kareina

We did 11 hours of cleaning and work on the new house today. The office is now empty and ready for the floor to be installed. We would love to paint the walls first, but we don't expect a paint store to be open tomorrow. We took one of the nice cabinets, which had been in the bedroom and put it in the kitchen to serve as a pantry holding all the glass jars of food.

We installed a shelf in the space where there once had probably been a small inset fridge, and mounted the microwave in there, at eye height. We cleared a space in the little room off the fridge for the bookshelf Caroline gave me, which is now the pantry for canned goods and refills for the jars.

We shoveled the driveway down to the garage door, so that when the late owner's step daughter comes to take away some of the tires and stuff in the basement it will be easier. Whilst outside we met some of the neighbours, who seemed really nice, and who also seemed glad to learn that we are cleaning out the house and that the cars in the yard will be going away.

We also cleaned a bit in the laundry room to make room for the dryer I brought with me, my tricycle, and my kick sled. In the process I discovered a mummified frog. I don't cope well with corpses, so I squealed when he picked it up to take a photo.

Once we were done for the day we took away the day's trash and recycling and tried to donate some of the former owner's clothes, but the container at the second had store was too full to take more.

We got back to Keldor's dad's house on time to watch the midnight fireworks out the bedroom window. Happy New Year!

I had previously packed most of my kitchen stuff, leaving out only those things that I use all of the time that David doesn't have equivalent examples of. keldor raised an eyebrow a bit tonight when I finally finished packing that last "little bit" of kitchen stuff, and it amounted to six full moving boxes (bringing my total to 66 boxes so far--a fair bit more than I had when I moved to Sweden 11 years ago).

Of course, there is still all the glass jars of food to be packed, and the stuff in my room...

This morning lord_kjar and I signed the last of the paperwork and picked up the keys to our New House. This pleases me immensely. I have wanted a house of my own since I was a child, but they are hard to come by when one is on a student budget.

Something that pleases me even more is how clean the previous owners left it. The plan for today was 1) meeting at bank to close the sale 2) take cleaning supplies to the house, along with a few other things, and start getting it ready to move in.

Because I am me I added to that list: bake bread in the new house. Last night I started a bread sponge, and this morning, after my run and before we went to the bank I turned the sponge into dough and set a loaf into the bread rising basket. I then put that and a few useful things, like a bread knife, baking sheet, hotpads, butter, etc. into a box, ready to go.

About the time lord_kjar got home from his couple of hours of work before our 10:00 meeting I was ready to go, so we went into town and bought a house. Then we came home, had a very quick lunch, hooked up his brother's little trailer to the car (we picked it up from his brother's house in Skellefteå on our way home from the gaming con this weekend), loaded onto the trailer the pallets and logs (future dishing stumps) and my trike (which still has a flat tire, because I haven't had time to deal with it for weeks now), and put the cleaning stuff and box of bread baking stuff into the car.

When we got to the house we backed the trailer up to the garage door and started carrying things that go into the house inside. Just as we had naught left to unload but the pallets and tree segments our nearest neighbour came over and introduced himself. He is a delightful man in his 70's and we had a pleasant visit with him. Sadly, my Swedish wasn't up to following the entire conversation, but I could catch much of it, and was able to participate a little. (I did run up stairs to put the bread in the oven while they continued to chat, and then I ran back and forth a few times to check on it.)

He wandered home after a bit, and we had just time to check the outbuildings and rooms in the house to see what sorts of treasures we have been left in addition the house. The list includes a "spare parts" washing machine (in addition to the working one in the house), a couple of wheel barrows, some boards, a decent sized vanity mirror, a work bench, a couple of sets of shelves, a corner cabinet, and a guest bed.

After that quick tour the bread was done, so we shared some before he returned to work. I then started "cleaning". Not that it needed it. I have never in my life moved into a house that was so well cleaned when I took possession. I did run a sponge over all of the shelves in the kitchen cabinets, because you do when moving in, but not one of them needed it. This pleases me immensely.

