To borrow loosely from Walt Whitman, these days I’m a person in multiplicity. I am cluttered with dizzying tasks, followed by hours of silent waiting for this installer, that servicer, those workers. I’m writing this post, in fact, on the fly, in an empty house on one of those pilfered and unsecure “Internet Tubes.”
But These Days, it’s all about moving from here to there.
It’s especially about moving into a needy house. A money pit, to be more accurate This newer, shinier house came with a bargain basement price tag, but when we got it home and pulled it out of the sack, we realized it had some flaws … some loose threads. It needed more than a bit of work before we could actually wear the thing.
First, the previous owners (bless their dear little hearts) stole the entire kitchen! The bank kindly rebuilt a kitchen, but as in all bank things these days, it came up a bit short. Among other things, they neglected to install a microwave. Now, when your husband is the Microwave King, you MUST have a microwave. Also, the water in Phoenix is harder than a granite pit and just about as tasty. Thus, a water softener and reverse osmosis water system are necessities here. Those things were gone too, along with even the little thingys on the water handles that indicate hot and cold — yep, pulled right out of the faucets. The flooring was a mess; yucky carpets, messed-up travertine tiles, hardwoods crying for some tlc.
Next, the backyard was gone. How does someone remove an entire backyard? Seriously! How does someone DO that? The front yard was overgrown and mostly all weedy. A poisonous and, dare I say, illegal Castor Bean lolled in the wind like some Dr. Seuss character. Of course, the water timer was missing, as well as our good sense by now.
I think you’re getting the point. Each day we’ve discovered another compelling reason to flip open our checkbook and pay people to do things for us because we’re too lame, too unskilled or too old to do it ourselves. I’m still a month away from doctor’s release after my recent wrist surgery, so poor Dan gets to do all the packing, lifting, toting of all our barges and bales.
The good news is that we’re only days away from habitability. Days away from moving our furniture and boxes into our new shiny object. Only days from the new exhaustion of switching from our sensible and modest single level home to what can only be referred to as “that two-story big a$$ house.”
But it’s our final house. It’s the Monopoly Park Place property that we hope we bought at the bottom of the market. (For all our sakes, I hope we’ve reached the bottom of our collective economic mess.) It’s our last grand house before the kids discover how daft we really are and ship us off to the old folks home where we can retire in peace with mashed potatoes and pie served at every meal. In the meantime, the stairs and all the work and simply keeping up with the Arizona dust in this big a$$ house will keep us in shape …
… And in a perpetual Walt Whitman state of multiplicity.