The study will be finished this morning. Wow. Then I’ll sort files until Kate’s ready to take yet another pass through all of our clothes. After that, who knows? Dancing in the streets?
A month from now we should have been reunited with our stuff. That will mark the beginning of the next phase, moving in. To be followed by settling in. The UU ministry has an interesting term for a minister who has been hired by a church. They are considered settled. Settled will be the culmination of the move itself. Maybe a year from now? Hard to say.
Moving in, settling in and being settled operate on our time frame and have financial expectations that we can control. They will, in that sense, be less fraught. Of course, the sale of this house will be an issue, but it will happen.
So far the days around the purchase of Black Mountain Drive and the mortgage approval have been the most stressful. May it continue to be so.
When people ask if this is a downsizing move, my first response is no. And it isn’t in terms of total square feet when you add in the spacious loft study above the garage. There are two ways though in which that response is misleading.
We’re making a huge change in the amount of outdoor work. There is no yard on Black Mountain Drive. Hallelujah. Just rocky soil, moss, lodgepole pine, a few aspen, and a small patch of green over the leach field for the septic system. The two small garden beds are both close to the house. Yes, we will put in a couple of raised beds, but that will be it. The bees will be no more than two colonies. Much simpler.
The second way in which that no misleads is in the distribution of space in the house itself.
Kate’s Realm
Black Mountain Drive is an odd hybrid, a tri-level. It has a walk-out basement with a master bedroom, a full-bath, living room, laundry room and utility space. Up five steps is the main living level with a fireplace, what we’ll use as a reading room, a small dining area, a small kitchen and a closed in garage perfect for Kate’s sewing and quilting. Up seven steps from this level are three bedrooms and a full bath. One bedroom we’ll use as an office. The second, with its wonderful murals of the forest, will be for grandkids and the third, with its balcony overlooking the back and the pines, a guestroom.
Our current house has a very large basement area, 1,900 square feet, of which we use about half. The rest gathers stuff. It also has a too large for us living room and a long kitchen. The Andover house is not only bigger than Black Mountain Drive, its space divisions make it less useful to us. Black Mountain Drive has less square footage and the various spaces will each have a clear use. Too, the grandchildren’s room and guest room will get little use most of the time.
So, in terms of outside work and in terms of the economical use of space Black Mountain Drive does represent less responsibility for us. And we’re glad about that.
An odd part of the process. I’ve been taking my novel manuscripts off their shelves and putting them, plus their research, into banker’s boxes. I get to find the occasional rejection letter, see proof of past effort, wonder about writing. After hearing Ursula Le Guin’s speech at the National Book Awards (posted below), I found myself getting excited about writing again.
The whole commercial aspect of writing just does not appeal to me. Writing, on the other hand, does. So, when I get the study in order in Colorado, that leather chair and Chinese character green rug positioned in front of the window overlooking Black Mountain, a new novel will get going. Probably not a continuation of the Unmaking trilogy, but you never know. We’ll see what happens once I’m in the new environment.
Travel stimulates my imagination and I’m sure Colorado will do the same, probably over a sustained period of time since it will be all new places, with other new ones not far away. Also, being alone. Kate’s found a perfect place for me, a sort of aerie, a loft space on the second floor with a mountain view. The combination of new places and spaces. Wow.
At last all the pragmatic, git ‘r done energy can shift toward new possibilities. We’re not moved, no. And, we’re not 100% ready, but it’s clear we will be and we know where we’re going. Everything else feels marginal.
The book shelving has been dismantled. The teaware, ceramics, project organizers and various small objects like candles, bowls, book-ends are in boxes, sealed with packing tape and marked green for my study. What remains in here are my novel manuscripts (banker’s boxes), various office supplies, my computer and printer, a few desk items.
It has taken longer to finish the study than I imagined it would. The smaller and less uniform objects require more care. Even so, there was enough time, enough to keep my anxiety to a manageable level.
The short-timer feeling has vanished, too. We are no longer living in the move, as I said a few posts back, but are living the move. The focus now is on getting ready to leave.
Various matters that have to wait until the end, like closing out the Comcast account, will begin to appear. Comcast, infuriatingly, does not allow advance notice of stopping service. “You have to wait until two weeks before time,” the “customer service” denier said.
We can’t obtain new insurance in Colorado until we are resident there, even though the enrollment time will have passed for 2015. Our estate plan and trust documents will have to be updated there, too. It will be months before the immediate impacts of the move have all gotten sorted out.
Nearing the end here in the study. Office supplies and a few odds and ends (plus the computer and printer which will get packed at the very last), my close files are all that’s left. This represents not only a lot of work, but a marker announcing the near end of packing. Hurrah!
A call from Mike this morning. All the corner posts and braces are set and they have begun stringing a guide wire to mark off and set the other fence posts. Strange to have a major project underway at our house, yet it’s happening 900 miles away.
The resistance I felt last week has vanished. It’s a matter now of slogging through the last items, making sure everything has a place and the appropriate amount of shielding from damage. On track to finish well before Thanksgiving.
Mike the Fence Guy (as he identifies himself on his card) has had his travails this week. While enroute to our property, his truck’s fuel pump failed. This meant he not only had to get the truck fixed; he had to shift all of our fencing supplies to another truck.
When he got to Black Mountain drive, his assistant did not show up and had left his phone turned off.
Too, he had asked me yesterday for the code to the garage door opener key pad. Hmmm, I thought. Didn’t get one. So, I called the realtor who called the second realtor who discovered that the key pad had never been activated.
