C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 66

getting there

I’m down to about a dozen Moving Guys boxes, which all need to be emptied out so the Moving Guys can come get them again. Actually, we have quite a few left over from the last move, so the goal is now to give them not only the ones they brought this time, but also all the others. Technically I only have to empty 3 more small boxes and we’ve got enough to send back. But dammit, this time I am Unpacking All The Boxes.

I found the PERFECT SHELVES to fit into one of our kitchen closets. Unfortuna...

Kitchen Illusion

So the thing about Irish houses is they mostly have laundry facilities in the kitchen. This is because even up until about five years ago, “all mod cons” — all modern conveniences, including, say, a washing machine (but not a tumble dryer; those are more than Modern Conveniences) — were stil fancy enough to be mentioned in house ads, and most of those Mod Cons ended up in the kitchen because it’s where the running water was.

We spent the first 3 days in this house with our 6′ butcher block a...

The Long Room

Our living room is about 20 feet long, and will contain the dining table when we’re done, so it will henceforth (at least in these hallowed pages) be referred to as the Long Room.

The living room half of the Long Room is pretty well sorted now:

(For the record, Young Indiana’s leg is not strangely deformed, it’s just the photo is a panorama and he moved while I was taking it. :))

It and our bedroom are about the only two spaces that can be considered pretty well sorted thus far. The back ha...

in & out

We are, after a very tiring day of cleaning, out of the Dublin house. It took longer than we hoped, but it’s clean and we’re out, so that’s that. Done and dusted. The woman at the post office, the guy at the corner shop, and various others all expressed surprise and dismay that we were moving away, generally couched in terms of a horrified, “*Drogheda*?” followed by, “Oh, well, that’s not so bad,” when informed that Ted works in Swords which isn’t too bad a drive from Drogheda.

So we’re back...

Adventures in Housecleaning

So I was doing okay until I almost set the kitchen on fire.

Our stovetop dials turn very easily. Something got pushed against one and it turned on, which normally isn’t a problem because the power to the stovetop is controlled by a wall switch that we leave set to off. But I turned the wall switch on so I could cook something in the oven, and I didn’t notice that beneath the stuff on the stove a burner was on.

(yes, I know, NEVER PUT ANYTHING ON TOP OF THE STOVE. usually we don’t, but post-mo...

Home Sweet Home

The movers called at 10 and said they were running about half an hour late. They arrived and began work at half ten, worked with admirable and somewhat depressing speed (it took them SO LITTLE time to pack up a giant room full of book boxes that had taken me weeks to fill), threw the last things we hadn’t quite managed to get into boxes, into boxes, got everything including the trees and the barbeque into the truck, and hied themselves off to Drogheda where they got lost trying to find the ho...

T minus 1

Less than that even, now. The movers are coming in 12 hours. Actually less, or they’d better be.

Things are more or less packed, with the emphasis on more. As Ted said, at this point it’s almost impossible to see the forest for the trees. It’s hard to tell what’s unpacked anymore because there are boxes all over the damn place.

We’re all very tired. Poor Indy is high strung with excited nerves and exhaustion. Ted and I are just exhausted. We keep saying, “It’s only Monday,” with disbelieving...

anecdotes

Me: Can I beguile you with some cake?

Visiting friend: Oh, no thank you, I’m more a brownies kind of pers–is that German chocolate cake? LET ME RECONSIDER MY HASTY DECISION

Friend, later: As is always the case with everything that Catie bakes, IT WAS THE BEST GERMAN CHOCOLATE CAKE I HAVE EVER HAD.

Me: I’d say you flatter me, but it’s probably also true. :)

***

Delivery fella just dropped off a big box of stuff. “Big boxes are usually for men,” he said, “plastic bags with dresses, things like...

Actual Manor House

I forgot to show you guys the place we’re moving into.

It is an actual Georgian (or Georgian-style; we don’t know when it was built) manor house. Not a huge one: it’s 4 bedrooms, not, like, 38 or something. But it’s an actual manor house. It has a living room AND a sitting room. And that is, yes, a gazebo; please do not shoot it with an arrow.

It has about an acre of grounds, and a brook running through them, although the brook is in the badly overgrown part of the grounds and I don’t partic...

clearing out the cupboards

There’s evidently a part of me that’s convinced I’m the sort of person who plans dinners/cooking far enough in advance to use dried beans.

It may be the same part of me that’s apparently sure we always need another can of chickpeas. Or that keeps collecting condensed milk that I never, ever use. (Buying that is usually an actual mistake, rather than some kind of strange conviction, to be fair. Periodically I get condensed and evaporated milks confused in my head.) It’s probably also the same...