random thoughts - Day 1,976 (Thursday) - plastic and more progress

The absence of drawers in the bathroom sink area has been crippling. There were two very useful drawers as part of the vanity in Lowell which were the perfect size and depth for daily makeup and hair tools. The wall mounted medicine cabinet featured three mirrored doors and deep shelves that held all manner of skin care, dental care, and medicinal products. 

Another organization problem solved.

The main bathroom in the new house has a small, shallow medicine cabinet behind a large oval mirror. A tube of toothpaste takes up most of one shelf. The vanity has double doors to an open area under the sink and a lower counter to the right with an open area below it. I have zero guesses as to why the counter is a few inches lower that the sink counter or what the original intended use is. With no drawers the counter has been buried in makeup and hair brushes and cosmetic bags for over a week while I sought a workable  and convenient solution. 

The best option was determined to be a small cabinet and several nights have been occupied with searching online for the perfectly sized piece. The height of 25-inches available under the counter became a challenge when it was discovered while scouring product descriptions on hundreds of items that most cabinets seem to be 28 or 30 inches tall. 

Today, Mom and I took a trip down the road to Hobby Lobby and Marshall's to look for a cabinet for me and some artificial flowers for her. There were a couple nice cabinets that are too tall. On the way home we stopped in WalMart, and an inexpensive option was found in the form of a 24-inch tall plastic unit for $20. 

While it's not nearly as stylish as the too-tall options, the color of the plastic piece is perfectly neutral. The drawers are a bit deep and the unit is a smidge narrow, but it fits perfectly under the counter which is now cleared and tidied. I love a plastic miracle. And when I find the perfect wood cabinet in some antique, thrift, or consignment shop, the plastic unit can be redeployed to hold art or kitchen supplies. 

Let the trimming begin.

The evening was cool and comfortable and after the walk to the mailbox I grabbed the hedge clippers and loppers from the shed to start trimming the overgrown greenery out front. The mature plantings are growing against the house and encroaching on the walk, so something needs to be done. It's going to take a while and may require multiple stages, but at least it's started. 

random thoughts - Day 1,975 (Wednesday) - lunch and critters

Like many recent days, I woke up a little later than usual and still felt tired. There was coffee with Mom and email and a slow start to resuming dealing with the boxes. Time spent in the armchair surrounded by boxes and going through job postings online is time not spent finishing moving into the house, and that is the tightrope walk. 

View from the
lunch table.

There was lunch at The Old Mill with Mom, Sis, and one of my nieces for my birthday. The ducks and some gray geese were posing near the rocks when we arrived and our table overlooked a slow-moving, gentle stream. The dining room had several full tables and a waiter who was hopping busy. The conversational volume from the tables, combined with the acoustics, made us have to practically yell to talk and we joked how it felt like we were in a nightclub. 

The food was good. My lunch was wild mushroom ravioli in a creamy tomato sauce. Other meals at our table were a giant slab of fried fish and chips, teriyaki steak with potato, and chicken and pasta alfredo. Back outside in the parking lot in the 90-degree heat, we considered going to Mom's to play Yahtzee, but it was already after 2:00, and we were all full and tired and decided against it.

Back home at the ranch house, I sat around. It was 85 and stuffy in the house and I caved and finally turned on the two window A/C units. The game of "how long can I hold out?" felt less interesting when the air was closing in warm and heavy. And besides, it's my birthday. 

So cute!

Later, I took a ride to Aldi for a mini cheesecake assortment I saw there earlier in the week. It's eight of the cutest little slightly larger-than-bite-sized triangles of cheesecake on a tray. Two almost make a normal sized slice, so I had two and chocked it up to a birthday indulgence. 

Next door at Tractor Supply, the plant display in the parking lot looked dead and was still full-price. Inside, they had Halloween decor that included a skeleton rooster and a little cow dressed in a sheet like a ghost. They were almost cute enough to get me to open my wallet, but I remembered I don't need any more stuff and snapped back to reality. 

Around 6:00, when I was ready to walk to the mailbox, thunder began rumbling and I imagined being caught in a downpour and dashing back home soaked. The thunder stopped after about an hour, we were not delivered any rain, and the evening walk to check the mail finally happened. The pace was quick and I may start tracking routes and times and personal bests because I am that flavor of nerd no matter what day it is. 

Serious model potential.

