Two more days

And the bulk of the move will be finished. On Tuesday we move the furniture, with the exception of the pool table. While we may be able to move it ourselves (others have done it, I know), we have opted to have professionals do it for us. It will be the very last thing to move, though.

Today, after the Texans game, I’ll be headed to the new place to clean up a bit. We’ve moved all the boxes over, and the kitchen is unpacked and my studio is mostly unpacked. Once we get furniture in, I can finish unpacking the clothes that go in the dresser (the kids do their own moving stuff like packing & unpacking), and making some changes to the house to make it more livable for us – like removing the towel bars in both bathrooms to make room for bookcases. While the house is large, storage is at a premium, particularly in the bathrooms, so we’re having to make some changes there.

But, the bathrooms DO have clean towels, and have been cleaned (and will be cleaned again before we move in, probably tomorrow). In fact, about the only thing missing at this point is furniture. I was determined that since my vacation officially begins tomorrow, I didn’t want to spend the entire time packing, moving, and unpacking. I think we’ve done a decent job of having things unpacked that could be unpacked, so we won’t be living with a mountain of boxes for several weeks – which would drive me nuts, and cause me to spend my entire vacation unpacking, at least until everything was sufficiently put away. My closet is slowly filling up with clothes – I take a few every time I go over there, leaving only enough here to get me through till Tuesday. I’ll be so glad when this move is over!

What I’m really looking forward to is some studio time, even though it will now be in my bedroom. And Thanksgiving! I can’t believe it’s less than two weeks away. And of course, I’m really looking forward to spending time with my husband and kids while I’m off. I am so excited about the next eight weeks or so, I can hardly contain myself – the holidays in a new house, new decorating opportunities, and just the excitement of the holidays themselves practically give me a contact high! LOL I don’t know why I’m so excited for the holidays this year – maybe it the relief of four years of stress, or maybe just the idea of being with my family, but this holiday season will be fantastic, I know it.

 

Hard to believe

But it’s nearly Thanksgiving! In just two and a half weeks, we’ll be celebrating one of my favorite holidays. I really love this time of year (I think I’ve mentioned that before), and this year I’m really excited to decorate a new home for the holidays, spend time with my family, and get moved.

The Big Move will take place on November 15th. We’ve been moving some things over in the last week – bookcases, boxes, dining table, just to list a few things. I’ve started to unpack boxes, too. Everything that goes in the kitchen has been put away. Linens are put away, so everyone will have clean towels & washcloths when we move in. My studio is being unpacked, so when we move in, I can just bring in my tables & machines and voila! I’m ready to finish Christmas projects.

Before you know it, we’ll have zoomed past Thanksgiving, right into Christmas. What I don’t understand is, why do so many people zoom past Thanksgiving right into Christmas before Halloween is even over?! I love Christmas, I really do, and maybe it’s that I’m getting older, and want time to slow down, but I was a bit irritated to see the Christmas decorations up all over town on the first of November! Even the Home Owner’s Associations in our area have decided to put up decorations. What is up with that?!

I saw something the other day – and I really wish I could remember where it ws, but I can’t – about “Respect the Bird.” It was all about not skipping over Thanksgiving and getting caught up in Christmas. I think this is an excellent idea. We spend half our lives wishing it away, or ignoring it (anyone else remember being a kid, praying to grow up?), and the other half wondering where the time has gone. This year, I am going to make an extreme effort not to over think Christmas before Thanksgiving. I’m going to enjoy every minute leading up to Black Friday (which is an ominous name in it’s own right, isn’t it?) and not try to leap too far ahead. Like any quilter/artist/crafter, I will be working on gifts before Thanksgiving, but I won’t turn on a single Christmas song (never mind that I was singing them last week without even realizing it), pull out a single string of lights, or even consider a Christmas tree until the evening of Thanksgiving at the very earliest.

Instead, I will spend my time moving, unpacking boxes, working on making gifts for the holiday season, determining what I’ll make for Thanksgiving dinner, and enjoying the time with my family. The day after Thanksgiving, I will turn my thoughts to Christmas, but until then … the reason for THIS season is the Bird!

 

Randomness

There are days when I am focused, I am driven, and I know exactly what I’m doing. Whether it’s cleaning the house, working on a quilt, or dealing with one of my many work duties, there is nothing that can tear me away from my single-mindedness which keeps me on the path.

