We've arrived

The house is marvelous. It's in the upper end of our price range, but well worth it. The owners are obviously conscientious with smart improvements all over the place. The wood floors on the main level appear to be that self install stuff from Costco, most of the main rooms have a personal touch to the paint (in most cases most definitely not what I would have chosen, but it shows a deep care in the property nonetheless since specific texturing techniques were applied), among a number of other little tweaks here and there. A shed outside contains many cans of touch up paint and property maintenance supplies. Half barrels and carefully trimmed rose bushes outside, and the lingering scent of candles in one kitchen cupboard give mute evidence that aesthetics mattered here.

So we've littered the place with boxes, both filled with our belongings and recently emptied of pizza. We toiled all yesterday afternoon and today to begin fitting our home into this house, wondering over and over again why we have so much stuff. My shoulder began to ache again, as is its wont when I am experiencing great stress. It sometimes renders my arm numb if left to its own devices. I'm awake now having attempted to sleep with that ache unchallenged, waiting with blogging and Cityville (a game in facebook) for ibuprofen to make it possible to sleep. Princess came to see me earlier this evening and I mentioned my shoulder pain to her. Her face looked tragic and she exclaimed "not you, too!"

Moving losses so far: one electric griddle which snapped under the weight of a toaster oven and various other kitchen-type things. One candy thermometer, un-used.  :(  Some damage to my beloved stand mixer. And one box that has simply vanished from the Earth. More losses to come, surely, as these packers have been our worst by far. Nice guys, with great customer service as far as smiles and howdy-do's go, but wretched organization which labeled two rooms' worth of items as "girls' room", "den" became the room where all boxes and furniture went to live when Man's back was turned or someone hadn't bothered to check one of the room label boxes printed right on the side of the flippin' box (my poor craft room,which I'm overwhelmingly lucky to have, is bursting at the seams), and several "last minute boxes" have an assortment of items each worthy of a hoarders favorite junk drawer based on their eclectic nature alone since the first wave of packers couldn't be bothered to finish the job despite knocking off for the day quite early and leaving all of the rest of the packing to the loaders, who couldn't be bothered to bring any "just in case" boxes.

Ok, Annie, take a breath.

I've got some ideas on how to make my kitchen fit into this kitchen, utilizing some free standing plastic drawers and one of the shelves that won't fit into the den, but this place is seriously lacking in drawers. Three small and two medium mean that most of my utensils are homeless and laid bare on the counter, waiting for my decree to see them safely nestled in a resting place where Man, the official dish put-awayer, will never remember to put them until shortly before we move again. I intend to label my free standing organizing solutions to within an inch of their lives.

Mostly I miss having a pantry option right off of my kitchen. We had converted a linen closet into a pantry in the last house, and now we'll have to make do with one corner pocket lazy Susan (which seems to be a ubiquitous feature in these Colorado homes. I think there was one in every home through which we walked) and one cabinet. Other than that, we have Raul in the craft room (which is where my shiny boyfriend belongs, thankyouveddymuch), shelves we've squeezed into the laundry room, and the half of a garage where we'd eventually like to put a second car. It looks like bed risers are our food storage option du jour, which we won't really be gathering in earnest until we actually buy a house anyways, so it's not a huge loss.

Snow has been scheduled for my beautiful city for the next two days.

And now my motrin seems to be working. I'm going to top it off with some tylenol and see what sort of sleep I can get tonight. Tag wants to go up and down the street meeting the neighbors tomorrow and it wouldn't do to look like an ill hag for that first impression.