After that (and another slice of bread, because I could) I decided that I needed the exercise, so I walked back to the apartment. It took me 56 minutes to walk from there to here, which means that Google's guess that it will take 45 minutes to walk from there to my office is probably pretty close to correct, since my office is 10 minutes from here, in between here and our new home.

Now I will relax a bit, and we will decide what to start moving tonight. Our big moving day will be Friday, when his brother will come up with his large trailer. That trailer is large enough that it may well take only two trips to move everything over. Indeed,it makes sense to do two trips--one to drive over the stuff going downstairs, which we can take straight to the garage door downstairs, and the stuff going upstairs we can take to the front door. Needless to say, we have been sorting as we pack. Just now all of the boxes in the bedroom will be going upstairs, and all of the boxes in the living room will be going downstairs. We still haven't packed the kitchen or his computer, but that is pretty much all that is left to do, and it won't take long.

Stay tuned for a decision on when we will have the housewarming party. It may well be the weekend before my birthday, which would give us just over a month to finish moving in. All of my friends are, of course, invited, though I don't expect so many of you in other countries to make it. (Note: anyone who can come from a long way away: we have plenty of room for crash space, come on up!)

After finishing up yet another job application yesterday I decided that I was tired, and, just to be different, I'd go home and get to sleep early. By the time I fished doing my yoga and reading my 1000 words of geologic literature it was only 21:30. I slept deeply and peacefully, till I woke up at 0:34 sweating. Yes, it is that tie of the year again--someone has turned on the heaters in the building, and I forgot to open the door to the balcony wider than just a crack for fresh air before climbing into my loft. (Yes, I do have a small fan in the loft with me to keep the air moving, but while it helps, it isn't always enough.) I've been sleeping on a single-wide mattress since clovis_t moved to Edinburgh. When he was here I had my egg-crate foam folded in thirds lengthwise next to that mattress that came with the house, and then a few doonas spread over the top to even it out a bit to make a bed that worked for two slender people, but wasn't the world's best. But when he left I decided that I'd rather put the eggcrate foam onto the rather thin foam mattress and get a little more padding. This was quite comfortable, and I enjoyed having all that space on the loft next to the bed for storage, but it had one huge down side--when I wake up over-heated there is no cold side of the bed to scoot over into and drift straight back to sleep.

Therefore I got up and did something about it. I've been thinking about what to do for packing, and where to keep packed boxes, and had finally decided that if I pull the couch forward about a meter there should be room to stack boxes behind it, and still get into the closet next to the loft (which, fortunately, has a door on the left, and a wall that doesn't open on the right, so I can stack boxes right up to that wall without interfering with access to the closet. When I woke up too hot it suddenly occurred to me that I have another option for bedding. I can take the double mattress off of the couch (which is a futon frame), and put the single mattress on the couch, with the egg crate foam on the back of the couch. I tend to only use the couch to lay down to read, or sit up/forward for working on sewing projects anyway, and it isn't likely that I will have much in the way of visitors in my last 1.5 months in town.

Therefore I made it so. Pulled out the couch (swept away months worth of dust that had accumulated back there since last it was moved), lifted down the 8 boxes of clovis_t's books from the loft (where they'd been doing duty as a stand for my stuffed animals and the little fan), and put them behind the couch (which has also moved a bit to the right, leaving a path to the side of it for bringing boxes in and out of the storage area. Yes, that does block access to the second half of the door to the balcony, but I can cope with being able to reach only one of the doors--it is plenty wide enough for me to walk through when I need to. Then I wrestled the old bedding down, and the new bedding up and put everything back together.

I *love* re-arranging furniture and cleaning and organizing things!

