Ch-ch-changes
Holy cow, there's been some chaos lately.
First:
We sold our business. It's not the "retire early and live a life of wealth and leisure" exit strategy we may have dreamed of in the early years, but it was a number greater than zero and it gets rid of a lot of headaches. It's also tremendously sad, because we had coalesced into an extended family rather than just a group of co-workers, and now everyone is going their own way and I miss them already. It's also terrifying for me, because real bosses expect you to show up. Every day. On time. I'm not sure if I'll be able to cope after a decade and a half of not having to do that.
On the practical side, there's an entire office to empty. Thankfully, I'm not the one doing most of it-- just my little area is hard enough. But it's a good bet that there will be a last-minute "Oh god oh god oh god" rush and whatever's left will end up out in our barn.
Second:
Chris moved into his own house this summer, and got married earlier this month. (Yay, congrats!). John has claimed Chris's bedroom as his new home office, and has been slowly migrating things downstairs. This is complicated somewhat by the fact that Chris hasn't moved ALL of his stuff out yet.
There's been some entertaining exchanges as Chris cleans things out, in which he finds something that isn't his and leaves it someplace for us. 3 times out of 4, it's not ours either, and we put it back in his area. I foresee a few trips to drop off charitable donations in my future.
Third:
Did I say John was moving things downstairs slowly? Yeah, no. We discovered that CJ's room has a shower failure and as a result there's probably some mold issues hiding under the carpet, and probably explains why CJ has such a difficult time with allergies. (Plus, the carpet is old and was in need of replacing when we moved in 1998.) So CJ is moving into the guest bedroom, which means that my craft/sewing room has to move out.
The plan is: John moves all of his stuff off of his desk and clears the area around it. CJ moves his "desk" (which is actually just a table and much better suited to craft and sewing stuff) to John's actual desk, leaving the far 2/3s of the room for me. I move my craft and sewing stuff into the office, taking over CJ's table. CJ moves his bedroom into the guest bedroom. We take up the carpet and find out how bad it is. We fix the shower, and whatever needs to happen floor-wise happens. We set up the newly-restored formerly-CJ's room into a guest bedroom. (Or possibly CJ says "Agh, I hate this new arrangement" and moves back into his former room. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.) And we do all of this quickly and somewhat simultaneously, because we like CJ and want him to continue breathing. The catch? The guest room carpet needs a good cleaning before CJ moves into it, and I don't just mean "vacuum it."
So the carpet cleaners have just left. Since we were having them come out anyway, we had them do the family room as well. John and CJ (and to a much lesser degree, me) spent the last couple of evenings moving things around to clear out the family room, hallway, and guest bedroom. The guest bed is in pieces, leaning against our dresser-- and my lazy laundry habits are paying off, because the only access I have to socks and underwear is the stuff still sitting in laundry baskets because I haven't folded it yet. The couches are in the kitchen. My sewing machine and accouterments are sitting in random places wherever they would fit in the upstairs office (and some of it is in the bathroom and some of it is in CJ's current room, because Shit Needed To Move Now). John and I had breakfast in his new downstairs office because it was the only place where we could both sit down at a flat surface at the same time.
Fourth:
Did I mention that we're hosting the Penguicon ConCom meeting and SMOS party on Sunday? The upstairs is going to be off-limits because there's no possible way I can put both floors back into a semblance of order, but the family room and kitchen need to be put back together ASAP, and all the furniture needs to be thoroughly vacuumed because some folks have cat allergies. The good news for the allergy sufferers is that the carpet cleaners will have drastically reduced the amount of dander in the room.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, we have all been rather exhausted lately.
First:
We sold our business. It's not the "retire early and live a life of wealth and leisure" exit strategy we may have dreamed of in the early years, but it was a number greater than zero and it gets rid of a lot of headaches. It's also tremendously sad, because we had coalesced into an extended family rather than just a group of co-workers, and now everyone is going their own way and I miss them already. It's also terrifying for me, because real bosses expect you to show up. Every day. On time. I'm not sure if I'll be able to cope after a decade and a half of not having to do that.
On the practical side, there's an entire office to empty. Thankfully, I'm not the one doing most of it-- just my little area is hard enough. But it's a good bet that there will be a last-minute "Oh god oh god oh god" rush and whatever's left will end up out in our barn.
Second:
Chris moved into his own house this summer, and got married earlier this month. (Yay, congrats!). John has claimed Chris's bedroom as his new home office, and has been slowly migrating things downstairs. This is complicated somewhat by the fact that Chris hasn't moved ALL of his stuff out yet.
There's been some entertaining exchanges as Chris cleans things out, in which he finds something that isn't his and leaves it someplace for us. 3 times out of 4, it's not ours either, and we put it back in his area. I foresee a few trips to drop off charitable donations in my future.
Third:
Did I say John was moving things downstairs slowly? Yeah, no. We discovered that CJ's room has a shower failure and as a result there's probably some mold issues hiding under the carpet, and probably explains why CJ has such a difficult time with allergies. (Plus, the carpet is old and was in need of replacing when we moved in 1998.) So CJ is moving into the guest bedroom, which means that my craft/sewing room has to move out.
The plan is: John moves all of his stuff off of his desk and clears the area around it. CJ moves his "desk" (which is actually just a table and much better suited to craft and sewing stuff) to John's actual desk, leaving the far 2/3s of the room for me. I move my craft and sewing stuff into the office, taking over CJ's table. CJ moves his bedroom into the guest bedroom. We take up the carpet and find out how bad it is. We fix the shower, and whatever needs to happen floor-wise happens. We set up the newly-restored formerly-CJ's room into a guest bedroom. (Or possibly CJ says "Agh, I hate this new arrangement" and moves back into his former room. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.) And we do all of this quickly and somewhat simultaneously, because we like CJ and want him to continue breathing. The catch? The guest room carpet needs a good cleaning before CJ moves into it, and I don't just mean "vacuum it."
So the carpet cleaners have just left. Since we were having them come out anyway, we had them do the family room as well. John and CJ (and to a much lesser degree, me) spent the last couple of evenings moving things around to clear out the family room, hallway, and guest bedroom. The guest bed is in pieces, leaning against our dresser-- and my lazy laundry habits are paying off, because the only access I have to socks and underwear is the stuff still sitting in laundry baskets because I haven't folded it yet. The couches are in the kitchen. My sewing machine and accouterments are sitting in random places wherever they would fit in the upstairs office (and some of it is in the bathroom and some of it is in CJ's current room, because Shit Needed To Move Now). John and I had breakfast in his new downstairs office because it was the only place where we could both sit down at a flat surface at the same time.
Fourth:
Did I mention that we're hosting the Penguicon ConCom meeting and SMOS party on Sunday? The upstairs is going to be off-limits because there's no possible way I can put both floors back into a semblance of order, but the family room and kitchen need to be put back together ASAP, and all the furniture needs to be thoroughly vacuumed because some folks have cat allergies. The good news for the allergy sufferers is that the carpet cleaners will have drastically reduced the amount of dander in the room.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, we have all been rather exhausted lately.