Runnin’ around CRAZY!!!
Not to worry… the silence of the past few days has not meant that the stories have run out. On Saturday morning I disconnected my computer and carried it to the house. Meanwhile, other stories were in progress.
Friday evening, after four hours of madly shovelling mulch and barely making a dent in the pile, I sent the S.O.S. out to Troy who called a local high school coach, who knew a couple of his kids were looking for odd jobs. At nine a.m. they would be there to bail me out! On Friday Troy also put up the Wonderboard on the exterior wall of the tub so I could go about retiling.
Saturday, slightly panicked over the moving that did not happen on Friday, I began running loads to the house at seven a.m. When I arrived, there was my new neighbor, Will shovelling away at the mulch pile. Yes, I got a little teary-eyed. I had no idea the very best feature of the house I bought was the amazing people I would be surrounded by. Will had already worked all night at his job, and there he was, working away in my yard. I told him about my young, eager help on the way and thanked him so very much.
After that, I was back to shuttling loads until nine when the kids arrived. We decided what they would be paid and they set to work, and I went back to more loads. At ten, my boss and his son arrived a the rental house to pick up my motorcycle. The ole’ gal needs some new fuel lines and some TLC and Russell’s son Jordan was eager to work on her for me. It was such a relief to have some help with the bike. Then back to more loads.
I had told my landlady I expected to be out by about two pm. or so and she called a few times to verify how things were coming along. She let me know she had planned to go out of town but stayed in town because she’d be able to get in and size things up that afternoon. That added tremendously to the pressure, but I kept working at it.
By about one p.m. I moved all the last odds and ends to the garage and went about cleaning: vaccuuming, cleaning toilets, glass, wiped down door and window trim with wood cleaner, cleaned off smudges on the walls, swept out the garage, sprayed oxy grout cleaner on all the tile work and then mopped the kitchen twice (the first time left terrible water spots). Then I went to pressure wash the house and with no success after an hour, resigned myself to the pressure washer being broken.
To pre-empt the next check-up call, a bit after two I called to say I wouldn’t be out until maybe four p.m. The next call was to my next door neighbor, Randy, asking if he could help with a last truckload of stuff to the house. Though he just returned from all sorts of air travel headaches and hassles, he came over and helped me.
In the end, despite all my cleaning efforts, there was so much more cleaning I really wanted to do, but totally ran out of time. If the pressure to get out so my landlady could get in had not been there, I would have delayed and spent Sunday cleaning too. I had planned to take one last nice, long hot shower before departing and didn’t even have time for that. Maybe it was better this way, though. I arrived at the house to settle that last truck load of stuff and was totally exhausted but relieved–only one house to worry about now.
And for dinner Saturday night… the neighbors who run the Iron Horse garage across the street had a big fundraiser spaghetti feed to help their granddaughter afford cheerleader camp. All kinds of people were there and it was a complete break from all the panic of the previous couple days.
From there, I walked back across the street to my little house, back to my little bedroom where my little bed was and barely recall crawling beneath the covers for my first night’s sleep at the house.
