Board Games

Yesterday afternoon our friend PJaye came over and we were planning a Scrabble Death Match out on the deck. All would have been well had we known where our game of Scrabble was.

After moving, it seems as though we are only unpacking as needed. That is to say, whatever we are looking for. I know this seems highly inefficient, and you’d be right for thinking so, but without a handle on how long we will even be here or where life will take us next, priorities have been shifted. Unfortunately this also means most of my craft and quilting stuff is still in the garage in boxes. Most is organized, but I know if I’m looking for something and can’t find it there’s a good chance it is in the box marked “Random Shit from the Craft Room.” Yes, towards the end of packing I started getting lazy. I know, shocking.

Anyway, while searching for the box marked “Board Games” I came across a smaller one with that title. Needless to say these were not the games I was looking for. And so I continued my search and was quite clueless where they’d be, mostly because I didn’t pack them so I didn’t even know what kind of box I was looking for in the first place. Well, after I searched, my husband searched, and I did a second search underneath three heavy boxes of DVDs and Blu-rays and an old footlocker, I found it. Also needless to say, we’ve got a lot of stuff.

So we played our game, had some dinner and said our goodbyes. I don’t know what it is, but there is nothing like a good old fashioned board game to bring friends and family together, even though we only brought about half of our games over and are planning to garage sale the rest. Like I said earlier, we got a lot of stuff and what we have here isn’t even all of it. Why not dust off an old favorite family board game and play it tonight?

Let's Finish This Already

While we mostly moved a few weeks ago, we are still living out of boxes. I’m ready to unpack now.

Yes, there are a few things at the old house we still need to get. For one thing, our lawnmower. I mean, it’s not like we’ve got a lot of lawn to mow here, but still, it’d be nice to have it here so we can mow down the patch of weeds that is referred to as a lawn in the backyard. It would also be nice to get our fish moved over and everything else we want here, like the vegetable garden stuff we are taking, herbs and strawberries, and all of the garden pots.

I’m also ready to get the ceilings painted in the office and boys’s room and finish painting the bathrooms, I just don’t want to be the one to do it. I know it has to be done and that the longer we wait the more we’ll simply be okay with how it looks. While I was reading the boys a bedtime story the other night I looked up at stared at the Hail Hitler painted on the ceiling and thought, “Well, it isn’t that noticeable.” Okay, now I know we need to paint over it soon.

I guess I am just tired of everything looking like we are ready to move again, because I don’t want to do that for a long time to come. Things like hanging pictures on the walls and books and bookcases that make a difference. The personal touches that make a house a home. After being here a few weeks now, I’m ready to leave the old house behind us and start living in this one.

Operation Kitchen: Complete

Yesterday my plan to finish the kitchen and the boys’s room was a success. Well, mostly.

After getting a rather late start, running by the house to load up the shelving unit in the kitchen we used as a baker’s rack, some yard tools, and a few little things, I went to the hardware store to exchange the much-too-small hose I got for the refrigerator ice maker installation. Fortunately it was only a couple bucks more for a connector five feet longer. Like I said, grossly underestimated the size I’d need. Now we have ice!

Anyway, so I got home and started doing what I could to tackle the mess otherwise known as the kitchen, filled with boxes of pots, pans, bowls and stemware, bags and reusable shopping bags I’d loaded with groceries, and started trying to figure out where to rehome them. The once useless space under the corner cabinet section? I found that if I got all the way down on the floor I can just barely reach the very back. So I put least used items in the farthest reaches of its confines and used one shelf for baking goods and the bottom for extra storage bags and plastic wrap. I’m sure more stuff will make it in.

After the kitchen was mostly tackled, I began work on the boys’s room. I had an idea of how it would turn out, but after putting the bedding on the futon and books and a few toys on the bookcases and their clothes in the dresser, it still looks empty. Perhaps we need to get a few posters for the walls and definitely bring over the stuffed animals from the house.

We then started putting boxes in the closets of stuff we either weren’t unpacking or unpacking yet, and brought in the baker’s rack from the garage to put all of our bins of food, the microwave and cookbooks. I have to say that with the addition of the pantry, the baker’s rack does look quite empty. However, I’m thinking that open storage for all the cake pans will make good use of those bottom two shelves. We’ll see how well this plan works. In the mean time, I’m excited to see how well working in this kitchen will be. With a cake order and a cupcake order for tomorrow, I guess I’ll find out tonight.

Unpacking

Finally I feel like I am beginning to unbox our lives. Unfortunately there is still a large part that needs to be packed and moved over… including the chickens.

So I have a plan for today, and that is to unpack and set up the boys’s room, unpack the kitchen, and get a longer hose for the refrigerator’s ice maker because my little brain wasn’t thinking when I got one that was obviously way too short yesterday. Of course, my brain was also operating on practically nothing when I bought the hose because my attempt at eating breakfast at work was foiled by an influx of telephone calls and a person dropping off a dead lady’s dog that was supposed to be in Texas but was found broken and bruised in her abandoned house’s yard by the neighbor. Yes, Macho is back at the clinic. My granola bar lunch I was looking forward too wasn’t going to help the matter either. Hmmm… perhaps this is why I’ve lost twenty-five pounds since I started working again?

Ah, the joys of unpacking stuff. First you have to locate the items you are looking for and then you have to figure out where in the hell you are going to put them because after nearly fourteen years of this stuff practically not moving much you suddenly have to find new places to put them. This is especially true in our awkwardly designed kitchen/dining room. I mean, what is the point of having a new kitchen if it has less storage than something built in the 50s? Of course, I think the revert back to basics approach versus the Every-Kitchen-Needs-To-Be-Huge Phase must have been on the builder’s mind a decade ago. Especially considering the smaller size of the house, it’s gotta be a starter or ender home. Which is fine because ninety percent of the time it is just the two of us, and the boys really don’t have a whole lot in the way of toys or possessions that aren’t ours from our childhoods (or the desperate attempts to hold onto them) so really it is just going to be a matter of what do we need and what can we live without.

Alas, I suppose I should begin getting the boys’s room in order for them since they’ll be here tomorrow. I wouldn’t want their first impression of the house to be, “I’d rather go back to the homeless shelter, it’s not as ghetto.” Of course, the boys are going to be in for a big surprise because their mom is moving this weekend into their new home, which is going to be super exciting for all involved. I’m sure it’ll be nice to finally be back on her own, though maybe a little daunting at first. And to finally be able to unpack her life as well. Good luck, Miss R.!