Dinata Misovec

It’s been ten days since I posted a blog update.  And, it has been a whirl of activity.  I have lost track of the days of the week and the date.

We took two days to drive to Sister Barbara’s house in Maryland. As before, we took a day of rest before moving day. Early Sunday morning, Brother-in-Law Tom, Andy, and I drove to Fairfax, VA to pick up the rental truck and then headed to Daughter Kathy’s house in Vienna. Kathy had already set out our furniture, lamps, and artwork in her living room. It was not too much, so we had it loaded into the truck quickly.  Tom was in charge of draping things with moving blankets and strapping them into place.

Our next stop was son Andrew’s house in Rockville, MD.  They had also set out most of our belongings in their driveway. He had also posted a Facebook picture of it as the status of his yard sale. That is what it looked like.  They had not brought out our china cabinet or bed.  I took the doors off and the glass shelves out of the china cabinet and removed the small drawers.  Then, the guys carried the cabinet out in two pieces. Tom and I disassembled the bed.  Unfortunately, we broke one piece of the canopy.  (Tom glued it back together when we reassembled the bed in Florida.)  Andy ordered a couple pizzas for us and we took a quick break from loading the truck to eat lunch.

Our last stop was Tom’s and sister Barbara’s house in Prince Frederick. Barbara did not have much of our furniture, but she did have some of her own that we loaded into the truck. Their three-car garage is full of “stuff”.  I picked out some tall chairs to set at our kitchen counter and some knickknacks Barbara had used to “stage” houses when she sold real-estate. The best thing I took was nephew Joshua’s bed.  Actually, it was my daughter Jennifer’s bed, since she moved out of the crib. When we sold the house in 2000, we gave her bed to Joshua.

Joshua did more than just sleep in that bed.  He turned it into an alarm clock backup.  He took the bed apart and mounted jacks on the back side.  Then he rigged a system with the alarm clock, I presume, that would lift the bed and dump him on the floor if he had not gotten up when the alarm sounded. I hoped he had the video of it in operation on YouTube but could not find it. Now the bed, without the lifting mechanism, is in my sewing room in this house.  Grandsons Owen and Cam are going to sleep on it when they come to visit. I had a bookcase headboard/nightstand but I did not take it because the room is small.

It was late afternoon before everything was loaded into the truck. We were anxious to get on the road and declined to spend another night at Barbara and Tom’s house.  As soon as we took off, we used the GPS to forecast when we might arrive at Bill Ellis Barbecue in Wilson, NC.  Boo; it was half an hour after they closed. We talked about barbecue all the way down I-95 but did not get any.  You can’t just stop anywhere when you are driving a big ol truck towing a car. Tom and I took turns driving the truck until Andy cried out for bedtime. We found a motel at the next exit off the interstate.

It was nearly dark when we arrived at the house on Monday.  Tom got a mattress out of the truck and slept on it in the guest room. We slept on the family room sofa-bed. We unloaded the truck in about two hours on Tuesday morning. Bring in and setting up beds was the first priority. Then I returned to the job of emptying boxes, washing contents, and finding a place to put things away.

This move was mostly about the dining room and bedroom furniture – and a truckload of odds and ends.  I love dishes and everything else to do with a dining room. I chose this house partly for the separate (mostly) dining room. This picture is weird. Our furniture does not look like that wood. The table top needs some work; I’ll adding refinishing to my to-do list.

We finally have our bedroom furniture back. Tom glued the broken piece of the canopy and it is barely noticeable.  We used the dressers as packing boxes and I had to empty all the drawers before we could put any clothes away.  Then, I vacuumed them with the hand-held. Clothes, boxes, bags, and laundry baskets filled with clothes are all over the place.

Brother-in-Law Tom, who is on vacation, works like a possessed demon.  He decided to stain two bookcases so they would match in Andy’s office.

This chair belonged to Gran Thorn.  It was old when she died maybe twenty years ago (or more). The fabric is at the end of its life.  The foam in the cushion has apparently been dead for some time.  It is crispy. A small tear on the front grew when the Stanly Steemer man was cleaning in and foam crumbs fell out and on the floor.

We took Tom to pick up a rental car and go visit some of his family for a few days.  I’m  not working as hard or as long now that he has gone.  I didn’t want to be a slacker while Tom was running around doing all kinds of things that needed to be done at full speed.  He even rearranged the boxes in the garage according to their contents.

I have been focusing on washing and putting dishes away for several days now.  I honestly don’t know how I accumulated so many sets of china.  I have two sets that I don’t remember ever seeing before. We are going to start using a different set of dishes for every meal.  All the dining room boxes were put in the parlor so we could put the china cabinet and table in the dining room. This room will probably be the last to get straightened out.

When granddaughter Elizabeth’s dresser broke, Andrew and Joanne bought her a new one.  I saw the old one in the garage and asked for it to use as a television stand in the family room. Making some repairs and fixing the paint is on the to-do list.  It already looks great on the opposite wall from the white kitchen cabinets. We don’t have a television yet.

The family room furniture was coated with a fine, brown dust.  It looked dingy and brownish.  After it was steam cleaned, it looks good as new again. I feel so much better now that the furniture and rugs are clean.

We unrolled the rugs when the Stanley Steemer men came to clean them and the upholstered furniture.  The foyer rug from our old house looks great in its new foyer home.

They put the living room, dining room, and guest room rugs outside where they could clean them easily all in one place. The living room rug is still out there because there is no room to put it in the living room. We rolled up the dining room rug and placed it in the foyer where I have tripped over it every time I go in the living room for more dishes, etc.  I even stumbled over it just walking by it to go out the front door.  At that point, Andy said we are going to lay it in the dining room tomorrow.

We are also still moving stuff out of the motorhome.  It is amazing how much we had in there! Andy said we could fill a house just with everything we had in the motorhome. The community only allows motorhomes to be parked in front of a house for a few days to load and unload.  Ours has been there way too long, but we have not had any complaints.

I am tired.