Transplanting a Seattleite

A. got up yesterday (I woke her up) after 4 pm, and so, understandably, struggled to get to sleep before this morning. I’m not sure she’s asleep yet as I type this, but I’m getting breakfast because BW will be here soon and we’ll be packing.

I vacuumed her room in the early (not that early, maybe 6 am?) hours, because she was forever in the bathroom repetitively. Her TikTok battery vacuum (pink, of course) actually works really, really well. I did the hallway and a bunch of my room after hers before it said nope need to be charged. The light is effective, and it’s not that loud. It’s pretty easy to empty the bin. I couldn’t figure out how to un-telescope the thing, tho. I’ll have to ask R. to help later today.

I made it to the dentist. I have a small cavity (they used to call these pits, R. says) that they will monitor.

I made it to the hair appointment and had a lovely time, altho A. did not make it to her appointment. I made another appointment for me, but not for her.

R. and I went to Prime 41, where we had oysters, a couple drinks each (the boulevardier and manhattan are both excellent), some bread, the fingerling potatoes, steamed asparagus and a 16 oz ribeye (we split everything except the drinks). It’s kind of fun to get back to how we used to eat out, splitting things. We stopped at a Whole Foods and I bought way too many baked goods, and some deli meat, which was very fun.

We had a Situation recently with A.’s contamination OCD and a stuffie falling on the floor. R. broke out a bottle of OdorOut that was older than either of our kids, and it genuinely still works. Of course we can’t buy another, but I explored other possibilities in this general area (spray, unscented, enzymatic or other does not need to be rinsed out cleaning agents). Based on Consumer Reports, I ordered 1 bottle of Odoban from Amazon for around $6. It was repeatedly delayed. I ordered a 4 pack for a little over $32, which felt mildly excessive, but whatever. It was canceled because of problems in shipping. I then ordered a 6 pack shipped from Amazon for $18 and change. That is NOT a typo. It hasn’t arrived yet. I canceled the single bottle. If the 6 pack fails to arrive, I’m moving onto another option. This is so weird.

Also, BS decided the tablet + cover was less useful and as heavy as a surface laptop, so we arranged a return on the tablet + cover. Unfortunately, all efforts to buy the surface laptop have failed for a variety of reasons. But we’re still trying, fingers crossed.

We got more boxes from the guy at Hanscom who is unloading them. In addition to the single use for $1, he had some that had been used more than once that he included for free. Many, many boxes. Woot!

We forgot to bring over the barstool, but we got a bunch of other stuff over to T.’s apartment. After hanging the shower curtain, we realized it needed a liner, so I’ve ordered one of those and a few other things he could make use of. We brought back some of the totes that we unloaded.

Family zoom included MIL, who is in the hospital following dehydration / diarrhea / fall. I wondered if she had taken one of those diet teas, but apparently it was just straight up laxative overuse. *sigh* OTC meds can really cause problems. She seems to be recovering well, and a friend is there to look out for her which is nice.

I’ve been moving greeting cards and such to a box, and it’s nearly full so I ordered another.

I also ordered a photo storage box, and that arrived today (earlier than anticipated, I think?). So I’ve been moving photos out of binders and into the photo storage. It’s like a massive life review / edit / curation exercise and I’m weirdly happy about the whole thing.

In the meantime, B. came over and we did, well, she did, room layouts for K, C, their sitting area, the LS bedroom and the LS living room. I made kale omelettes with roasted potatoes (a little too much chipotle oops) for lunch. I made leftover amounts of potatoes, and had that with a veggie burger (the Trader Joe’s Masala burger) for dinner. Mmmmm.

In the email from B (of LS), the desks for KC were the regular Secretlabs Magnus Pro, but there is an XL, and there had been talk earlier about whether they wanted the extra deep desks, but it turns out no. But with the diagrams from B (BW) and a reproduction in ProCore with adjustments, I was able to clearly communicate the proposal, which was really nice!

It’s so weird, that room being empty. I think the last time it was this empty, it was to install the red carpet he wanted.

Gentle Giant is, as always, utterly delightful. And their movers (at least one of them) immediately recognized that the floor plan T. worked off of was not a good match for his space. We made adjustments and it was fine.

The rugs I bought him are actually about the right size. He’s agreed to let me order him a shower curtain and a bath mat. I may go back and unpack more of his stuff. I want to reuse the boxes and totes.

We had lunch at Taqueria Central. That place is sooooo awesome.

I’ve started going through binders and putting things into the box. It’s working well. The recycle box is filling up.

B. came by earlier than expected. R. picked up a bunch of FBM stuff, which was lovely. B. and I got a last few things taken care of in T.’s room. She taped some doors and drawers closed. We boxed three lamps and put them in the back seat of T.’s car. I moved a bunch of hangars into one of the garment boxes.

R. got the posters off the wall.

I finished reading my book group selection and sent the email out.

B. and I had lunch at NYAJ’s.

We got the schematics for the garage, and R. seems mostly happy with them; I haven’t really looked at them yet.

B. put together a document with a list of rooms in each of the named sectors, and also nailing down what we are going to call the rooms. I do love a good naming scheme. A. is onboard as our gopher on move in day, with pay figured.

