Work in progress!

We closed on the Franklin house on Friday, and have been painting, moving, unpacking, building and cleaning ever since. A rundown of events over the last few days:

Friday
7:30 am - pack the car at Battlefied Drive and head to our new home!
8:00 - unpack at Margin Street.
8:30 - our first visitor - Caroline Gobble saw our cars at the new house and stopped by
9:00 - closing went great, the seller's real estate agent brought us muffins and OJ.
9:30 - back at the new house to find (a) cleaners, (b) applicance deliverymen, (c) AT&T outside installation, (d) electric company meter reader and (e) gas company meter reader all at the house at once. Look for husband, who has decided to seek refuge in garage.
10:30 - tell the appliance deliverymen to remove all doors, gates, windows necessary to get the darn refrigerator in the house. 11:00 - accomplished.
12 - where is husband? Seeking refuge in garage. Just kidding, he's building a fence.

Now is a good place to interject and say that I have the most handy, fabulous and hard-working husband ever. He removed a fence, built a fence and stained the fence and replanted bushes all in one day. Amazing.

Now is also a good place to decide that I am waaay too tired to keep writing an hour-by-hour description of our insane weekend, so I'll switch to the highlights:

Toby built a fence, fixed a gate, replanted flowers, set up a workshop, cleaned the garage, loaded up the remaining items at the old house (with Bill's help) and moved them in to the new house.

We met at least six new neighbors, some of whom thought that the nice couple moving into our house was comprised of Toby and my brother Bill. The Downtown Franklin Neighborhood Association phone tree was probably in heavy use for a while after that.

We had one brother and five good friends tour our new house/help paint on Friday afternoon, and I loved showing off the house.

I painted the kitchen, half of the dining room and primed the living room. We have a painter coming tomorrow to handle the upstairs, downstairs bath and ceilings.

We decided to hire people to unpack the POD that we used for moving, and it will be done on Wednesday.

We have cable and internet a week early - hooray! If only we had something to sit on to watch it! The process took at least 3 hours, probably closer to 4, but now we have a new cable installation friend.

We ate funnel cakes, gyros, corndogs, BBQ and sweet potato fries (not all at once) at the Main Street Festival, which was a blast! We simultaneously got to listen to a few great bands and watch a lot of people shaking their groove things.

Sadie is adjusting, but slowly. Twice when we left her at the new house over the weekend, we came home to find her hiding in the shower. So sad. I'm hoping she's doing better today.

We introduced Bill to one of our new favorite local pubs, which is a five minute walk from the house. Awesome.

Its hard to explain how tired I feel right now, but I'm super happy. I'm going to finish painting the dining room tonight, come heck or high water.

Nary a list in sight

Considering that we're moving TOMORROW, those of you who know my fondness for lists must think I have at least 10-15 going right now. But I don't. I'm not sure whether Toby's laissze-faire attitude is rubbing off on me, or if I'm too overwhelmed to write it all down. Now, with less than eight hours before movers show up at our door, I'm feeling a strong need for lists. Here are a few:

Things to do this weekend:
Paint, paint, paint (Krista)
Build 16 feet of fence (Toby)
Build and hang garage doors (Toby)
Move stuff that movers aren't moving (Krista, Toby, and hopefully Bill)
Install new smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors (whoever has time, hah!)
Enjoy Franklin's Main Street Festival, the biggest festival of the year and official welcome party for the Coopers.

People coming to the house Friday:
Friends
Neighbors who have already asked what kind of pie we prefer
Glass man to give quote on installing shower door
Paint man to give quote on painting Krista doesn't want to do
Oven and refrigerator delivery people
Handyman to connect oven to gas supply so that we don't poison ourselves

Things to do soonish:
Figure out how to turn the make-shift closets into real closets
Put a railing on the stairs
Make the basement stairs more stable
Replace the missing brick in the sidewalk
Cut roses from our fab new rosebushes

Whew! I feel better already!

Update: The Congratulations Edition!

Congratulations to Meredith and David -they're having a girl! I was so sure it was a boy... Only 20 more weeks until we get to meet her!

The Congratulations Edition!

With all the packing/moving/packing/trips to Home Depot/packing we've been doing lately, I've neglected to share so much good news recently! Here goes:

Congratulations to Michelle and Richard Barnett! They are expecting a baby in November, and the law school crowd is so excited! Baby Barnett and Baby Dinkins (Meredith's baby) will be only a few months apart in age.

Contratulations to Kate Sallwasser and Michael Cordell. Kate is my dearest childhood friend, and she is getting married! I don't have the details yet, but I think the wedding will be next year, in April or May. Rumor has it that her little brother Charlie (who probably goes by Charles now) is getting married at around the same time. I'll be sending very good thoughts to their mother, Susan, as she plans two weddings!

Congratulations to Jessica Harris Telligman! Jess has hung out her shingle in Winston-Salem and is working for herself. She is joining the ranks of the solo law practitioners, and I know she is going to be a huge success!

Quote of the Day

By Christopher Morley - "There is only one success, to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it."

We are NOT boring!

Toby and I can still officially hang. We had a blast night night at the Stage, and could not believe that we hadn't been there in 10 months! A few things I learned:

1. Toby gets sweetly sentimental about the honky-tonking event we had a few days before our wedding. He's right, it was an awesome evening! I remember at the time thinking how Toby and his family were truly "in their element" - having a great time, laughing, being silly (mostly Toby), when they were so "out of their element" - in an American honky-tonk!

2. If you are the only woman in a six person country/rock band, you are one awesome chick.

3. If you are a musician who refuses to wear shoes while you perform but instead puts down a bathmat to stand on, you are not cool.

4. Old ratty army-brown undershirt + bedazzled rhinestones = suitable attire for a lead singer.

5. Don't forget your credit card when you leave. Oops.

Packing, Packing and More Packing

Toby and I have been packing for our move. Packing and packing and packing. One might wonder - How much stuff can one couple own, especially when half of that couple has only been in this country for four years? A shocking amount.

By now we're pretty bored with the packing process, and we still haven't resolved certain differences in our individual theories of packing. Not only are we bored, I'm afraid we're quickly becoming boring!

We're determined to stop the progression into being boring, so we're going out tonight (unless the weather continues to predict tornados) to paint the town red. We haven't been to the Stage in almost a year, and since we will be too far for a cab ride home when we move to Franklin, we're going to make the most of it tonight.

Next Saturday night we're going to Carnton for a ghost tour. I really hope we don't see any ghosts. Toby hopes we see lots of ghosts, and he recently "reminded" me that I agreed to go on the ghost tour after our wedding. I think what I really said was that I refused to go on the ghost tour before the wedding, because if we saw any ghosts at Carnton, we were going to have to find a new location. I was not sharing our wedding with ghosts.

So wish me luck next Saturday - I think I'm going to need a pre-ghost tour glass of wine.