Now, refresh my memory, gang; is there anything on earth more exhilarating than packing up to move to a new house??? (Please. Don’t say “bungee jumping”. Let’s keep this in the realm of things I’m actually likely to do.)
The thrill of packing!
Even though I hate packing, this time is not quite as mind-bogglingly tedious as other times since I never really unpacked from the last move, a year and a half ago. I only need to pack dishes, clothes, sheets & towels, some books, and the medicine cabinet stuff.
However. Lest we forget…
6 of the 8 critters who travel with me!
…I live with 8 semi-feral cats who basically refuse to be touched and/or get into their cages, regardless of the imperativeness of the circumstances! [Note to readers: Do not use “imperativeness” while conversing at dinner parties or at other socially crucial events because it is not really a word and you will likely be laughed at and humiliated! — Ed.]
Anyway, all is actually going pretty smoothly with the moving arrangements, except for the stress of knowing I have to move these 8 little creatures. I brought the 8 cages out of storage and set them around the living room, to help them at least get used to the sight of them, and a couple of the cats are so scared of the cages that they won’t come out from under the recliner… The last move was truly traumatizing for all of us.
But we’ve still got 10 days! 10 days of positive thinking! 10 days of affirmations! 10 days of creatively visualizing 8 semi-feral cats happily arriving at their new home! And I’m off now to make sacrificial offerings to the Goddess of Semi-Feral Cats, in the event She can intervene on our humble behalf! (It doesn’t hurt to approach it from every conceivable angle…)
All righty!
Have a wonder-filled Friday, wherever you are, gang! And have a terrific weekend. Thanks for visiting! See ya.
Yes! As the song says, “It might as well be spring!”
It began over the weekend, when I noticed that tons of robins had arrived in all the yards. And, in the air, a bit of chirping. And then, this morning, with the bedroom window open at around 6am, the full-on, merry serenade of bird songs!
The cats, naturally, were crowded around the open window, transfixed by the singing. The temperature had reached 77 here yesterday, so, between the lovely weather and the birds once more singing at dawn, the cats have been completely bamboozled into thinking it’s spring!
But au contraire… The temperatures are set to plummet back down to the February range later today. But it always feels so good to get that early reminder of how the world feels in spring, doesn’t it, gang?
Okay.
First of all, a belated thank you to those of you who have been signing up for my non-appearing newsletter. Once I finally move, unpack, and get settled into an actual life again, the newsletter will resume! Probably only quarterly, for now. I’ve got too many backlogged writing projects for there too be much news to report for awhile.
You know, I have these grand dreams of “life after the move,” wherein I will immediately return to my normal writing schedule, as well as do things like get up-to-date on all the various work-related weekly podcasts I subscribe to — mostly writing, publishing, and stagecraft podcasts, but a few thrown in that I simply enjoy listening to. For example, The 1600 Sessions, by the White House Historical Association. Or LeVar Burton Reads. Or the Joel Osteen weekly sermon. Or Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast (really super funny but not for the faint of heart.)
Honestly, how on earth do we find time to keep up with everything anymore? There is just way too much stuff vying for our attention. I realize that everybody already knows this, but sometimes it is simply staggering to consider just how much we are trying to take in — and this is one of the reasons that I am truly excited about my upcoming move deeper into the Hinterlands.
The little village I’m moving to has: a police station, a fire station, a post office, a diner, a gas station, 2 churches, a Family Dollar, a Dairy Queen, a mini storage, a couple of beauty salons, and that’s it. Seriously. Nothing else but a handful of people and a whole bunch of stuff that God created — i.e., trees, birds, flowers, animals, seemingly endless hills and rolling fields, and sky and stars. (And one road leading in and out of town that is named after the High School football team from the early 1900s! The High School itself has long since been torn down.)
The only real distraction is going to be the darned Internet, folks, so I’m hoping to use it productively because I have a ton of writing projects piling up. Mostly re-writes of projects in various stages of development for stage and TV, but there are a couple of books I also want to write just for my own enjoyment…
That said, though, I am currently addicted to the old Phil Harris – Alice Faye Radio Program from the late 1940s-early 1950s (on youtube). It is so funny. I love Phil Harris. And The Detectorists, a BBC TV series written by/starring Mackenzie Crook, that is so charming, sweet, funny, wry, delightful.
