Adventures in homeowning
As everyone who buys a house knows, you have the things you notice when originally walking through the place (awkward position for that 1/2 bath! Everything will need to be repainted/refloored!), the things the inspection finds (in a classic example of how not to put together your own AC system, or, in a related note, why remembering the existence of gravity is important), and then the things you find during the clean-up/move-in/living process.
The first one of those popped up yesterday: the pipes beneath the bathtub, which leads to the probability that we will be replacing the bathtub, which is good in the sense that this means we can actually have the sort of bathtub I want (within size limits - alas, it's a small bathroom, so my visions of huge tubs comfortable enough for more than one person must be discarded) and bad in the sense that this is going to be one major delaying project, which I suppose makes up for the unexpected speed of cleaning up/fixing the AC system. (I thought that would be far more of a nightmare than it turned out being - here looks were decidedly deceptive.)
Otherwise, much of the cleaning work is going well.
Going rather less well are the cats. Not being quite as stupid as they may occasionally seem, they started guessing that something was up when lots of boxes began appearing in the apartment on Tuesday.
They know boxes. Boxes mean that cats get put into boxes and put into cars and taken to new places. Sometimes these new places have dogs. Sometimes these car trips are long.
The Little One switched between scampering about madly and knocking boxes over (typical) to being aloof (so atypical I wondered if he'd had a kitty brain transplant while I wasn't looking). This is the cat that is rarely happy unless he is on someone, anyone, and by on someone, I mean, firmly on top of a lap, a chest, a head, a shoulder, whatever; humans, in his opinion, were created solely so that he can sit on them.
He's been avoiding me and vanishing for most of the week. When not sleeping in boxes.
The Grey One, who usually is the one to vanish for hours or days at a time, meanwhile, has decided to frame her response in a series of reproachful looks, then wails, and then, for no particular reason flop and drape herself all over me before wailing again. Today she has vanished. I suspect she is visiting another, cat centered dimension where cats sit around and complain about the cruelness of humans who move them places instead of allowing them to focus on important things, like naps and birdwatching.
The next few weeks should be fun!
A couple of you emailed yesterday and said I didn't sound that enthusiastic. Well, I am enthusiastic about the house - once it's cleaned up and those horrific carpets that would bring most of you to instant tears of pity or laughter now in there are out of there and the room my father thinks was used to grow marijuana no longer has quite the same drug laboratory look, and once I manage to have the chairs recovered, the place is going to look quite nice, and I honestly cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to the end of stairs. (But many local people are expressing this feeling for me.) But I hate the actual process of moving. And in this particular case, I hate that I feel so useless. I have done some small things here and there, but I can't do that much, and it's frustrating.
Meanwhile, of course, we have the various other irritations of moving: my father's car not starting at precisely the wrong moment; my trike breaking down at also precisely the wrong moment, adding to the irritations. And also meanwhile, everybody thank
gargoylerose for once again going over and above the call of duty!
I am, however, very glad that I will be at World Fantasy, which I can't believe is coming up so quickly, the weekend the furniture gets moved.
The first one of those popped up yesterday: the pipes beneath the bathtub, which leads to the probability that we will be replacing the bathtub, which is good in the sense that this means we can actually have the sort of bathtub I want (within size limits - alas, it's a small bathroom, so my visions of huge tubs comfortable enough for more than one person must be discarded) and bad in the sense that this is going to be one major delaying project, which I suppose makes up for the unexpected speed of cleaning up/fixing the AC system. (I thought that would be far more of a nightmare than it turned out being - here looks were decidedly deceptive.)
Otherwise, much of the cleaning work is going well.
Going rather less well are the cats. Not being quite as stupid as they may occasionally seem, they started guessing that something was up when lots of boxes began appearing in the apartment on Tuesday.
They know boxes. Boxes mean that cats get put into boxes and put into cars and taken to new places. Sometimes these new places have dogs. Sometimes these car trips are long.
The Little One switched between scampering about madly and knocking boxes over (typical) to being aloof (so atypical I wondered if he'd had a kitty brain transplant while I wasn't looking). This is the cat that is rarely happy unless he is on someone, anyone, and by on someone, I mean, firmly on top of a lap, a chest, a head, a shoulder, whatever; humans, in his opinion, were created solely so that he can sit on them.
He's been avoiding me and vanishing for most of the week. When not sleeping in boxes.
The Grey One, who usually is the one to vanish for hours or days at a time, meanwhile, has decided to frame her response in a series of reproachful looks, then wails, and then, for no particular reason flop and drape herself all over me before wailing again. Today she has vanished. I suspect she is visiting another, cat centered dimension where cats sit around and complain about the cruelness of humans who move them places instead of allowing them to focus on important things, like naps and birdwatching.
The next few weeks should be fun!
A couple of you emailed yesterday and said I didn't sound that enthusiastic. Well, I am enthusiastic about the house - once it's cleaned up and those horrific carpets that would bring most of you to instant tears of pity or laughter now in there are out of there and the room my father thinks was used to grow marijuana no longer has quite the same drug laboratory look, and once I manage to have the chairs recovered, the place is going to look quite nice, and I honestly cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to the end of stairs. (But many local people are expressing this feeling for me.) But I hate the actual process of moving. And in this particular case, I hate that I feel so useless. I have done some small things here and there, but I can't do that much, and it's frustrating.
Meanwhile, of course, we have the various other irritations of moving: my father's car not starting at precisely the wrong moment; my trike breaking down at also precisely the wrong moment, adding to the irritations. And also meanwhile, everybody thank
gargoylerose for once again going over and above the call of duty!
I am, however, very glad that I will be at World Fantasy, which I can't believe is coming up so quickly, the weekend the furniture gets moved.