Category: December 2017

I’m very grateful and excited to be living in my new house in Santa Fe! But honestly – I’m in that frustrating stage where nothing is right. Every time I go to do anything, I don’t have it, or it’s in the wrong place and I can’t find it, or it’s not set up yet…

My kitchen is mostly working, but I don’t have any plates or cooking utensils. I have silverware and I have bowls. So yeah, I can pop a frozen pizza in the oven and serve it up in a couple of bowls, no problem. Pizza in a bowl still tastes the same!

My bathroom has no trash can. It’s not hard to walk the trash out to the kitchen. But when there are hundreds of that kind of thing, it starts getting annoying. The shower is leaking on the floor, and I don’t have any bath mats. No problem, I’ll throw a dog blanket on the floor.

It’s crumpled and funny looking, but whatever.

I would really like to clean the toilet bowl. But I don’t have a toilet scrubber. I could do it the old fashioned way, but I don’t have any rubber gloves. And I’m not putting my bare hands in there! I briefly considered trying to tie a washcloth to a stick, but then I realized I had no string.

Therefore, no one gets to visit me until I have purchased a toilet bowl scrubber. Which are readily available at any local convenience store, but again, when there’s hundreds of these things to do…I’m not quite sure when going to get a toilet bowl scrubber is going to be the top of my list of things to do.

I thought I could at least take out the garbage (which is currently in a bag in a small box because I don’t have a kitchen garbage can that fits under the sink). But when I carried the bag out to the garage I realized that the big bin has tons of stuff piled on top of it.

Piling things on top of the garbage can is a TOTAL pet peeve of mine. But I understand why people do it. It’s such a tempting flat surface at arm’s height. How many flat surfaces at arm’s height do we have in garages? (Other than cars, but if you pile things on your car you’ll end up driving off with them, and then they’ll be scattered all over the street and that doesn’t end well).

I have one window that has no covering at all, and it bothers me at night. That black abyss – I feel like I’m in a fishbowl. So I thought I’d just temporarily hang a sheet or something over it. But no hammer or nails. No thumbtacks. No poster putty. No tape. No bandaids. Not even any chewing gum!

I’m grateful to have a working washer & dryer. But the doors! Seriously?

Speaking of doors, I guess it’s better than when we moved into one of the houses in California, and the remodel wasn’t done. We had both Darren and Monica staying with us, and there were no interior doors. At all. Not even on the bathrooms. So at least we’re not in the midst of a major remodel (at this house). The other house is another story. I’ll post an update on that eventually, but can’t even think about that right now.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t moved very many of my clothes yet because my new closet wasn’t ready. So now I’ve been moving them in batches out of the casita during my lunch hour. I can’t fit the wardrobe boxes into my Mini Cooper. So I’ve been taking my clothes back out of their boxes and putting them into trash bags with a little hole torn in the bottom to hold the hangers in one place (sort of, if I’m careful).

I’m not happy with the direct route to and from work, because of the level of traffic and crazy drivers. So I’m trying to plot a zigzag path along the side streets, but a lot of the signs aren’t lit and I can’t read them at night. So I’m getting lost on the way to and from work, even though it’s not that far. Once I memorize a good route I’ll be fine. But I can’t even print one off to take with me because – of course, the printer’s not set up.

But sometimes I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. My kitchen is looking better.

Yes, that photo was totally staged. No, my kitchen doesn’t really look like that. But we can pretend.

And the new appliances are genuinely really nice. There’s a new microwave too, that will go over the stove. It’s not installed yet.

(Hint – to take a good picture of a trashed kitchen, first move all the stuff onto countertop #1 and photograph countertop #2. Then move all the stuff onto countertop #2 and photograph countertop #1. Your audience will never see THE STUFF.) In this case, “the stuff” is manuals for the new appliances, random hardware, piles of junk mail, random kitchen items that don’t fit in the tiny amount of cabinet space, but nothing nearly as handy as a SPATULA would be. I just really want a spatula.

