May Flowers…or…Moving Out of Our Rental. You pick.
Hey there.
I know.
It's been a while.
The thing you'll need to get used to with me is that I have a hard time putting things down on paper…um, screen…if I can't feel what I need to write. Sometimes I have all kinds of shit rolling around in my head, but when it comes out it doesn't resemble anything I was thinking. It can be a frustrating process, or it can be one in which I can get completely lost and write for hours.
Ugh. Anyway. The last few weeks have been all about moving. Packing up our rental and getting everything to the bus, or the shipping container, or to Andy's parents house. Lucky them, they got our 1970s Pioneer receiver and Audio Technica turntable, along with all of our vinyl. We didn't think it would appreciate the hot summer temps in the shipping container nor the vibrations of driving down the road all the time, but I will definitely miss it…and my Tapestry album.
We planned to be out of our rental by Mother's Day. What's that they say about making plans? We were not out by Mother's Day. We were done living there by Mother's Day, but it was still full of a lot of stuff. One problem we've been having is that our local thrift stores have not been open during Minnesota's stay at home order, so we have piles of bags for Goodwill. Yes, piles. I almost can't believe how much stuff I purged. You see I purged the winter before we started remodeling our house (2018/19), since we had to move out of the house to do all of the renovations.
I purged again before we finally moved out of the house last summer. When I say I purged, I mean I took 5+ full vanloads to Goodwill. Like full from the floor to the ceiling and from the tailgate to the driver's seat. Apparently after 15 years of living in a 3100 sq ft house, you can accumulate a lot of crap. Now try to fit what you need into 300sq ft (not incl storage bays - because I didn't count our oversized three car garage with the house)
Now, however, we are finally on the bus. Like bed up on a platform, baskets of our life stacked up under the bed, in the storage building where the bathroom is, in the back of the van, in the storage bays under the bus. Our entire life is mixed in with rolls of vinyl and cans of paint. The boxes of games we decided to bring are sitting in the bay between the generator and the dishwasher.
But, we finally have our cabinets in.
We have our refrigerator in, and full.
We finally have a convection oven/microwave that works (no thanks to the orange box fake-DIY store that shall not be named) and Andy's job for today is to make the curved end piece for the hallway side of the cabinet so I don't smash into a sharp corner everytime I pass by, and to install the propane cooktop. I am crazy excited for the cooktop. I have been going back to the rental as we've been cleaning it, and making eggs because we have no cooktop, so that will be awesome!
Thank the gods we were renting from a good friend; it makes a difference that we've been able to go about it at a speed that's slower than a panic.
Oh, and we finally brought Turbo, our cat, to the bus. We left her at the rental as long as we could. The location we have the bus parked is very near a busy intersection with lots of semi traffic, and she is a mixed lifestyle cat. She loves to be outside but only on her terms, and she generally thinks that loud trucks are scary monsters.
This morning she ventured outside for the first time. I introduced her to the local crows, who have really enjoyed all the compost we've put out for them. They should watch out for her, since they recognize us as their friends. She also discovered the perfect place to sit under the bus and eat grass, because when she's under the bus nobody can see her. Ah the cat life.
These last few weeks have seemed slow, but I am grateful for them and the breath they allowed.
I will leave you here, as I now have to go set up my sewing space. I have more masks to make, and since it's going to rain for the next two days before it hits 80 for the next week after that, its the perfect time to make screens for the windows so I don't actually need to use my new Epi-Pens.
