The Scoop

Aunt Jo, here's the move scoop.

Alatariel has had yet another (and most likely the final) falling out with her controlling, manipulative, obsessive-compulsive, co-dependant, spoiled, tempter-tantrum-throwing bipolar friend, so Ala is ready to move yesterday.

Hubby is so swamped that he can't even begin to talk about moving.

It's up to me. This house is in a major, major, state of disaster; you would be frightened by the clutter and piles of crap that I have collected and stacked around in corners. I started painting the kitchen three, maybe four years ago, and have yet to finish it. We painted part of Ala's room in 2004 and never finished it. You've heard tales of The Bead Room.... when Hubby cleans house, he takes it all to the door of my craft room and tosses it. My closets are overflowing. Shelves are about to explode. I have no storage space for my stuff, because Hub has his power tools stashed under the sinks, in the coat closet, in the laundry room cabinets... We need to build a front porch and a deck. The only porch is at the back door. And that's just the house stuff that needs to be done. I won't go in to what needs to be cleaned up on the land.

I decided my first priority will be to a)pack up stuff that's sitting around that I will not part with, like family photos and those pieces of junk that are worthless to anyone else but priceless to me, b) trash or donate the other junk. This will take approximately three years.

Next, I'll finish painting. We purchased all the paints to finish the half-started jobs, new brushes, a power paint roller, and one of those ladders that you can fold to be like scaffolding. I should have the painting done in two more years.

Sometime during that period, I'll probably hire someone to build the porch and deck, because neither Hub nor I are talented with a hammer, not in any way, shape, or form.

However, I plan to have the house put on the market by early spring, so I probably need to do a fast forward on those time tables.

The biggest issue I see is that there are a lot of properties for sale around here, and some of them have been on the market for a looong time. I'm hoping that our place will look attractive to someone really quick-like and we won't sit in limbo waiting for The Right Person to come along. It's my understanding that late spring & early summer are the best times to move real estate - people change jobs and relocate when school is out. Crossing my fingers that it'll work out just right!

And, we will be moving there. I found my dream house about half an hour south... in pictures, anyway. The chances of it still being available when we're able to move, however, is probably slim to nuttin'.

Sissy Kitty is in my lap trying to get her head under my fingers so I'll pet her. Silly cat. I'll miss her when she goes to live with #1Son, but I think she'll be a good kitty with the #1Grandson.

I took my two bags to Target today. I put them on the little conveyor belt with my haul, and told the lady that they were my grocery bags. She said OK, put them aside, and started checking groceries. Rather than bagging my groceries, she just started putting them on the other end of the cash wrap after she scanned them. It became quickly apparent that she had no intention of putting my purchase in my cloth bags. Fine. I picked one up and held it in front of her so she had no choice but to scan and drop my stuff in the bag. Any deviation from the program is just incomprehensible to these people.

Sissy's driving me nuts.

I'm going to throw away some junk now!