Then there are other days when my mind flits around like a small bird looking for a good place to hang out – three seconds at a time. It’s days like this that push me to question my sanity and long for just 10 minutes of being able to focus on a single task. Today is one of these days. *sigh*

I’ve been thinking about the conversation I had with Chris about our budget and saving money. One of the things he said to me was, “I just hate telling you ‘no’ even when I know I should.” That’s incredibly sweet, and no one has ever felt that way about me, but as I told him, I depend on him telling me no when we really don’t have the money for something I want. I may pout, I may be unhappy about it, but in the long run I know he’s doing it for all the right reasons. I told him that he must become better at saying “no” to me. I am going to hate it but there it is … more no, less yes.

Valentine’s day is less than a month away, and while I’m not a big fan of V-day, I do like the crafty things that appear for the holiday. I would like to find a way to purchase maybe just a yard or two of Valentine’s fabric to use for pillow slip covers. I have no real idea where I’d put them (the game room maybe) but I have this idea to make pillow slip covers in a variety of fabrics over time so I can switch them out on a whim. I got the idea from a woman I met in the quilt store over the weekend, who was buying fabric for pillowcases for a bench she has in her hallway. I don’t have a bench in a hallway, but I have two couches, a chair and a loveseat. Surely some of them could use a pillow or two? I already have the pillow forms …

I finished a book yesterday called The Other Daughter. I will admit I was intrigued by it, but was irritated when the author employed poetic license and changed Houston to suit her own needs. For example. Huntsville has moved south about a hundred miles to be at the corner of I-45 and I-10. Anyone who’s from the area knows that the intersection of I-45 and I-10 is right at downtown Houston … which is about 75 miles from Huntsville. Furthermore, I had no idea – having lived here my whole life, I was a bit surprised by this actually – to find that houses are “cut into the hillside”. I am trying to find the hill. I didn’t know they called overpasses “hills” nor did I realize that houses were “cut into” them, because I assure you, the only hills in Houston are those that are man made, i.e., overpasses. In one passage, there was a car chase – “up one hill and down the next.” I really have to find these hills! It really bugs me that an author would be so obtuse as to even suggest such things in their books – do they really think the locals don’t know the landscape of their homeland??

Work is very slow right now. I’m bored. And I may not have a job much longer anyway because this position could be moving to another country. So I’m looking for something else, but I’m not really finding anything that thrills me, nor anything that pays nearly what I’m making now. If I can’t find a job making near what I make now, we’ll have to file for bankruptcy. There are worse things, I suppose …

Someone told me yesterday that because of failed crops, cotton is set to go up 85% in the coming months, which means that fabric and thread will also go up … great.

At what point does the government decide that the cost of living has increased? Because they’re saying it’s remained basically steady over the last couple of years, and yet … it seems like prices on everything are steadily increasing. I’m not sure how anyone trying to support a family on the city’s median income of $40k-ish can survive. We’re struggling at twice that!

 

I am impatient

We are still waiting to hear back from the realtor on whether or not we will be able to rent the house we found. As a result, I am a bit on edge, because I’m so impatient. And nervous. Chris tells me that I shouldn’t be nervous because a lot of people are in the same position we are, and that if people want to rent with people with excellent credit, they are in the wrong business. He may be right; I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t like being in limbo. We’ve made a decision and now I just want to DO it.

I know we’ll be moving somewhere … so I’ve been considering what sort of decorating I want to do when we move. We have a brown couch & loveseat that currently sits in our game room – a room we likely will not have no matter where we end up. Unforunately I don’t have a picture of it, so I’ll see if I can get one later to post. Anyway, it’s a dark brown microfiber, and I’m thinking of painting the walls a sage green color – light sage green. The walls in our living room are this color now and we really like it – two walls are brown also, but we won’t be doing that in the rental. I’m thinking of accessorizing with red and taupe. I think I’m going to sell the pics that we’ve had in the house until now – they aren’t in line with what we want to do with the decor (we want to do something more contemporary and these are definitely NOT contemporary pictures), and I’ve never really accessorized correctly. I’m hoping that with a little extra money – and a LOT of dedication – I may finally overcome my accessory block and make our new home really look good.

We started packing a little – and I DO mean “a little” – this week. I’m hoping we make a decent dent in it all today and that we can start weeding out stuff we don’t plan to move to the new place. We have so much stuff and it will NEVER fit in a smaller space, so purging is the essential activity here. Also, I’m just tired of having all this crap laying around the house! It isn’t very conducive to stress-free living. I am going to work on packing up our bedroom this weekend, and also on the mountains of laundry that needs to be washed & put away. Yes, I did say mountainS. *sigh* I probably have 15 loads at least that need to be done. I am not going to enjoy this at all. Next week I’m moving my computer upstairs and packing up my studio during breaks from our computer game. I’ll tell you more about THAT next week. lol

I just really wish we would hear from the realtor so that we can either start planning in earnest to move or so we can look at other properties. Either way, I wish he’d tell us so we can at least start making firm plans.