I then crawled happily into my new, much wider bed at 02:55, and drifted back towards sleep again. After about 30 minutes I realized that I wasn't going to actually cross that line into true sleep, so I got back up and came back across the street, where I have done useful things like catch up on the posts to LJ and Facebook that happened in the 7 hours I'd been away, and posted a geoblog on the topic of moving and not having control over where/when. Now it is 05:00 and I should probably go get one more nap; I fear I'm not quite rested enough to do productive uni work...

Despite the late nights and early mornings this week, I couldn't help waking up early again today--there was moving to be done! First I took my receipt saying I'd paid for the Italian class and turned it in at the office, since I'd been instructed to do so within three days of signing up, and that deadline was approaching. Then I did the repairs to the cabinet doors--fixing a couple of hinges and replacing the missing door knobs. Then back to the hardware store, where I obtained a new power-strip so I can plug in the washer in its new (clean!) location and the pieces I wanted to create a headboard for my loft. The Closet has a sleeping loft, and I've decided that I will be sleeping with my head to the end which is closest to the room, but this means that I needed something to keep my pillow from falling off the end at night. I also needed something sturdy enough to use as a hand-hold when climbing into bed at night. Therefore I obtained a couple of very sturdy angle brackets with rounded hand-holds, a chunk of pine of the appropriate length, and some hardware with which to assemble them all. Then to Uni, to drill holes into the board so as to bold the angle brackets to it, and back to The Closet to fasten the other side of the brackets to my loft, using really long screws through the top planks and into the underlying 4x4s. I'm reasonably happy with the result. Photos will have to wait till I obtain a replacement battery charger--no idea what happened to mine, but I can't find it anywhere. I guess I don't need an Australian charger in Italy, but it is kind of annoying that it vanished like that.

Once I'd completed all of the home-maintenance tasks that were essential before moving in I completed the last of the scrubbing (and did the formerly greasy kitchen cabinets a second time. That got me to 19:00. (Ok, I did take a lunch break in there, too.) Then I started moving. Keep in mind that when I arrived in Italy three months ago I had naught but two suitcases--one small checked bag, and one smaller carry on bag (both with wheels). I didn't *think* I'd accumulated much stuff, but it took four trips to drag everything over to the new place. Granted, that last load was a fairly light one. I've always loved having a well-stocked pantry, full of grains, nuts, seeds, a variety of flour types, etc. I haven't been purchasing food in the kind of quantities I have hitherto--first of all my kitchen stuff isn't here yet, so no place to keep it, secondly the budget has been a bit tight due to having used all of my saving just getting to Milan, and third I've been on foot, so couldn't ever purchase more than I can carry at once (and my favourite store is a 30 minute walk away, but that is the only place to get some of the grains/nuts/seeds that I consider to be staples). Knowing that I've not really "stocked up" yet, it was quite a surprise that it took both suitcases and a cloth bag to carry all of my food from one house to the other! That was, by far, the heaviest trip. (Ok, so I like to keep grains/nuts/seeds in glass jars whenever possible--makes them lest tempting to tiny critters with whom I'd rather not share my abode.)

During the three months I was in the student apartment I didn't meet anyone. I occassionally saw other tenants, but while we'd nod to one another, we never spoke. This evening as I was standing out on my balcony eating some muesli (quick, easy first meal in a new place before going back for the next load of stuff) admiring the view my neighbour in the next baclony was outside doing stuff with her plants (she's got lots of them--it is inspiring, I think I'd like to get myself a herb garden for my balcony) and we said "chiao" to one another and smiled, and as I was heading out for my final load of stuff a lady coming in stopped to introduce herself and ask if I were just moving in (she even spoke English when I told her I didn't understand her first Italian question). Pity she was smoking at the time, but at least she was friendly.

Now that everything has been moved and put away, all I still need to do before I can go to sleep is to read my 1000 words of geologic literature, and do yoga. I *like* having a two minute commute! My legs are sore from all of the stairs, walking, and squatting/kneeling/climbing I've been doing. I'm *really* looking forward to tonight's yoga!