Kiki emerged from her daytime napping ritual and ventured out to the living room. She puttered about and then posed on the rug like a model in a drawing class, which is a job posting I saw on the local community college website (for human models, not cats). Eventually, she slipped over to the open dining room window. She stretched up on her dainty little back paws, placed her front paws on the window sill, and looked and sniffed through the screen at the new world. So cute. Even cuter than a little cow in a sheet like a ghost. 

random thoughts - Day 1,974 (Tuesday) - exploring

Looking outside.

Since Kiki and I came to the new house, she's been confined to the main bedroom and attached bathroom so she wouldn't be overwhelmed by an entirely new space. A rug from Lowell is on top of the carpeting, the furniture is familiar, and her food station and litter box were located in the bathroom. Mostly Keeks stayed under the bed. Once, I saw her looking out the window with her little front paws on the sill. In Lowell, it seemed she never acknowledged the world outside The BungaLowell.

I made frequent trips into the bedroom throughout the days and the other day Kiki was lounging on the bedroom rug near the door and was startled when I entered. She launched herself under the bed when she saw me. Smart kitty always knows her hiding places.

Monday night, Keeks was meowing softly in the bedroom while I was in the living room. She seemed to be paying more attention to the magic portal to the living room through which I would appear and then disappear, and it seemed it might be time to begin introducing her to the rest of the house. 

Early exploration of the new habitat.

Tonight, I opened the bedroom door, and after a few minutes, Kiki ventured out to the living room. Then back to the bedroom. And back to the living room. And back to the bedroom. She began staying longer in the living room, slinking around the perimeter of the room and sitting briefly at the screen door looking outside. Her exploration expanded to the dining room and then the kitchen before she arranged herself on the rug facing me. In another few days or a week, I'll start adding the two spare rooms and the guest bathroom for her exploration and soon, she'll have her entire realm at her pretty little paws. Baby kitty steps.  

random thoughts - Day 1,973 (Monday) - mondaying

Monday rolled in like it always does and computer work with bills, address changes, bank balances, phone calls, and job search activities sucked up a chunk of the day into a void like it always does. There was an unproductive, circuitous, automated level of menu hell on three different phone numbers related to unemployment insurance in an effort to get an answer to a question not covered in the website or the FAQs. 

While trying to set up bill payment instructions on a new checking account, it was discovered that the Lowell electric account was not closed on August 1st when the account was transferred to Gardner, and I was being billed for Lowell through the 5th of August. The usage for those five days was equal to the entire month of September 2024, so who knows how low the new owners at Lowell had the A/C cranking. The billing is allegedly being corrected, but I'll believe it when the corrected bill arrives.

The job searching stuff is painful and time consuming. Looking for work is harder than working. There must be 15 different versions of my resume on the laptop now just from the past month. My eyes hurt after several hours of sifting through job postings. 

Shoes that were in my Amazon list for a year had a 50% price drop the other day and I pounced, but stupidly followed the "Based on hundreds of reviews your recommended size is [a half-size smaller than usual]". The shoes delivered yesterday, were tried on today, and are too small. The return request was entered, and of course, the price is back to the regular price and Zappos (now owned by Amazon) can keep their stupid shoes.

The next thing I knew, it was 2:00 and I hadn't eaten anything yet. Late lunch was leftover hot and sour soup with the leftover fried rice dumped into it. Not delicious, not awful. 

Light summer supper.

It was refreshing to return to unpacking boxes and sorting closets and cabinets even though my wrist hurts and now has a bruise next to the scar over the plate that the tendon rubs on. 

The late light summer supper break was cheese, crackers, cherries, and grapes. A cabbage sits in the crisper waiting to be transformed into a salad, and hopefully that will happen soon, but additional ingredients are needed. 

Tomorrow, when I drop off the Amazon return, deposit a premium refund check from the old homeowners insurance policy, and drop off a book donation at the library and get a library card, I'll get carrots and other veggies to go with the cabbage. I think. Probably. We'll see.

random thoughts - Day 1,972 (Sunday) - entertainments

 It was the annual family cookout at my Aunt's house and generations of us convened in the back yard under canopies and on the back deck near one of the coolest inventions of modern times -- a solar powered fan. There was a variety of salads and grilled chicken, burgers, and hot dogs and scrumptious desserts including a lemony trifle with blueberries and cake and cookies. 

Cowboy Caviar bean salad.

