We're In!

I'm sipping coffee at my desk on my first morning in our new home. I've taken today and tomorrow off work to help unpack and sort things out.

I've got a lot to write about. I'm not sure where to start and I'll probably forget things, that I can add in a later post.

Looking out the window, I see the sun breaking on houses opposite. Beautiful. I've been pretty elated since arriving here yesterday.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier about switches. We got the fat kind, those really wide rocker panels, instead of the standard little switches. I first saw them on a visit to Sweden in the 90s and I've wanted to have them in my house since. I never got around to putting them in our Portland house.

I think it was Wednesday night that I got serious about packing. There's that transition of state, from normalcy to no longer normal. One day everything is where it should be, and your house is fully functioning. Then you start moving things around, some into boxes and whatnot, and at some point you pass a tipping point where your house is no longer functioning, you're past normal, in that in-between place where nothing is settled.

Since then we rushed to get things ready for moving. I lost a lot of sleep Thursday as my brain would just not shut off analysing the stuff to move and where it should go and how and when it should get there. I realised that this is our first move as a family where we've not liquidated most of our belongings for a trans-Atlantic crossing, or already had been living in boxes. I came to the same conclusion as Margo had earlier: that our Sunday move would be mostly a move of furniture, that the little stuff would be moved before, during, and after. So we prioritised emptying all bookshelves and dressers. Things like closets and the kitchen could wait.

Need more coffee.

Ah, better. Actually my alarm woke me up this morning. I didn't mean for it to, but it runs on batteries as well as AC and the alarm on button must have been pressed during the move. I had to dig it out to turn it off. Margo's up. She gets direct morning sun in her room. Beautiful.

Anyway. And so the move came to pass yesterday. The girls took a carload with them to the new house. I stayed back to disassemble beds. The movers arrived at 9. They were really quick. I started to panic that they'd be done before I had all three beds ready. Especially when I found that one of Sarah's "Bucky Balls" bearings had got itself magnetically lodged in the hex key of a bolt I needed to remove, and could not be pried out. Fortunately the guys had a sweet tool set and a pair of vise grips around the hex head got me going.

My. God. The things one can find in the room of a ten-year-old whilst removing furniture. Things under the furniture. I won't go there; it's too frightening. And don't get me started on the topiary of dust and detritus from under Margo's dresser. (It goes without saying that my bedroom's carpeting was a bastion of purity.)

Most everything went into the first trip. The second took about fifteen minutes to scoop up the remainders. It was finished on my end before 2. I washed dishes and then ... I was done.

On the bus over, I texted Margo: "I am happy to be coming home."

I think I'll stop here. I have lots more to add but they'll go better with the pictures I took yesterday, which I'll transfer to computer once my hard drives come from the old house.