not drink, and don't know the first thing about alcohol. I just know that we have a bunch of bottles cluttering up my basement and fridge, that no one ever seems to drink.  If there's a party, someone brings over the appropriate bottle to go with what's for dinner, and an extra, that just gets added to the contents of our basement.  So I was giving away whatever I could.
Second, right after we moved in, I was downstairs in the unfinished basement putting something on a shelf, and nudged the wine rack on the same shelf.  It's a fancy wine rack that holds the bottles nose down at what is apparently the right angle to keep the cork wet.  However it is also the optimum angle for sliding right out of the wine rack if it is jostled the right way, to go crashing nose down onto the cement basement floor.  We lost four bottles of something or other that way.

Later as I was regaling some friends who had come up to see the new house with the story of how hard I am on the alcohol in the house, my husband got kind of an alarmed look and asked "Where's the Scotch?"
The what?
"The Scotch, you know, the bottle of Scotch we bought in Scotland?"
Ummmm...  Might it have been green, in a cardboard cylinder?
"Probably!"
Welllll... I gave that to one of the annoying movers.
"...!!!!!!!  Are you kidding?"
No..?
"Honey, that bottle was at least 30 years old... maybe 40!"
What?  We only bought it, 12 years ago? and besides if you haven't drunk it in that long, who knows if you ever will! If you haven't used it, get rid of it, right?!
"Sweetheart...  (shakes head). I bought two bottles to give away, that was the one left.  It was 10-20 years old when we bought it. You pay more the older it is.  Scotch gets better as it gets older.  That was probably a $200.00 bottle of Scotch."
WHAT?  WHAT!?!?


So in a matter of 1 week I singlehandedly decimated our stock of alcohol.  For a non-drinker, that's quite an accomplishment.