Moving, Phase I: The Altar, the Witch, and the Basement
I hauled my altar stones in groups of two and three to a section of the backyard, wishing desperately for a wheelbarrow. It was gritty, heavy, arm-breaking work. But at last it was done.
The boundary between our backyard and our neighbor's is marked with a line of trees and a half-broken wire fence that looks like it went up in the 20s, back when the area was farmland. A section on our side is all shady and mossy and soft, the perfect spot for an altar. I stacked all the stones and bricks and statues back there, and discovered another pile of bricks and cut stone which must have been there for several decades at least. The cut stones don't match anything in any of the buildings around us, so I think they're leftovers from an old farmhouse or stone fence. The bottom ones were deeply buried in the soil, pressed there by many years of weight and waiting. I decided on the spot to incorporate them into my altar.
But not yet--we still had unloading to do.
We decided that Darwin would bring stuff in from the truck and put it at the top of the basement stairs. I would bring it down and decide where to put it.
Here, I discovered an . . . interesting feature of the house.
The main storage room in the basement is lined with built-in wooden shelves. These shelves look handy--until you try to use them. Then you discover that the shelves are too close together to be of much use. No box fits on them. So I had to put the boxes on the floor in a different area of the basement. Oi! I was cursing the shelf-making by the end.
Unloading the basement turned out to be the worst of the worst of the worst. I kept running up the stairs and finding a box or two at the top. I'd haul it down and come back up to find yet another box. It was like the Easter Bunny was made at me--always dropping more horrible presents. I was tired and achy and sweaty and dealing with an endless stream of boxes.
But finally it was over. Everything was in its place. The truck was swept and ready to be returned in the morning. The garage was tidy, the basement was neat, and we were done.
Remember in the previous entry when I said we made a mistake? This is where we found it.
"We should have hired movers," I said. "This job was supposed to be little, and it was a lot bigger. And we're older. I would happily have paid $500 to avoid all this."
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The boundary between our backyard and our neighbor's is marked with a line of trees and a half-broken wire fence that looks like it went up in the 20s, back when the area was farmland. A section on our side is all shady and mossy and soft, the perfect spot for an altar. I stacked all the stones and bricks and statues back there, and discovered another pile of bricks and cut stone which must have been there for several decades at least. The cut stones don't match anything in any of the buildings around us, so I think they're leftovers from an old farmhouse or stone fence. The bottom ones were deeply buried in the soil, pressed there by many years of weight and waiting. I decided on the spot to incorporate them into my altar.
But not yet--we still had unloading to do.
We decided that Darwin would bring stuff in from the truck and put it at the top of the basement stairs. I would bring it down and decide where to put it.
Here, I discovered an . . . interesting feature of the house.
The main storage room in the basement is lined with built-in wooden shelves. These shelves look handy--until you try to use them. Then you discover that the shelves are too close together to be of much use. No box fits on them. So I had to put the boxes on the floor in a different area of the basement. Oi! I was cursing the shelf-making by the end.
Unloading the basement turned out to be the worst of the worst of the worst. I kept running up the stairs and finding a box or two at the top. I'd haul it down and come back up to find yet another box. It was like the Easter Bunny was made at me--always dropping more horrible presents. I was tired and achy and sweaty and dealing with an endless stream of boxes.
But finally it was over. Everything was in its place. The truck was swept and ready to be returned in the morning. The garage was tidy, the basement was neat, and we were done.
Remember in the previous entry when I said we made a mistake? This is where we found it.
"We should have hired movers," I said. "This job was supposed to be little, and it was a lot bigger. And we're older. I would happily have paid $500 to avoid all this."
And Darwin agreed.
I took a long, hot shower and swallowed half a bottle of ibuprofen before bed.
But we weren't quite done yet. . .
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