B. and I discussed strategies for communicating where furniture goes in each of the rooms (since there are a lot of rooms) so that heavy things are put down in the correct location first. We’re pretty sure we have a scheme to make sure they go to the correct room using the correct route, but positioning within the room is tricky for things which are not against a wall (we can tape signs to walls). Tape on the floor is an option, but many of the situations involve rug pad + rug + one or more furniture items, which could be tricky to communicate without a picture. I think the solution is use the plan view to generate room maps; she’s concerned the movers will struggle to make sense of information presented in that way. I figure that if we make it available, then at least someone on the move team will be able to make sense of it and that increases the number of people who can point to where things should go.

Today, B and I produced a list of non-furniture items that a house is expected to have / this house needs to have more or less at the beginning. It was long, and producing it meant that is no longer cluttering up my brain which is amazing and converts it into a list of Things to Acquire and Prepare to Move.

We also took trash bags into my closet and my dresser, and I filled 2 and a half of them. She relieved me of a couple of items, which made me feel really good about the whole thing. It also means that it’s easier to find an empty hangar, easier to hang something up, and the drawers all open and close much more readily now.

Finally, we went through the shelf o’ travel binders on the 3rd floor. Woot! I have a bit more to do there, but I got rid of about 80% of the volume, and I can get rid of a lot of the rest by tracking down my archival photo box and putting the photos in there, should I choose to do so.

R. and I had dinner at Great Road Kitchen. The ginger marg is amazing; I had two. I listed the Lounge Light, and it will be picked up in the morning. Someone else is picking up a bunch of the green plastic baskets. I’m going into Lexington to buy a teak shower bench lightly used for $50. Fingers crossed.

I did a meeting with LB from Glass Art, and I’m super optimistic that the niblings’ shower is going to turn out to be absolutely amazing.

I had a belated phone call with KC which was a delight.

I did FF with Priestess and the S’s, who are out having a great 4th weekend on one of the islands in Puget Sound. Delightful!

R. installed the fan in the dining room. It’s really nice!

He’s seemed like he was having some unarticulated feelings about what B and I have been up to. I’ve been super careful not to nag at him about participating in the move prep and packing and also not to be messing with his stuff. I asked him if he could tell me what he was feeling, and he said basically that he always waits until it’s slightly too late for big tasks and then just does them, and he’s really uncomfortable with watching how fast I am moving (with B’s able assistance), even though he recognizes that what I’m doing is important and needs to be done and all that. Which is quite a lot of forthright self-insight!

I picked up keys and parking sticker and signed things and delivered cashier’s check and all the good things for T.’s new apartment. Very exciting! Packing is getting close to done, since the garment boxes showed up. Someone is going to pick up a bunch of his old costumes.

RXO picked up the mattress after 9 pm. The original window was 3-7, so R. and I got takeout from Benjarong, which was yummy.

I got up fairly early this morning to drive out to Groton to walk up to Bancroft’s Castle with NK. That was delightful in every way — no bugs, beautiful weather and neither too hot or too humid yet. Gorgeous views. An interesting location. The very best of conversation and company.

Unfortunately, I was up at 5 am trying to help A. get to sleep. Ugh.

R. finally got out the crate of mudcloth and cut up the new piece to add to the old panels so they would be long enough for the future dining room windows. Of course he did a completely awesome job in every possible way, when faced with my nonsense tabs that had to be removed, and one panel that was substantially wider. It all looks amazing.

Meanwhile, I was very cranky because it was really hard to move around in T’s room in order to pack things; there is still A.’s old bed and old mattress in the hallway, awaiting July 1 RXO return for the mattress and unknown to happen to the bed. BW offered to list the bed, and she may have already. In any event, the space I had mentally allocated to staging full boxes wasn’t available.

But it’s a big hallway. Step 1 was getting the carpet remnant and the packing materials out of the corner where the drying rack lives. Step 2 was relocating the drying rack to the corner between the master suite door and the hall bathroom door. It doesn’t fit well there, but we can manage for at least a little while. That cleared a corner where I could line up full, large boxes (I was using dish barrels recovered from Florida Man’s storage unit) and stack full, smaller boxes (mostly Lilac Hedge) on top of them. This worked spectacularly well. It’s now easy to move around in T.’s room, despite the two office chairs and all the rest of what he has going on in there. I mean you still can’t get to the right hand side of his closet, but like I care.

I managed to clear out the two drawers in his closet, and a bunch of shelves. I listed some things. I got his bookcase mostly emptied out. Along the way, I found Kylo Ren’s head from a lego set that was missing the head, so I got to offer that to one of my frequent flyers and he will pick it up tomorrow morning.

I did family zoom for a bit, and then I facetimed with I. That was really nice, and calming. My friends are consistently amazing.

I realized that the crappy microfiber sheets that people complain about were still in the package (for A.’s new queen bed) and she was happier with the bamboo viscose sheets that were an incremental upgrade. And I’m still within the return window! Woot! I stupidly asked her if I could return them and she froze on me. After a while, I just said, you know, I need to quit consulting with people. Asking her about which one she likes better is fine. Asking what I should do is NOT FINE. I need to fucking stop.

I think I have a plan for tomorrow. Hopefully, I will get some sleep tonight.

ETA: Also, I made myself a drink tonight and probably I have not had enough to eat.

ETAYA: I ate some more, chatted with Priestess and put the pink curtains that we had for a while in A.’s room up in the walkin closet, since R. took down the panel in there for future dining room. They look very classy.