Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Legwork and Life, week of 3/7/18

The moving continues!  We're about at the point where we need to arrange for actual movers, though.  There's piles of stuff everywhere in the house, with no homes just yet, and the amount of stuff in the apartment is well diminished... except for the heavy furniture.  There's no way we're getting the chest freezer by ourselves.  It's like 4-5 feet long, at least 4 feet deep, and 3 feet wide, minimum.  The rest of the furniture would mostly be doable, but if we're already hiring movers for the chest freezer, might as well make them move the rest of it, too. 

Yesterday Chris and I both opted to snag some of the more fragile things we own.  Various glass pieces, some of the wedding decorations, our framed pictures, and various bits of art.  I expect we'll probably be done moving everything but little bits and pieces by this time next week... which I'm looking forward to, because I'm really tired of the abuse that road heaps on my car.  Awesomely, though, yesterday was the first snowfall ever that I didn't have to worry about clearing off my car.  I had a car in college, but there was no parking structure.  And natch I've had a car since, but it's all been parking lots.  Since we now have a garage, I simply parked my car inside the garage.  The snow fell, but not onto my car.  I have like three ice scrapers and two snowbrushes and I'm enjoying the fact that I'll only need them occasionally now. 

Today marks the first week we've lived in the new place.  I'm finding the neighborhood much quieter, though a couple days ago my doorbell did ring, and an elderly lady presented me with chocolate chip cookies and a welcome to the area.  I was somewhat startled; I'd kind of thought that sort of hospitality was dead.  But apparently not.  I'm hoping to make a batch of chocolate chip breakfast bites (highly nutritious grain and nut balls) and go visit her at some point.  With so much else to worry about, though, it might have to wait 'til the weekend. 

The soundproofing in the new home seems nice as well.  I can't hear the garage door very well from the basement, nor from the bedroom.  We technically have a shared wall, but it isn't a very big shared wall, and if I didn't know better, I'd assume our neighbor was dead.  A great improvement from being able to hear the whine of someone else's shower, plus the noise of the heater, plus the booming bass of some thoughtless git's stereo outside.  Plus whatever assorted people happen to be out there "talking." 

The noisiest things in this neighborhood appear to be the geese.  And sometimes the ducks.  But even they're much further away, and as a result, much easier to ignore.  The most disruptive thing thus far to my sanity is the light in the bedroom.  In the apartment bedroom, we have almost all light blocked out with the use of blackout material.  It's crude at best: we more or less stapled a sheet of blackout fabric over each window.  We'd prefer to be a little classier in this new place, so whenever I work up the nerve (probably right after this, since I'm shaming myself about it publicly), I'm going to message a more sewing-inclined friend of mine and see if we can pay her to make some proper curtains with blackout fabric. 

The house is basically still piles of stuff everywhere.  But we've been making some improvements despite that.  There are now trash cans in most rooms, and soap, extra toilet paper, and cleaning supplies have made it to all three bathrooms.  We still haven't located a decent couch for downstairs, but by the look of it, that might take a good while.  In the meantime, we're still hoping to find shelves... but apparently shelves are about the one furniture type you can't find secondhand.  Everyone always needs shelves. 

We'll either have to buy new ones, or Chris has said he might be able to make some from boards and such.  It would be pretty cool to have handmade shelves, but my skill with woodworking was limited to like three projects in shop class.  It sounds like I should be grateful I was able to have shop class at all, between the past mentality (females weren't supposed to learn "manly" trades like woodworking!) and the current mentality (cut EVERYTHING out of school except academics/sports!). 

No comments:

Post a Comment