Kate suggested I figure out how to set it up and perhaps Mike could set it himself. Would work except you have to be inside the garage, with the lift motor, to engage the switch that allows you to enter a new code. A good safety feature and one I was glad to discover, but not helpful to Mike.
He did solve the storage problem. There is a shed on the property which had combination locks but also exposed screws. He simply backed them out with a drill, opened the door and stored the concrete. Good deal for him. And for me. But it does mean that lock hasp will either have to be reinstalled or not used for locking the shed. There’s nothing in there except window screens anyhow.
(This is roughly the sort of fence Mike’s installing.)
When I talked to him this afternoon though, he said six holes were dug and posts set. The ground is only a little frozen in some places, mostly not. And, the temperatures will not plunge as they did last week.
In a month this story I’ve been writing since April will cease to be about moving and shift to the act of settling in to a new home. It’s a narrative we had originally planned to take two years and instead it will have taken only seven and a half months. The process picked up speed at its own pace, one decision seguing into another and that one into another until on October 31st, we bought a house and set a moving date.
I don’t know whether the speed is good or bad, probably neither, but I do know that once the decision was firm, the desire to execute it swiftly grew. At the same time we have wanted a measured pace, one that allowed us to pack easily, look for a new house without getting frantic and determine an actual day without angst.
We have, for the most part, succeeded in that. We have a Thanksgiving reservation at the Capital Grille for ourselves and Kate’s sister, Ann. This will be our last Thanksgiving here and we wanted a nice meal to remember it, but not one that required us to cook.
Finishing up our part of the packing before Thanksgiving has been my goal and I’ve decided that no matter where we are on Thanksgiving, that that’s where we’ll stop. After that A1 movers can complete the work. There won’t be much more. We’ve already contracted with them to pack up the garage, the tools and the kitchen. Whatever’s left will be minor. (We both will pack the stuff we need to use till then. Computers, sewing machine, that sort of thing, but the rest. A1.)
Breakfast at Keys, then over to Sears Outlet to talk ourselves out of taking our Viking stove with us. Looked at Warner-Stellian for a bit, stoves like Thermador and Viking are tres expensive! Considering an induction cooktop and a wall mounted electric oven for Black Mountain Drive. The point is we decided to go for more flexibility in Colorado.
Back for an early nap. Then, more packing. I’m really close on the study, but packing the smaller stuff is harder than the books. Books I’ve packed so often that I understand them intuitively. Smaller things I have to think about some, make sure things are secure and don’t rattle around.
Mike the Fence guy called for the code for the garage door. Good idea, but I didn’t know it. So I contacted Ann Beck, the realtor. Turns out I never got the code because it was never activated. Don’t know where Mike’s going to store his concrete now. He’ll have to figure something else out.
Things feel chaotic, not out of control, but easy to tip over in that direction. Then, there’s the I can see the other side from here feeling and things tip back into balance, or as much balance as this part of the move allows.. Shadow Mountain looms closer and closer each day, becomes more tactile.
This day a month from now we’ll be getting ready to collect the dogs from Armstrong Kennels, Kate in the rented cargo van and me in the Rav4. I’ll pick up Vega, Rigel and Kepler while Kate will take Gertie. We’ll drive together to Shorewood where I’ll pick up my co-driver, Tom Crane. Then it will be good-bye to Minnesota.
That thank you for visiting Minnesota sign at the border with Iowa will have a different signification for Kate and me. We’ve lived in the Twin Cities a similar amount of time, Kate coming in 1968 and me in 1971. So, ok, it was a long visit.
Don’t know why I’m writing about this except that the sense of abbreviation to our time here has begun to increase. It has become palpable, as if the future is pressing back against the present, calling us forward. As I wrote a day or so ago, the closest analogy seems to be the anticipation of Christmas for young children. Not so much in the sense of eagerness, though there is that element, but in the way a particular future day and its events can dominate a present moment.
Now even the small world between my desk and my bookcase, punctuated at one end with the computer and at the other by the gas heater, feels impermanent. I can see it stripped down, bare, then gone. That’s new.
More moving business today. Buy a new stove for the kitchen since we’ve decided to take our Viking with us. Take hazardous waste to a dump site. Perhaps deploy the bagster to clear some space in the garage.
Packing takes a toll in these last days. Not sure why, but each day I spend a good deal of time packing really wears me out. Not physically, but emotionally. It’s not resistance to the move itself, as I’ve said here before, rather I think it feels as if the packing has gone on too long.
Let me see if I can sort this out. I’ve been packing, with many generous breaks, since May. The bulk of the summer I packed books and sorted files, then packed them. I made an effort to get all the art and objet d’art packed before Labor Day, along with all the books in my study except those I use regularly. That was successful.
We’ve decluttered, thrown away, donated a lot of stuff. Some has gone to recycling. Then there was the search for the house, finding it, my seeing it, then the closing.
You can’t control the Universe. You are the water, not the rock
Living in the move, an idea I developed early on, has helped me see all this as the liminal space between our decision to move and our eventual settling in Colorado. But now living in the move is breaking down as we get close to the actual date. We are now having to live the move itself.
This seems like an understandable, normal response at this point, as I consider it. We’re neither completely finished, nor are we actually moved. So we’ve entered a time when planning and reality are about to collide. A part of me wants to rush through this, get on with it. Why is there this teaware and ceramics to pack? Why are there still these boxes of files to sort? Well, precisely because they are the things I chose to pack last. Oh.
The trick is to just stay in the moment. Let the day’s packing be sufficient there unto.
