Things

I wrote this about a week ago:

 

I spent the night at the new house for the first time ever night before last. That meant that this little guy spent the night alone, something he's only done a handful of times in the many years he's been living with us. The next day he was feeling very needy and spent a lot of time on Dave's lap getting pet.

This is the look he gets in his face when he is very into getting belly rubs.

 

And this is today:

 

Gray Kitty and I have since moved to the new house. GK knows that he's living in a house with another animal--the dog that once belonged to Dave's mother who is now in an assisted living facility--but cat and dog have yet to come face to face. Right now they are separated by a pet gate draped with towels so that they can hear but not see each other. GK has a bedroom, office, and a bathroom to himself until he's ready to come out and share the rest of the house with the dog. Right now he's napping on the bed but he's still very much in "hiding under the bed" mode whenever the dog barks (which is rare; he's an elderly dog and very quiet but delivery trucks set him off). 

Behind me is a mountain of boxes that need to be unpacked. In front of me is a mountain of boxes that need to be unpacked. I unpacked five of them this morning, rescheduled a dentist appointment and reordered some medications. Dave unpacked a bit around his workday and he also made bread and started a load of dishes in the dishwasher. When I'm done here, I'll hand wash what can't go in the dishwasher. Then I'll get back to unpacking.  

The empty room from the last entry now has a bed in it and a small bookshelf that is being used as a nightstand. It also has a large room divider that is destined to be a quilt design wall (I haven't sewn in a long, long time seems like) but which is now placed in front of a large, sunny window to act as privacy curtains until actual curtains can be acquired and hung. I don't know why we need privacy curtains except as a habit that's hard to break; the window looks onto a large courtyard with a six foot tall fence around it and our neighbors are not very close to us at all. The only things that could possibly look in the window are the hummingbirds that visit the feeder that hangs from the pergola. 

We're all in the same house again, the three of us plus the new-old dog, but we're by no means finished with the casita. Yesterday we moved more boxes (there is yet more, the last of the things that were in use up to the last second), emptied the freezer, and started cleaning. Today we'll empty the fridge, possibly bring the indoor plants, and continue cleaning. Then it will be a matter of bringing the things from the patio, the outdoor plants, the bistro table and chairs. We'll have to call to have some large furniture picked up for disposal next week and after that's done we'll still have to move three bookshelves, a desk, washing machine, and table

I look at how the things we had in a 500 square foot casita are expanding to fill a 2000+ square foot house and it is mind boggling. I am a genius packer of suitcases for travel--I can pack any amount of clothing and toiletries into the smallest suitcase--but I hadn't quite thought those skills also translated into packing possessions into houses. (I guess I had some inkling when the first thing we packed and moved out of the casita was 28 cartons of books--and those were not all the books, not by a long shot. We've moved many more cartons since.) We originally ordered eighty small and medium moving boxes and we used every one in addition to the boxes we saved from Amazon, Target and Chewy shipments. After we unpacked the boxes at the house, we brought them back to the casita be used again. I would guess we've moved over a hundred boxes (mostly Dave has moved over a hundred boxes to be honest). That doesn't include the things we've moved that didn't go into boxes, like office chairs and shopping bags of things and my sewing machines and the two carts of art supplies and my fabric stash already in its own storage and the 12x12 inch bins with more art supplies and CDs and old school notes and the storage footstools that had yet more art and office supplies. . . 

I mean, how? How did we have that much stuff in such a small space? How? It was two months of moving things (very slowly moving things) before the first corner of the casita appeared (after moving a small set of shelves that held our shoes near the front door). That was exciting. Now I can see all the casita corners (except the one behind the fridge). It's sad.

I'm stalling on the dish washing, clearly. I'm going to wrap this up, swallow the last, cold dregs of coffee in my cup and get moving.