And when I’m not zoning out on those 2 things and a nice bottle of French red, I’m up to my eyeballs with packing, and still doing a TON of paperwork re: the mortgage and the upcoming move. I really, really, really need the future to become the present, gang, as quickly as possible, so if you have any pull in that area, I would appreciate your helping me out! It is so many months already that I’ve been dealing with this move.
All righty!
And that said, I need to get cracking around here because I have to drive deep into the Hinterlands here soon to inspect the repairs that were done to the new house and make sure we are ready for closing (which is supposed to be next week, however, the lender informed me yesterday that if she doesn’t get the title survey by, like, today, the chances we are closing next week are “slim to none.” Ay caramba!!! Don’t tell me that!! The truck & movers are already scheduled!!)
Aaaaarrrgh!!!!
Anyway, gang. The stress continues. But the end is in sight. I hope you have a relatively stress-free Wednesday, wherever you are and with whatever you’re doing. I leave you with this awesome stress-breaker! Give it a listen if you’ve never heard it before! It will get you bopping!
Yes, well. My new house doesn’t look exactly like this, but I’m sure that, in essence, it will feel the same! I’m so excited.
Yes, the darn bank appraisal finally came back the other day and the house passed with flying colors! The only negative thing the report pointed out was that the house “fronts to railroad tracks which is considered adverse due to traffic &/or noise”. [See post below somewhere, wherein I discovered the startling and quite sobering sound of the train barreling into my soon-to-be new living room during the home inspection. – Ed.] [Also, I should point out that it is an old coal train, with few cars, that passes by in under a minute. It’s not some long, drawn-out, train with a zillion cars that takes 20 minutes to pass. – Ed. again]
Yes, the house I’ve been laboring over, for over 2 months already, is finally going to be mine! It is a really old house (1901), in the tiniest town you can imagine (well, population around 1300, so you can probably imagine towns tinier than that, but still…). I am going to be, pretty much, extremely far away from everything, however, I’m seriously up for the new adventure.
When I say “laboring over,” this is what I mean: I saw the house listed on Realtor.com and, even though it was in a town I had no real interest in, it was in my price range so I decided to investigate. The house had been on the market for nearly 500 days, and had been in & out of contract twice. My realtor said, “I don’t think you want to see that house; I took a client through it when it first went on the market and it was a disaster.”
Oh well, all right. Onward.
But I just kept coming back to it, and I asked my realtor, “Can’t we at least go see it? The photos online don’t look that bad.”
Realtor: “They aren’t going to post photos of the really bad things.”
Oh well, all right. But… “Can’t we at least go see it?”
Then, because it was the holiday season, it was like pulling teeth to get the seller’s realtor to respond and then to arrange for us to go in and see it. And, true, the outside grounds need a lot of work. Some siding & gutters needed fixing, the picket fence surrounding the backyard is rotting in huge sections, and an old tree had fallen on the roof of the shed/garage/barn-thing out back. But inside the house — wow. Big rooms. Sunny. All new plumbing, new wiring, 22 brand new windows with screens, a totally dry old basement for storage, new furnace, new water heater, new counter tops, new sinks & toilets, great closets with plenty of storage there, too; a big kitchen with lots of cupboards, and new carpeting throughout most of the house.
My guy-friend, who had come out to see the house with me, took me aside and said, “This is a sweet little house; you ought to buy it.” And I said, “I know. I’m planning on it.” And then it took 6 more weeks to finally get the A-Okay from the lender, but I did. And now I couldn’t be happier.
So, be on guard, gang; trust your gut. If you keep getting the feeling that something is better than everyone’s saying it is, follow up on your hunches because you could be right and everyone else might all be misinformed.
By the way, here are 2 photos of the shed/garage/barn-thing that appeared to be in horrible shape.
