My Christmas Tree Is Currently In My Kitchen (and other things you can judge me for)

First of all, totally unrelated to the topic of this post but as a follow-up to my last one, guess who successfully mowed all two acres of her lawn today without cutting off a toe? Yes. Yes, I did. And I am so sorry that the first 20 minutes of that adventure wasn’t captured on camera for posterity– particularly the part where I came thisclose to running the mower through the closed garage door.

It has been a long time since I laughed that hard at my own ineptitude, but I will say this… mowing the lawn may actually be the one household chore that I love to do, and it was a nice way to decompress after what ended up being a particularly crazy couple of days.

You may have gotten the impression over the last couple of weeks that I wasn’t completely moved out of the Farm House rental. My lease is actually up at the end of May, and while the landlord agreed to let me out of the contract early if they found another renter, up until Friday it looked like I would still be on the hook for another month of rent and maintaining the grounds and utilities at two properties. (Which is not stressful or financially taxing at all, right?)

Then Friday at 9:30 AM I found three frantic messages on my voice mail. Apparently they found a renter who had signed a lease and wanted to move in rightthissecond, which, on one hand, Yes! On the other hand, I still had about four carloads of junk in that house. You know, all that big awkward stuff that was both difficult to move and that I had nowhere to store at Liberty.

For example:

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That, for the record, is one mini-fridge, one microwave, one full-sized Christmas tree (boxed), one bar stool, one dining room chair, one ironing board, and four boxes of miscellaneous junk.

Now 330 days out of the year I go to work in some variation of jeans-and-a-tshirt, which would be totally fine if I had to unexpectedly take an afternoon off work to move large and unwieldy objects by myself, but oh no, not Friday. On Friday I was wearing a dress. So, add to the list of things I never thought I would do, but did: “load minifridge into back of SUV wearing cute red flats and making very unladylike grunting noises.” Check.

It took four loads and eight hours, but by the end of the day Friday I was able to close the door on this house for good.

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It was never “home”, but I’m grateful for this little place because if I hadn’t taken a leap of faith and moved here five months ago, I never would have found The Liberty House. (Okay, that thing with the sink I would rather forget about, but everything else I’m grateful for.)

I also figured out what the World’s Largest Mudroom is good for…

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Yup. That’s only three carloads of stuff because the fourth one is still in my car. And, you know, usually I’m all about breaking out the fancy camera out so that you can have a really sharp image of all of the crap I’ve managed to accumulated over the last decade (and have moved twice in the last six months) but I have a sneaking suspicion that the camera is located at the bottom of that pile of junk right now so the iPhone pics will have to suffice.

Now the ironic thing is that it really only took eight hours to move all of this because I had a half hour drive between houses each time I took a load, and when I mentioned this to my Grandpa over what has become our weekly Sunday breakfast, he looked at me quizzically and said, “Honey, why didn’t you use the trailer?

Oh, right. Look what I forgot was conveniently sitting in my barn:

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So clearly I’ve moved beyond a point of rational problem solving in my life these days, because that would have been a hell of a lot easier.

So, there is just one thing on my to-do list for the house this week: Regain control of my sanity and the mudroom. And the kitchen. And the front entry. Okay, so like four things, actually. One day I’ll be able to get back to building stuff and making big messes, but apparently this is too much chaos, even for me.

5 Responses

  1. YAY for new tenants!

    BOO for last minute box wrangling in a dress.

    Good luck with making order from chaos – the sanity will return rather quickly after that.

  2. Oh dear. I have done something like that and then have someone point out an obviously simpler plan of action. And I don’t envy finding a home for those last few boxes after moving! That stinks!

  3. ??”……use the trailer ?”?? – Kit, you made my morning! Almost laughed myself out of the chair on that one – because I’ve done similar! Just shows that “temporary” conditions can hit all of us! A great BIG THANX!

  4. Your honesty is so refreshing…sometimes I can’t wait to tell some of the crazy things that I’ve done to share the fun of mistakes. Life would be a lot less stressful if we all would learn to smile and shake our heads when things go off the rails. Enjoy your new place; moving is just the worse!

  5. No, no , no….the trailer would’ve needed a tarp and tie downs and you then climbing in a dress all over it and then the tarp would’ve blown off half way home and the Christmas tree would have bounced out and been ruined along with the ironing board with that cute checked cover not to mention the cost of gas and wear and tear on the engine pulling the thing and by the time you finally got home you would’ve said ‘I’ll just finish in the morning’ and left it all outside where the unexpected rain storm would’ve ruined everything……and then what a boring blog post that would have been! No, siree, the 8 hour packing/trek was well worth the wait (I only check for a new post 7-8x/day). Somebody get this girl a well deserved shot of something yummy!. Welcome Home for good!

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