9 August 2011 - Pick it, pack it, or part with it

I'm tired!  After the last couple of weeks, the song running through my head is I'm Tired, as sung by Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles.  The pertinent lyrics are:


I'm tired,
Tired of playing the game
Ain't it a crying shame
I'm so tired
God dammit I'm exhausted.

Okay, so I'm not tired of love, I'm just bone tired. Robin came out for the last two weeks in July to help us pack up the house to prepare for moving. She arrived on a Sunday to chaos. Jack and I had spent the previous couple of weeks emptying out our bedroom and the library, then painting, stripping the carpets and padding for the arrival of new carpet on Monday. Our guest room, so to speak was packed full. There was a small path from the door to the bed, and not any room for her belongings.

Robin, our self-professed fog flower, arrived in the midst of a heat wave accompanied by the requisite high humidity. I can't believe how hard she worked in such debilitating conditions. It was hard for me and I'm used to it. She did get both Jack and me drinking lots of Gatorade. I don't like it, but it does stop the nausea and light-headedness brought on from working in the heat. We had almost two weeks of temps from 98 to 101. Brutal. 

Sunday, we dismantled the water bed in anticipation of the new carpet and discovered it had some leaks and decided to pitch it. On Monday, not only did we have the carpet people in, but the pod was delivered. We quickly loaded the two apothecary cabinets, which freed up some floor space for working and packing in Robin's room. Then Robin and I went out bed shopping. We found a perfect bed (soft enough for Jack and firm enough for me) which would be delivered the next day. At least that was the plan. Due to some unexplained circumstances, the bed wasn't delivered until Friday, but after sleeping on the floor for five nights, it felt great! Still does.

Because Jack and I have already taken two full 17 foot U-Haul trucks to Utah, the stuff that is left is hard--really hard to deal with. Not only is every item fraught with pitch, pack or give away decisions, much of it is just the detritus of living. Stuff you need and want, but don't know how to deal with. It is draining.

The mission for these two weeks was to fill up a POD and have it shipped to Salt Lake. We packed everything in sight and the POD is only half full. Amazing. Everything took much longer than I thought it would. We packed a couple of type cabinets. Sounds easy, right? Oh no. For example, Robin carefully cut cardboard to fit the many different types of cases. We snapped the cardboard over the type then wrapped the case in stretch wrap. One case could take up to 20 minutes, and it took two of us to handle the case and stretch wrap.

Robin made a gallant effort to live up to her nickname, Robin the Ruthless, but she was in clean out mode and I was in the I-still-have-to-live-here frame of mind. Hard on both of us. But even so, I can't believe how much progress we made in spite of ourselves. The biggest piece, I think is that the attic is completely empty. Amazing.  It just kills me that I didn't take a before picture.  It took Robin and me two days to empty the attic. Everything went out of the house.

The three P's. Pick, pack or part with it. Lots of stuff went straight into the garbage. It is astonishing to see how much stuff you keep just because you can. Even more stuff went into the metal pile for the scavengers. Halfway decent stuff went into the driveway for a freecycle free-for-all. The deck was covered with boxes to deal with. Jack's pile, my pile and a muzzleloading pile. Stuff that needed individual decisions.

The majority of the contents of the attic went into the free-for-all. I put it on the freecycle list with a long list of items and said opens at 10 am. We had people showing up at 9. When we threw our hands up in the air at 10 it was total mayhem. Everything was gone in 30 minutes. The three of us were running around crazy, answering questions and hauling stuff. Our heads were spinning!

We also pulled the aquariums out of the garage for the free-for-all. Unfortunately, no one wanted the big ones, (a couple of the 20 gallons walked out with people), so we put them out for the garbage, and to our amazement, our guys picked them up! Yay!

Cats. It was hard to get going in the morning as we were highly entertained by our feral colony: my three favs, Hughie, Big Fluff and Little Fluff, plus Hughie's four kittens which were in the starting to pounce phase, and the occasional visits from Tabico and her two kids. It was a zoo, and fun to watch. The second week that Robin was here, Little Fluff had a litter of five. We gathered up the five, plus Hughie's four (all of whom had some sort of deformity) and took them to the animal shelter. While we were there we discovered that Oakland County has a spay and release program. All you have to do is attend a class, sign up your colony, then spay and neuters are only $10. Wow.  Jack and I will take the class in August, and try to get Hughie, Big and Little Fluffs fixed. I'm afraid they are already back in heat.

Back at the ranch, Jack rented a power washer and cleaned the deck, the siding, the gutters, and also sprayed all the loose and peeling paint off the garage. We have paint for the garage and sealer for the deck, but haven't had the weather for it yet. And during all the packing, there was lawn to mow, gardens to water, japanese beetles to battle.

We had some great wildlife. Whilst picking the dreaded Japanese beetles off my loosestrife, I found a bee (hornet? wasp?) that was totally new to my yard. Bright orange, black wings, and huge back legs. Most bees are a golden color, wasps tend toward yellow. This orange was definitely a bright orange.

I did a preliminary google search to find out who it was, but came up empty. Need to spend more time at that. 

Yet another morning, having coffee on the deck the sun was slanting through the maple at just the right angle to see a perfect orb web.

The way the sun sparkled on the strands it almost looked like a CD suspended in the air. 

The architect is smack-dab in the middle dealing with her latest catch.