Several of my plants are suffering in Placitas, and I’m afraid I’m going to lose them before I can get them up here. My jade is dying. I’ve had it for YEARS. Through multiple moves. How do you even kill a jade? They’re indestructible! Until now. And one of my group of 5 money plants has died (which I’m very superstitious about).

It is encouraging though, in the few areas we have managed to make progress. John made this nice, efficient set of shelves and hanging bars in my mini-walk-in closet. I really like having an organized closet.

But my office is trashed.

There’s that same ladder again! John has been working hard. I don’t know what I’d do without him. Now he’s putting up shelves in the office closet too. For books and office files? Yeah right. No, for my enormous shoe collection, which is totally not going to fit in the master bedroom’s mini-walk-in closet. I can’t even get all my clothes in that closet, much less my shoes too. (That’s the real reason I went back to work – I had too many clothes and shoes going to waste!)

So now I’m sitting by my Christmas cactus on my cedar chest and flokati rug, and pretending the whole house is just fine (never mind those boxes in the background).

I woke up early this morning, so I’m going to go to work early, so I can get off early, because we have an exciting day today!

Today the new appliances arrive at the Santa Fe house. John has today off, so he’s coming up first thing this morning to meet the appliance delivery. And then he’s going to do a whole day’s worth of handyman chores at the house, and for dinner we’re going to have Indian food at the restaurant near where I work. I smell it when I walk by and it smells so good! So I’ve been wanting to try it. Then John’s going to stay the night and we’ll spend Saturday in Santa Fe.

Then on Sunday morning we’re going down to Albuquerque to go to the Spanish Market at the National Hispanic Cultural Center that is going on this weekend. I hope to find authentic local Christmas cards. If they don’t have any, we can make a quick stop in Old Town.

Then John plans to blow out the irrigation lines and cap the outdoor faucets at all 3 rentals on Sunday afternoon. Because we’re going to get our first really hard freeze early next week! It’s already been below freezing at night occasionally for the past month, but this will be the first solid deep freeze. Yesterday it was cloudy and I could tell they were snow clouds, not rain clouds. It wasn’t cold enough to actually get snow on the ground, and we didn’t actually get any precip, but there was snow up there.

Anyway, regarding the new house; we moved the first round of furniture a couple of weeks ago. I told you all about finding the pastor’s son, Santiago to help us. Well, he was great, and we’re hoping to hire him again to get the rest of the stuff out of the rental and into the house in Placitas later this month.

Here’s boxes and furniture at the rental, waiting to go up to Santa Fe.

John did a great job of getting it all ready to go.

We got that first round of furniture in two weeks ago, then we went to San Diego for Thanksgiving last week (I’ll post about that soon). We haven’t even been out to the new house since before Thanksgiving. I’m really looking forward to spending some time out there.

So this weekend, I’ll be unpacking while John is fixing stuff. And I’ll take some pictures! John’s already installed the doggie door. But he needs to set up the bed, install curtain rods, tighten the wobbly toilet, change the locks, etc. I also bought new light fixtures, but I think John wants me to hire a handyman for that. And the kiva needs painted. I might do that myself, or might hire that. There’s no rush on that.

We also might replace the kitchen sink. No! Don’t do it! Right? You’re right. It’s a very slippery slope. Because if we replace the kitchen sick, we’d like an under-mount style for later when we replace the countertop. But I’m not sure if we can buy one that would work for a future under-mount installation and have it meanwhile work with the existing countertop. So maybe we should change out the countertop too – it’s such a small kitchen it wouldn’t be very expensive. But if we’re doing the countertop, there’s really only a few cabinets. And that pink backsplash is ok in the bathrooms, but I’m not liking it in the kitchen. STOP! Don’t even think it. We do NOT have time to do a kitchen remodel right now. But that’s how it happens!