We have loved every fun, hectic, exhausting minute of our first week in our new home! Also, if I don’t finally catch up on everything, I never will! Besides, even though my feet are getting used to all the activity, I could use a break. All the critical stuff is done anyway. Now that I’ve got things in the vicinity of where they’re going to live, it’s just a matter of fine-tuning and arranging them just the way I want them. I still LMAO over the appraiser or whomever it was that was arguing over the size of this place and trying to say this massive cavern of a house is only 1300 square feet. It’s much bigger than the house we had in Phoenix which would mean that house had to have been 1000 square feet or less if this were really 1300 square feet and there’s just no way in hell that could be. Phoenix was about 1200 square feet. It was one of those houses where you weren’t cramped but you didn’t have a lot of extra space either. We could cut a third of space off each room but the second bath and bedroom and still have plenty of space in here. Oh, the floor space I’ll have for bopping around to exercise vids once we get the big TV mounted.

Not sure I’m going to stuff most of the Barbie collection in the hutch because the doors’ wooden frames block some of them from view. You kind of have to have them centered in the doors. Wish I could put my bride doll in there (Summer Dream), but anything over 14” high won’t fit. So small dolls and knickknacks are all that can go in there. I still have the big bookshelf to fill up once I get their books out of the picture. Yes, there will be more to dust here than in the other place because there will be more stuff, but it will be easier cuz I won’t have to climb over so many things in order to dust one object, and there won’t be piles of clutter.

Sometimes I wish those I know, no matter how understanding and imaginative they may be, could really feel the stress and fear we went through for just 5 minutes so that they REALLY get a sense of how hellish it truly was and can REALLY see how relieved we are that it’s over and how we could never take this place for granted. And I’m NOT gonna let God send anyone or any circumstances to take it away from us either!

But I couldn’t do that to those I care about; that’s how horrifying an ordeal it was, not expecting a miracle to save you and not being able to see any way out no matter how much you rack your brains for a solution and really want to be able to continue to live on. Then they would have the memories to live with forever, no matter where they went or what they did. Trust me, no one wants this kind of PTSD! Life changes, but memories don’t. I’m just glad we got to live to see this day happen. No one wants to die. No one. They just want the misery to end. But you know how people are. They wrongly believe that if you kill yourself, you’re a coward, and if you try to kill yourself, you’re just looking for attention.

I’m still sleeping well here and it’s nice to know I no longer have to worry about that. That was one of my biggest concerns upon moving. It’s just so wonderful knowing that if next door does move, the welfare bums, college kids, and the Brady Bunch can’t move in! EVER! With our shit luck, though, they’ll make 55+ parks illegal, calling it discrimination. I hope not cuz I don’t ever want to have to move again! Or at least not for many, many years. Moving is fun, but it’s also a pain.

It was nice not having to wait a week to go online like when we moved from the duplex to the house we rented in Oregon. I wasn’t thrilled to find yet another new round of changes and glitches on Facebook, but it was there.

The amount of stuff they left behind, especially in the kitchen, is like OMG! I’ve already got like 5 boxes and 5 trash bags filled with shit for Goodwill. I said to myself, “Since they left nearly everything a kitchen could possibly have, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a spice rack in here somewhere.” So I went and checked and sure enough, there was. It was stashed in back of a cabinet. It was old, though. I was originally going to get a spice rack for all my nail polish, but they’re fine in the master bathroom’s medicine cabinet. Everything’s so far away from everything in that room. The toilet’s far from the sink which is far from the tub which is far from the shower…

They left behind some silver, some of which has engravings. There are spoons, cups, candlesticks and more. I haven’t yet explored all of that, the books they left or some of the cabinets. Going through the place has been like going on a scavenger hunt. We just never know what we’re going to find. Anyway, the silver isn’t worth much, according to our research, so we’ll probably just take it to a place that melts silver.

Gonna try to limit entries to about 1000 words so they’re not endlessly long!