Fixer-upper

I spent a few days back in Minnesota working on the house. It still sits unsold, after five months on the market. Besides doing some work to eliminate pet odors in the basement and some minor repairs, I had most of the interior repainted. The bedroom and living areas looked better with fresher coats of paint. We restored Ellen's room to white. That was a bit sad -- I had painted that room myself to turn it into a nursery. Now, that's all erased.

You (boxes) complete me

Finally! Our stuff is here. Now to figure out where to put it. At least we get to sleep in our own beds tonight.

Purple Sky

Rachel and Ellen flew in today. Still no delivery truck. We're living in a hotel room and spending our days trying to prepare the house and keep Ellen entertained.

The trees, shrubs, and flowers here are strange and beautiful. A tree called "jacaranda" is flowering -- brilliant lavender blossoms lighting up the sky.

Delivery

First delivery! The truck with Rachel's car has arrived. He was also hauling several vintage Mustangs. I don't understand why the guy with a load of cars (all of which he had to pick up after loading ours) made it the day after I did, but the moving truck isn't coming for almost another week. It's going to be a long wait...

Reboot

And here it is. The final leg of the trip, from Phoenix to Arcadia, wasn't too bad. The terrain was mostly desert. I did hit the only real traffic of the trip -- construction creating a stop-and-go bottleneck for several hot, dry miles just north of Imperial Valley.

I made it to our new home in early afternoon, got the keys, and dropped off the cats. No furniture or family yet, but the driving is done.

Endless

Day three of the move was the longest. Amarillo to Phoenix was a twelve hour drive, though jumping back a time zone every time I crossed a state border made it seem shorter. The strangest, most varied, most desolate, and most glorious landscapes passed me by -- from Texas scrub to New Mexico painted cliffs, to Arizona mesas, to the high coniferous forests around Flagstaff, to the cactus-dotted Sonoran desert.

In Phoenix, I wound up at a branch of New York's Grimaldi's pizza for dinner. They asked me if I wanted to sit at the bar to watch the game. I had no idea who was playing whom.

Kumback

Day 1 of the drive was hardest. I planned to be on the road by 11ish, but the movers were more than three hours late, and they were short a loader. I ended up leaving them to finish the job without me and got on the road around 2. My mood wasn't improved by dozens of miles of construction on I-35 in Minnesota, making my first 90 minutes of the drive a slow, maddening crawl. I put pedal to the metal once I got out of that mess, made up some time through Iowa, and got into Kansas City late, but still at a civilized enough hour for dinner.

The cats meowed throughout the drive but were otherwise well-behaved. They settled into a dated and bad-smelling 'pet friendly' room at the Kansas City airport Microtel. I was resigned to this being the cost of bringing pets on the road, but the other hotels on the trip were much better.

Day 2 was long, but more relaxing. Kansas was flat and green, Oklahoma was flat and red (with the occasional oil well decorating a grazing pasture), and Texas was flat and dry. Amarillo was unremarkable, though the Holiday Inn upgraded the cats and I to a suite. The cats appreciated that.

The best part of the day was a lunch stop at the Kumback Lunch in Perry, Oklahoma. I had the best chicken-fried steak of my life there (a dish I usually detest), and I got to see some local color. The fellow in the overalls (with his wife) had a lovely exchange with the restaurant owner. She bought his lunch, asked after his dog, got him a bag of scraps for the dog, then walked him to his pickup truck. Just a little slice of small-town life.

I also tried one of the famous drinks at Sonic. Way too sweet. I don't get the appeal.

Goodbye

Farewell to Minnesota and the Little Brick House on the Corner. You weren't perfect, but you were ours. And we still pay all your bills, until someone wants to buy you.

The movers have arrived and the house is being emptied into a big truck. I have packed my car with necessities and three cats, and we're about to hit the road.

Life, boxed

This is it. The packers have packed everything up. Rachel's car is being shipped. Tomorrow, the moving truck comes. For a week, we'll be in a suspended state, as we make our separate ways across the country. At the end of the transition, family, cats, stuff, and cars will be reunited in California, and something new will start.

Friendship

One final evening out with my best friend (and Ellen's future husband, if you ask her). Our last few days in Minnesota are winding down.

Two seasons more than we need

We're also selling a whole three-season porch set. Any takers?

For sale!

Did I mention we are downsizing like mad? Anyone want a big projection TV or an entertainment center suitable for holding hundreds of VHS tapes? C'mon -- live it up like it's 1999!

Antiquing

We're donating, selling, and tossing out all kinds of stuff as we prepare to move cross-country. Big ol' pieces of furniture that we don't really need are at the top of the list. I crawled under Rachel's old dining room table to take a picture of this stamp. A little Googling suggests it actually is a mid-century antique that might be worth a few bucks to a dealer. Now to find someone who wants to buy it...

Sign o' the times

Came back from vacation to find this sign in our yards. Sad but necessary.

Staged

Look at our newly Spartan house. Let's pretend that really tidy people with very little stuff live here! We leave town and it goes on the market tomorrow morning. The first two showings are already scheduled. I'm hoping that the extra scrubbing of the porch windows translates to, say, $5K more in the offer. We'll see.

Unfortunately, the cats are not on board with this plan, and they have their own ways of making the house less attractive.

Packrats

So. Much. Junk!

Twenty bags of old (but perfectly good) clothes to donate, as well as a tube TV. We finally admitted that if we lose a bunch of weight, we will not want to celebrate by slipping on our acid-washed jeans and rayon prints from 1989.

Live by the code

I took a snap of our rearranged dryer and its new vent to send to our realtor to make sure it's up to code. The inspector is coming Monday. I had to lean into the laundry room to make the shot as we had just had the floor repainted.

It begins

The first boxes are packed. We're really moving to California.