Moving Toward Something

Let's See Now...Where Was I?

Well hello there!  When I last wrote, it was in early May and I was expressing happiness that Spring was here.  Now it's late August.  It's been a busy summer.  Here's a basic rundown on what's happened since late May.

I bought a house.  We moved into it in June.  House shopping was fun.  There were some crazy things on the market.

• A teensy house in a lovely historic neighborhood, but the inside of the house looked like a suburban townhouse development had hit it--all beige carpet, shiny fake brass lights, beige walls.  Overpriced, to boot.
• A National Folk style house in a highly desirable neighborhood that was in terrible need of repair.  It was fun to fantasize about fixing this one up, but it would have been an enormous pain in the rear.
• A couple of houses where people had bought them in order to fix them up a bit and flip them, but then run out of money.  These were sad because the things the owners had chosen to change were the only things about the house that had any character.
• What was once a gorgeous arts and crafts bungalow, but was now home not only to a dude and his dog, but probably some raccoons and various birds and rodents.  It smelled of smoke, had fake brick siding, and a leaky skylight.  Extra bonus was the large painting in the dining room of two well endowed gentlemen making love.  While I appreciate the human form and depictions of love, I was not prepared for HELLO PENIS.  I had to hold in about ten penis jokes so as not to shock the real estate agent.
• A beautiful, well maintained old house in a nice neighborhood...except it had a nasty bulge in the kitchen ceiling and no off-street parking.  The built-in bar cabinet in the living room almost made me forgive this.  Almost.
• Another house with lovely old built-ins and woodwork that was unfortunately situated right next to train tracks.  If I had to live next to train tracks, these would be the ones I'd want to live next to.  There's a strip of beautiful community garden separating the tracks from the street.  But I don't have to live next to train tracks, so I'm not gonna.

So I wound up buying a Cape Cod style house built in 1927 in a pleasant neighborhood.  It is structurally sound and doesn't need any emergency repairs.  It has some cosmetic issues that I hope to correct over the years; while the house was lovingly maintained, at some point in its history its former owners clearly wished they had a 50s ranch style house and did some unfortunate remodeling.

There's all this stuff I want to get done to the house, but I have to pace myself.  I'm trying to focus on getting all the unsexy stuff done first.  Replacing the water heater, getting a fir tree removed (it had been planted five feet from a birch, and the two were preparing to fight to the death), new insulation, blah blah blah. 

I'll post here with before and after pictures when we get to the sexy stuff!

Apartment Population +2

Boyfriend and dog were safely installed in the apartment a couple of weeks ago, and as you can see, the Mr. Willis is VERY excited about his new surroundings.

Actually, the adjustment has gone much better than expected for the pets.  I had predicted that my cat Eloise would have a psychotic break, and that Beatrice would eventually befriend Mr. Willis after much fear and loathing.  In reality while the cats and dog couldn't be called friends (there is still the occasional hissing), we were able to leave them alone together the second day the dog was here. 

I the components that made this smooth-ish transition possible were:

1. The dog respects the cats' space.  He's dealt with cats before and he knows they can get sharp and pointy, plus he's just not all that excited by them.
2. The cats have a very tall cat tree they can climb up on.
3. A month ago, I installed a baby gate with a small pet door in the doorway of the room where I keep the cats' food, water, litter, and cat tree.  This means the cats can run to safety whenever they like, but the dog can't run in after them.  Not that he's even bothered to try; see item #1.

Yes, I'm blogging about my pets.

Oh, right, and the boyfriend-who-will-henceforth-be-referred-to-as-N is here now too.  That is a singular joy, as prior to this we'd been long distance for three years.  It is such a happy thing that it's hard to put into a blog post.  How do you make people understand why it is SO AWESOME that you got to go out to dinner with your boyfriend of three years, and that you'll get to go out to dinner with him again next week?  So that's why you're seeing more writing about the pets and less about N.  It's just hard to explain the joy.

Someday I Will Tire of the Farmers' Market...

...but today is not that day.  I went to the farmers' market and got fresh horseradish (made last night), rainbow Swiss chard, daikon radish, some leeks, and I registered to vote.

It is now root vegetable season, gourd season, and "spicy greens" (arugula, mustard greens, etc.) season.  It is also apparently the season of strange cauliflower, as seen in these photos.  I considered buying some, but then realized that this familiar process would result:

1. I bring them all home and look at them for a while.
2. I fail to make anything with them because I'm not that great a cook.
3. I end up having to toss them out when they became decrepit enough that the cats attempt to bury them.

That would be very sad.  But this is what photographs are for!  Now I shall have my pretty cauliflowers forever and ever, and so shall you.  Look at the crazy green romanesco stuff!  It'd be like eating fractals.  OM NOM NOM.

My Wisconsin driver license arrived in the mail today, and it's fabulous because it has a picture of a little farm in the upper right hand corner. 

Boxes, Unpack Thyselves

Unpacking is tedious.  The motivating factor for me is that I still haven't found the box that holds the pot in which I cook spaghetti sauce, and I want it because I want to make sauce with those fabulous farmers' market ingredients!  Arrgh!

It's so easy to get distracted by shiny things and wander off in the middle of unpacking a box.

Current unpacked box count:  12

The reason for this blog, revealed.

So back in I dunno, maybe May of this year, my boss said to me something along the lines of "Hey, would you be interested in moving to Wisconsin?" and I said something like "Yeah, I could do that," and he said "Whoa, really?  That'd be cool," and I said "Yeah, totally.  So should I do that?" and he said "Yeah," and I said "Okay."  And that's how I found myself making preparations to put my house in Minnesota on the market and move to Wisconsin. 

It happened far faster and far more slowly than I ever could have imagined, if you can fathom that.  In my naive optimism, I had wanted to be moved by July, but given the improvements I needed to make to my house in order to sell it, that was unrealistic.  Then I started overestimating the time it would take to get those improvements done; I had never had any work done on the house at all and knew nothing.  Along about early June, I had this revelation:  You can call people!  They will come to your house and give you an estimate!  If you decide you like their estimate, they will do work for you!  All you have to do is give them money!  I wish that I had had this revelation much earlier in the decade I spent in that house.  It now looks much, much classier than when I lived in it.

I moved to my current apartment in Wisconsin on September 1, and my house went on the market today.

Uh, so I guess I should justify titling this post as I did.  The reason for this blog is:  I want some place to post about this move and the things that spring from it.  I also want to post all this stuff in once, in one place, then direct family and friends to that one place.  I've been saying "Did I already tell you about this?" too much lately.