mark this one in the books

the view

This is my “sunroom” on a not very sunny day. I envision two comfy chairs there for reading, and a houseplant that I’ll try not to kill, my desk to the side, and my bookcase. We have some unpacking to do before I take any real pictures of this apartment, but here is the view from our living room, the woods, a ravine that I hope Dylan won’t fall down, and some snow? The snow I was hoping to leave behind in Michigan. But it’s just a dusting, we’ll live.

We’re here. I’m sore as all heck, even though we hired movers. I feel like I just ran a marathon or something. Which I didn’t. But even with movers, there was still a lot of cleaning involved, and a lot of carrying things out to the trash. I have a funny story for you – or not funny, but so tragic that you just have to laugh. It’s called, “Hubby Was Right.”

He said we should have the movers take the vacuum. I said, no, we’ll need to use it. He said, but it’s too big to fit in the car – we’ll have to leave it behind. I said, no, I’ll make it fit, just let me try. So he did. He let me try. I love him for that.

It was a Dirt Devil vacuum, the bagless kind, not a Dyson or anything, but not cheap either. It even got a second chance, sitting there with the boxes, and Dylan’s big blue bouncy ball. The movers said, the vacuum too? And I thought about it, I considered it, but I said, no, ummm, no, let’s keep that, we should probably do one last vacuum before we go. Take the ball though. So the movers took the bouncy ball. The bouncy ball got moved. Dylan is playing with it as we speak.

We have a Pontiac Vibe. There were a lot of things we should have packed on the moving truck – dirty laundry, my filing cabinets, more of Dylan’s toys. Pontiac Vibes are SMALL. The vacuum didn’t fit, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. Most of the stuff we thought would fit didn’t. Not just the vacuum. Old towels and toiletries. All of the non-perishable foods we thought we might transport. Worn out pans and plastic cups I honestly stole from TGI Fridays back when I waited tables there in college. It was just stuff we threw away – old raggy towels and a couple of new ones too, our pillows, all of our dishes we didn’t pack, things I’d stocked up on in bulk, like my favorite Caress Tahitian Renewal body wash, which I found on sale, 3 for $7.99!

But we managed to save most of everything that had any kind of sentimental value or monetary worth, which is the important thing. I told hubby, the stuff we threw away was mostly junk. And it was, just junk we’d accumulated through the years. We didn’t have to throw away anything that mattered. We sold the washer and dryer. We gave away the half-broken treadmill to two young ladies who worked very hard to get it up our basement stairs.

I only have two regrets. Dylan’s training potty, just weeks before we planned on potty training. We were waiting until after the move to start. And that damn vacuum. We could have just had the movers take the vacuum, but no, I insisted we could make it fit.

And the stupidest thing of all was that we didn’t have time to do one last vacuum anyway.