The Last of It...

I'm so behind on my blog...and most other things that don't have to do with either 1) client work or 2) moving.

This weekend is our last trip to pull the last of our possessions out of the house and clean. So far we've had a POD, a couple of fully loaded car trips and a voyage last weekend with a U-Haul. This weekend's final U-Hail trip will mean we at last have all of our things in one place, even if incredibly disorganized.

The new house is now the maze of boxes through which the dogs must navigate. And over the course of the past three weeks I've completely forgotten where I packed most of the small things one really needs to find...such as the key to the safe deposit box which was inadvertently packed and moved last weekend and is now needed today in a town 5 hours away. I guess our few precious items are safe, even if not easily accessible. Oh well, it gives us another excuse to visit our friends and old haunts on another long weekend some time soon.

The dogs are doing remarkably well, all things considered. They seem happy in either house as long as we're there. Unfortunately the new home is lacking a fenced back yard for them to run around in sans leash, so when we arrived moments ago at our old home I opened the back door and they both took off and started their usual chase/wrestle routine.

We'll all be a tad happier when our new town's new dog park is finally finished this fall.

Well, no rest for the weary self-movers, so off I go to figure out how to make an oval platter fit into a square box...

Got POD

At long last, the POD arrived Friday with a significant portion of our worldly possessions. My husband arrived a couple of hours later. I was relieved to see the former and thrilled to see the latter, as were the dogs (who have been arguing over the alpha male position all week).

We've now unloaded the POD and there's now a new maze of boxes through which the dogs must navigate. They haven't quite figured out how to chase each other on hardwood floors, yet, so collisions are inevitable. The dogs' solution to the problem is to chase each other up and down the stairs. Sometimes it gets rather rough and rather loud (you'd swear there were at least a half-dozen canines running up and down for all the stomping and growling going on).

Tonight's battle was over the red Kong Wubba -- a new toy I purchased for them last week at the local pet store. Baxter decided he wanted it. Kirby tries to take every toy away from Baxter. Even if Kirby's busy playing with his own toy, whatever Baxter has looks better. I decided to throw a rawhide bone into the mix to see what happened. Wubba ended up at the bottom of the stairs, Kirby ended up with the Wubba and Baxter's sitting here in my office pawing at me, trying to convey something I don't quite understand. "Take the rawhide away from Kirby and give it to me?" "I want to go outside again even though I was just out there 10 minutes ago?" "Biscuit?"

I've no idea...

Aaaaaahhhhhhh, coolness.

At long last, the AC guy finally arrived yesterday with the compressor. By mid-afternoon the hot little box we call home was starting to cool down and by evening it was downright chilly in here.

But the biggest indicator that something had changed was the energy level of the dogs. For the past several days they had mostly been hairy rugs, sprawled out on the floor with their tongues hanging out. Yesterday afternoon, however, they were as recharged as the AC and proceeded to catch up on their playing and wrestling.

Every time I was out of the room (and sometimes when I was in the room) there was scuffling. Toys were flying, rawhides were being stolen and the decision about who would become the alpha male while my husband is out of town was being negotiated in a less-than-diplomatic manner at times.

Ah, things are back to normal once again.

All Hot and Bothered

We sort of moved into our lovely new home (by moved I mean a few boxes, an Aero Bed, a folding chair and a TV tray) last weekend. The POD with most of our worldly possessions is sitting in a warehouse in Portland, but we're not going to get it until next weekend due to some over-booking on their part and higher-than-should-have-been expectations on my part. Anyway, it's good that I'm here because I have some on-site client work to do this week and that will certainly help pay for the costly move. My husband, who is still living five hours south of here, was kind enough to let me have the dogs for the week. Now we're wondering if that was such a good idea...

The trouble with the situation is...our lovely new home's air conditioning doesn't work, we have a Southern exposure with big windows (which we'll appreciate in the dreary winter) and the part that needs to be reinstalled (the compressor...big part) will take two days. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service has issued a severe heat alert for the area for the next two days, with temps reaching 100 degrees or more. It's damn toasty in here.

So I've been running around the house opening and closing windows and shades strategically to try to keep the heat out and get enough air flow to air out the off-gassing new paint, cupboards and floors (either it's working or I'm getting used to it). Fortunately it's been cool at night, so I've been able to open up the upstairs windows and capture the cool air, then close up during the day. We bought a huge fan that sounds rather like a prop jet preparing for take-off (and that's only on setting one of three) and it, along with the ceiling fan in the stairwell, keeps the air moving, which helps.

Today I have to spend a good portion of the day at a client's site and I'm a little worried about the dogs. The callous people at the Legend Homes office (which I'll rant about another time) had very little sympathy for our plight. The response was "well, I don't have air conditioning and my dogs survive." Ok, thanks. Nevermind that we just spent upwards of $4500.00 extra for the damned air conditioning, which didn't come standard with our house, and IT'S NOT WORKING.

The AC guy (who finally came out yesterday afternoon after I had to call them myself because the "Customer Care" people are all in Corvallis shooting a TV show all week) said the unit was faulty and the ventilation wasn't set properly either. Nice.

Anyway, that's only the latest in a long string of issues we've had with this move. But hey, moving is never a picnic. We've just been lucky in our past few moves. So I'm on to temporary solutions. My husband came up with the best idea, I think: put the dogs in the coolest spot in the house and turn on the giant fan blowing over a bowl of ice from our brand new refrigerator/freezer. Heck, I'm tempted to just open the doors and let the coolness emerge, but I think his idea is a tad more practical.

For now the dogs seem less bothered by it all than I do. I think they think we're camping. It rather feels like it at the moment.

The Box Maze

We're living in a maze of boxes at the moment, as we gather our things together and slowly take them out to the POD that's sitting in our driveway. Over the next couple of weeks we're moving our household back up to the northern part of the state, back to the cool green, back to the drizzly winters and gorgeous summers.

Baxter spent the first three years of his life there, walking with me every morning, rain or shine. But he's now spent most of his life in a hotter place and he's adapted just fine. On the hottest of hot days, Baxter will go out in the yard and lay down in the sun.

Kirby, on the other hand, is not so well adapted to this place he's always called home. He doesn't like the heat. His low-to-the-ground build and mostly black coat just aren't well suited to 100+ degree summer days. When Kirby goes into the back yard, he immediately heads for the shade.

I know Baxter will do just fine back in the land of his youth, and I think Kirby's going to like it a lot better in a more temperate climate. But the stuff that goes on between now and then is proving to be a bit disturbing. All this packing of our things. All this hauling off of the indoor landscape. It's a bit unnerving. Not to mention having to navigate around piles of stuff that doesn't quite fit into the boxes we're attempting to fill at any given time.

So what are the dogs doing? Oh, they are making sure they're never out of our sight. Wherever we are, the dogs are laying between one of us and the door through which we must carry boxes. This way, if they happen to fall asleep, they'll know we're leaving the building...if not from tripping and swearing, then from groaning and stepping to try to avoid them.

I get it, though. Dogs are creatures of habit. And, frankly, so are humans for the most part. And nothing disrupts your life quite like packing up everything you own into boxes and hauling it all off to another locale where the same thing happens in reverse. We just want it to be over.

But at the moment, we're far from it. So Baxter and Kirby are just going to have to deal with it all...at least for another couple of weeks.