Well, here we are...

This is exactly what Sam and I feel like today. In fact, we would not have gotten out of bed except that we were so hungry we thought we'd die. Since we have nothing in the house, we went over to Denny's and had a good breakfast, then came back and crashed again. We are currently waiting for a friend to bring us lunch and we are as grateful as we are hungry.

It seems that we are too old to be moving ourselves, ever again. Honestly, it is the worst thing I can think of. The two men who were going to move us called off the day of the move so I hustled about and got a student and his friends to help us. But that meant that Sam and I were out there lifting and moving possibly as much as they were. Now we are so sore and tired that we can hardly stand it. I have a splitting headache.

But we are in our new home and thrilled to be here. We keep commenting to one another how much we like it here, as we find some new feature that is nice. One not-so-nice feature is that every surface in the house is covered with a fine layer of dust or fine dirt. A place can't sit empty for 8 months and be clean. I didn't realize how bad it was until I got up this morning and found little Otis footprints all over the bathroom vanity where he had tried to drink out of the faucett (silly cat). Oh, the cleaning we have to do! And the carpet got even more dirty during the move. We really should have cleaned the house first, then moved in. But the timing didn't work out that way. So I'll be cleaning as I go.

Last week while we were waiting for the eternal escrow to close, our realtor suggested that we move all our things into the garage here. Even the agent of Deutsch Bank (the owner) said that no one would know if we did. We thought it was a silly thing to do, because we'd have to move everything into the house and it would feel like more work. So we sat tight and waited. Thursday night when we arrived and opened the garage, we saw that someone had been inside it and had removed the garage door opener (it is lying outside at the side of the house), and had forced the garage door up. It is now off track and will need to be replaced, which is unfortunate. But what is marvelous is that all these people found was an empty garage, not our things. The neighbor said he thought he saw the vehicle of the person who was here and it was a former owner. Apparently, it was the previous owner that also removed the jacuzzi and patio cover (some time ago), which we really would have liked to have. The man across the street said that three different people have lived here in the six years he has been here. So that makes one wonder. We love the house, more than we did when we saw it and we haven't seen anything wrong with it at this point.

We haven't lit the pilot light (or whatever it is that you're supposed to do) to the hot water heater. So we have been having bracing, cold showers in the morning. Actually, they are wonderful because it's so hot here that it's really not freezing--it does take your breath away though. We've been able to sleep with all the windows open because since we're up on a hill there is a delightful breeze every night that is quite a nice, mild temperature. We are looking forward to putting a curtain or blind over the balcony window by our bed--the sun shines right in on our faces in the morning, which we can live without.

Otis is adjusting pretty well. He spent the first day under the bed in the downstairs guestroom. Then he discovered the stairs and has been tearing up and down them. He hasn't slept with us yet but he did wake me up this morning because he was hungry.

So this is my update. I'm very pleased and boy, do I have a lot of work to do! Glad I have a vacation coming up--from the 25th - 19 August.

That's the news! I'm going to lie down and gather my strength again. If it weren't for the joy of having a new home, I'd say I'm just too old for this.