Front of shedSide of shed
Everyone said it was going to have to be torn down. I took these photos to send to a wood-salvage company that was going to come out and tear it down. But as I got closer to the building (I can’t go inside because it’s locked up tight and the roof is severely damaged), I realized that it was a really COOL old building. The windows were filthy but I could still see inside and it looked awesome in there. Really well constructed. Built in 1910, it was obviously more of work space than a garage. And it probably did start out being a barn back in 1910.
My guy-friend went out to the house recently to check on the rotting fence and he texted me and said, “We should just fix the roof on that old garage. It will be easy to do. It’s really cool inside there, and would make a really great work space/gardening shed.”
I immediately got very excited and halted the plans to deconstruct the old shed.
So now I am buying a really cool, completely updated, old house from 1901 that nobody wanted and keeping the old shed that everyone said had to be torn down. Of course, my guy-friend has a lot to do with this. If he hadn’t built his own house from scratch, out in the middle of nowhere, I wouldn’t feel quite so uplifted about the challenges connected to This Old House and living alone in that seriously remote old town…
All righty!! Well, have a great Saturday, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, gang. We’re supposed to get more snow today. We’ll see. Meanwhile, I leave you with this! Another Rudy Vallee ditty– this one from 1934 — that I’ve been playing nonstop in my car!
Gotta love those old melodies, folks. They really stick with you! Okay. Thanks for visiting! See ya!
Yes, loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I seriously love living in the past!
Not necessarily my own past, which, for the most part, sucked continuously for about 56 years. No, I refer more to an overall cultural past, or perhaps a “societal” past. Surely, I also refer to a past that didn’t actually exist but, rather, exists more in my imagination of the past.
A couple of cases in point: I’ve been streaming a British TV show from 1967 called At Last the 1948 Show, and loving it. This show featured soon-to-be famous members of Monty Python (and, in my opinion, is a funnier show than Do Not Adjust your Set, which featured soon-to-be famous other members of Monty Python.) It’s a really silly show, and the sketch I love most is called “The Chartered Account Dance.”
If you’re old enough to remember the popular dances of the 1960s (the twist, the frug, the swim, the hitchhike, the Watusi, the pony, etc.), as well as shows that instructed you in how to dance those crazy dances, you will totally get the humor of this sketch. And not simply the humor, but also how great the actual dance is! It’s too funny! (The clip is below, with French subtitles. Be sure to watch the whole 3 minutes, in order to see the actual dance.)
Another thing I am enjoying the heck out of is tootling around in my sporty Honda Fit while listening to my Rudy Vallee CD!
Yes, I said Rudy Vallee! How’s that for living in the past? (He is pictured at the top of this post, and in case you can’t even imagine anything as far back as popular music from the 1920s- 1930s, here’s a link to Rudy’s wiki page.)
I used to stream this specific collection of Rudy Vallee hits on Amazon but discovered recently that it was no longer available, so I was forced to buy the CD. However, I quickly discovered that it is super-duper FUN to be able to play it in my car!
My favorite song from this collection is “Page Miss Glory,” which is the title song of the film Page Miss Glory. Once in awhile, you can catch this movie on TCM. The movie was made in 1935, and starred the wonderful Dick Powell, the cunning Marion Davies, and the always dependable Pat O’Brien. It is a totally silly piece of musical fluff, but I always loved the title song of the film, and that led me to Rudy Vallee’s version of it a number of years ago.
Here it is below. I defy you to listen to this 2-minute ditty and not get into a ridiculously happy mood! (It really works, folks!)
Okay, on that happy front… Life continues to be really, really good around here, although I’m still awaiting the final report from the bank’s appraisal of my soon-to-be new house. I did take a drive out to see the house the other day and the harsh winter weather we had a few weeks back, did take a toll on the old fence around the backyard (meaning that it is now scattered, hither & yon, around the sidewalk). But other than that, the house is just sitting there, waiting for me to call it home! It’s taking forever…
All righty! Thanks for visiting, gang. Enjoy your Friday, wherever it takes you and have a great weekend. See ya!
Marilyn's Room 