In the evening, I took a walk around the neighborhood to try and burn off some of the afternoon's excess consumption and a bowl of the "Cowboy Caviar" bean salad made for the cookout. It's a tasty concoction of black beans, red onion, green pepper, corn, and pinto beans (because I couldn't find black-eyed peas) tossed in a vinaigrette dressing.

It was another nice walk on the gently sloped streets. Three turkeys were spotted in a yard, and several crows. Flowers, decks, and front doors were admired. Some of the yard statues and figures were silently judged with one word - "why"? Some of the yards in the neighborhood have big rocks that serve as a focal point and now I kind of want a giant front yard rock.

View through the bevels.

In addition to coveting neighborhood rocks, other evening entertainment included trying to capture in pixels the distortion of the view through the beveled glass in the front door window. Despite there still being boxes in the living room, time was spent mentally rearranging the furniture, which would involve swapping a couple pieces between the dining room and the living room. I can usually keep myself entertained.

random thoughts - Day 1,971 (Saturday) - tired and lazy

This week has featured coffee with Mom each morning. We chat for a while, then, I grab a bag or box of my stuff that went to her house instead of into the moving box and return to the toil of setting up the house and looking for a job. Today hit a slowdown because I'm tired of unpacking and organizing but at the same time that I'm also tired of stepping over and around piles and boxes. 

Friends invited me to a concert in the park event, which was a great idea for a beautiful night. Because I screwed off so much all day, as it got closer to the event time, I still hadn't been to the grocery store for ingredients to make the bean salad for a cookout on Sunday. 

Part of the turkey gang.

I got to the store. Made the salad thing. Didn't go to the concert event. Ate Chinese food leftovers from the other night.  

Later, there was a walk to the mailbox, where I encountered a gang of turkeys lurking on both sides of the street. They let me pass without incident and I thanked them. Back at home, I sat in a chair and yawned for several hours, looking forward to bedtime. 

random thoughts - Day 1,970 (Friday) - still progressing

Round table
with lamp.

One week ago, I drove to Worcester and closed on the house, then drove to the house to start cleaning. Today, I sat in an armchair in the living room (no couch currently), surrounded by boxes. but fewer that there have been most of the week. The mid-century round table has been reunited with its legs, found rolled in a protective casing of rugs in a bag with a handmade afghan and some placemats. 

The red shade on the lamp on the table (bought in Tennessee), matches the drapes that were left at the house and it looks like they were specifically chosen together. The TV is now connected and displaying shows. The plan was to delay setting it up until the house was close to fully set up, but there was an executive decision to do it today. The router occupied the living room cable outlet after failing to connect to the Internet from the outlet in the other room, and thanks to a splitter found in a bag with some cable/internet company stuff, the TV and router now share the connection. So far, the only glitch seems to be the audio and image pausing every couple minutes on Netflix and HBO Max streaming.

Too many screws
for the desk.

There was an attempt to re-assemble the desk, but the bag labeled "Desk" held 15 screws in three sizes. The desk has only six screw holes and I was confused. A quick text to one of my friends who helped with the moving and taking things apart and I learned the four largest screws and three medium screws belong to a Parson style dining chair. 

After re-assembling the dining chair and the round table and setting up the TV, I parked myself in the armchair. Even surrounded by the clutter of the remaining boxes, it was nice to appreciate how much bigger this living room is than the one in Lowell. The chair seems like it's a mile away from the TV, which feels like an opportunity to do something fun with the space. That could be the spark of inspiration to power through tomorrow and get the living room finished. 

There was an evening walk to the mailbox station located a quarter-mile from the house at the end of my street (no mail for me). In addition to all the mailboxes for the neighborhood, there is a little free library box which could be an opportunity to offload some books. It is currently full, so I may need to wait a bit for some room. Or exchange some books, which is the opposite of reducing the volume of books. 

I took a different street back for the change of scenery and to check out people's siding and flowers and get ideas for the yard. One house swapped out the black wrought iron railings for white vinyl and it looks great. Another one has a neatly defined wildflower garden patch in the front yard.

During the 20 minute walk, the set of four small wire shelves I'd been expecting from Amazon landed on the doorstep. They were promptly opened and set up in the cabinets, creating room for the glass liquid measuring cups and allowing for the relocation of a stack of small plates from the counter to the cabinet. The progress feels smaller but it's still happening and it's still progress.