Packing, moving, packing

We spent the whole weekend moving, a bit at a time.  I had to wait around for hours on Friday for a repairman to do the final walkthrough repairs on the house, then the Direct TV guys was 2 hours late for being 2 hours early (don't even ask!) today, so not as much stuff got done as could have, but I'm still very satisfied with what we did.  Today, we took the dogs back and they had a ball once again.  They are instantly at home, no conflicts, no memories of the past.  They just picked a spot on the sofa the folks left behind and hang out.  

I cleaned the fridge, lined the kitchen cabinets with contact paper and put some stuff in them. Emptied a couple of boxes of bathroom stuff into the bathroom cabinets and brought the boxes home to re-use and the coup de grace: did the laundry!  Woohoo!  Laundry in a house.  Laundry with no quarters.  No restrictions on the minimum size of the load.  No psychic timing challenges, trying to guess when the laundry room is going to be empty, or being frustrated that somebody's wet laundry's been sitting in the washing machine for 30 minutes!  We have a REALLY nice front loading washer with so many choices it overwhelmed me temporarily.  I got to dry my delicates the right way too, checking every so often so that nothing got hot.  Can't do that with a commercial dryer - it automatically deducted about 3 minutes every time you opened the door, so you'd have to just leave it alone.  Some things would be burning hot, other stuff still damp.  Not any more!

There are so many simple joys we have to appreciate at this house.  It was freezing on the inside on Friday, and so I got smart and went and sat in the sun on the patio for 10 minutes.  Voila, instant heat the old-fashioned way.  Got some Vitamin D while I was at it. Doing laundry, not having to walk the dogs, watching the dogs romp, a refrigerator with an ice maker and a filtered cold water dispenser in the door!  Nirvana.  We'll save a lot of money on bottled water, I'll tell you that.

I'm letting go of some perfectionism and just going more with the flow.  I'm not that concerned that I'm putting stuff in the utmost "right place."  I'm just happy to get it out of a box and into the new house.  If it needs rethinking or reorganizing, I can do that later. (Well, no I probably can't redo it later, I'm getting more pregnant by the day and even bending over is hard, but what the heck, nobody ever died over inefficient placement of bathroom products.) Mark and I did, however, try to carefully think out the placement of furniture within the rooms.  Me and the handy tape measure have been measuring everything to see where things can and will go.  And we had to have a clue for the cable guy so that we'd know where to put the outlets.  He was a little frustrated because we only had 1 tv at the house, and we'd brought that especially for him.  Why have a tv there if there's no cable and no bedroom furniture and no tv stand?  But he said he could come back next weekend to program the remote for the other tvs once they are there.

The baby's been quiet this weekend.  Still some kicks and some flops and moves, but I think he's active when I'm not and vice versa.  I usually feel him most when reclining on the sofa after a meal and doing nothing.  I think all the moving around lulls him to sleep.  I've got an appointment on Tuesday with the good perinatologist and if I can find a VHS tape, I can record the visit and the ultrasounds.  They don't do DVD because it'd take to long to burn it afterward.  My first chicken-hearted doctor always gave you a dvd, but then again, he also gave you a heart attack with his habit of pre-worrying.  I think most doctors are so cautious and concerned today because they don't want to be sued, not because there's such a likely of anything wrong.

With Mark at work tomorrow, I wonder what's left that I can even carry to the house?  Maybe some more clothes on hangers.  All the books, cds and DVD are there already.  Well, there are probably enough boxes that Mark left me from this weekend that I can unpack.

I'll have to take a picture of the baby's room - it's sort of funny.  It was a boy's room before, so there are baseball and soccer ball door handles and these solar system switchplates.  I might need to switch that up a bit for our baby, but it's still kind of cute in a hokey way.

I've lived in houses before, even owned one, but I don't think I've ever been so grateful to be in one as I am right now.  So far, for both me and Mark, this house is Thanksgiving and Christmas come early.