Month: June 2018 (Page 1 of 2)

“Cuddly Toy” – Roachford. For years I couldn’t remember the artist that sang this song, which I listened to on an endless loop the week I graduated from high school. I had the cassette single of it – holy time warp, Batman – and someone swiped it from me when I got to college that fall. When the wonderful world of “file sharing” arrived, I kept trying to find it, but was always looking under the wrong name. Finally, probably 10 years ago, I heard it somewhere, used Shazam to find the artist, and I was back in business. It’s still a good song.
“I Need To Know” – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. I was waiting for a friend at a restaurant a few weeks back and heard this on the in-house music. I kind of forget about it amongst all of Petty’s other great songs. It was released in the height of the punk era, and while it is still Petty’s classic blend of the south and California, there is a little of the rawness of the punk era in it.
“The Red Door” – Restorations. Oh good golly this is a humdinger of a song! Great to have the Restorations back, with a new album scheduled for released in September.
“Hold That Thought” – The Brian Jonestown Massacre. The final Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown episode I watched before we lost cable TV was his Berlin episode. If you’ve not seen it, it’s all about how strange a city Berlin is in the context of the country around it. Where Germany is a regimented, orderly society, anything goes in Berlin. Bourdain stopped in on musician Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, who is now based in Berlin. Ironically Spotify spit this song out in my Discovery playlist the next week. It’s a good jam.

Dear readers, I apologize. Between all the craziness of week one in our new home, I’ve not been able to sit down and share some updates with you all. And I realized last night that given part of Monday’s post, some of you may be worried about C.

I can happily report that she is back to normal, acting goofy, annoying us with her hyperactivity, and generally being herself. We never determined, with complete certainty, what caused her issues last week. We have a theory, though, after a visit to another doctor. It’s nothing serious or on-going, but I won’t share anything more than that about it here. The good news is that she seems to have put last weekend’s suffering behind her.

Beyond that, it’s been a week of trying to get settled in. We love our new home. But we are also building up a list of minor annoyances, or questions of “What were the builders thinking when they did that?” For example, our only completely furnished gathering area is what we will eventually call the Girls Lounge on the second floor. We have a sectional, some chairs, and the TV in that room. However in the builder’s plans for this room, there were several options, including one where the room doesn’t exist and the space is open to the main family room below. Because of that, there is no duct work into the floor. Instead, the two central air vents are both in the ceiling. Combine that with being on the second floor, having west-facing windows, in a very insulated home, and this room is like 10 degrees warmer than any other room in the house. We have to run a couple fans and it is still almost too warm to hang out in. Hopefully it is this toasty in the winter, too.

No cable/internet yet. No idea when we will get it. Fuckers. I met a neighbor from down the block tonight and he said he has AT&T Fiber coming into their house. So I’ll be calling them soon to beg them to do what I asked Comcast to do four weeks ago: come out and see if they can hook me into the line that is a block away. Not holding my breath.

Honestly, it’s been kind of refreshing to not be constantly connected. This is the time of year to do it. The Royals are terrible, so I hadn’t been watching them anyway. I miss watching every World Cup game, but we can still see the games that are on Fox. We miss our HGTV and Food Network, the girls miss their Disney and Cartoon Network. L keeps telling me how bored she is. It doesn’t help that it’s been hot and humid lately, so don’t want to play outside much. We can survive living like it’s the early 90s. For awhile.

We’ve been putting together Ikea furniture for the girls’ rooms. That’s always a blast.

It seems that the movers damaged both our washer and dryer in the transition. We had a technician out Wednesday. He got the dryer running; a connection had just come loose that prevented the heating element from firing. But the washer wouldn’t repeat the issue I had with it while he was here. When he left, M threw a load in, and about 15 minutes into the cycle, it started making a terrible, grinding noise. I called back immediately but they couldn’t get someone out again until Friday afternoon. We all really need to do laundry so I’m really hoping they can get it figured out.

I took the girls to see The Incredibles 2 Thursday. We all really liked it. L loved the first one and when the first trailers hit for 2 last winter, she was very excited at first. However about a month ago, she started telling me, “I’m worried it’s not going to be very good. The second movies are never as good as the first.” I loved that! A cynic already at age 9! But I also reminded her that her favorite Toy Story movie was the second one, and The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie. She was very pleased that The Incredibles 2 followed their leads and did not suck.

We’ve still been making at least one trip a day to the old house. We can likely get everything that’s left out this weekend. The buyers’ inspection was Thursday. Knocking on wood, rubbing rabbits feet, lighting candles, etc. that there are no surprises and we can potentially move closing up by a week.

Closing on the lake house Monday went off without a hitch. That was another huge load of stress off of us. Seriously, what were we thinking doing all this at once?

We have a very busy weekend planned. Today we are watching one of my nephews part of the day. M is having her first school buddy over for a couple hours. Hopefully our washer gets fixed. M and C’s buddies from the old neighborhood may spend the night. Saturday L is going on a nature hike with some school friends. We have a designer coming over to help us plot out what furniture and accessories to buy. And there will be a lot of unpacking, rearranging, and stacking of boxes for recycling.

If babysitting pauses allow, I’ll do my best to get a playlist or video up later today.

What a weekend.

Thursday, we closed on the new house. Which I believe I mentioned. What I did not mention was we also got an offer on our old house that day. It was not a good offer, thus my failure to mention it. But, we had no other offers, we were moving in two days, so rather than just reject it, S and I decided to see how much the potential buyers wanted to dance.

Friday I spent most of the day helping two of my sisters-in-law fill a Uhaul with items they had either been storing at our house or were claiming from our donation list before we moved. That was a nice, five-hour process.

Our potential buyers countered our counter. They were still way too low, but were still showing interest. We sent another counter back.

C got back from camp as I was wrapping Uhaul duty. She caught a ride with a friend, which made my day much easier. She looked tired but said she had a great time during her week down there.

After S got home, we came over to the new house with a couple loads of stuff. Another sister-in-law and her husband brought us pizza for dinner. My brother-in-law and I were trying to figure out why the hot water heater didn’t seem to be pumping out hot water(fn) when I heard a yell from upstairs that C was getting sick. I ran up and she was doubled over in pain in the bathroom, saying her stomach really hurt. The kid has always had a sensitive gut so it wasn’t a surprise that after a week of camp food, woofing down some pizza might set it off. So we went back home for our last night there.

Saturday was moving day! The movers showed up at about 8:30 and started loading. They did an awesome job. We were out of our house by 11:30 – it should be noted because we were still showing our house Wednesday and Thursday, we had done almost no packing, so a lot of small stuff stayed for us to get later – and after a lunch break they were unloading at the new house around 12:30. Amazingly they were completely done by 3:00. We had been scheduled for an eight-hour move and, subtracting their lunch time, they knocked it out in just over five.

As the movers were wrapping we got the latest counter offer. The interested party had come up some more, but were just short of the number we had decided we would not drop below. We talked it over with our agent who suggested this was as high as they would go based on his conversations with their agent. We had a painter scheduled to come in to do a bunch of rooms on Monday, hoping that would help generate interest. We did the math and realized by taking the final offer and skipping the painting, it would be about a wash. So we accepted. We sold the house! Well, inspection pending, of course. Which is a whole other set of stresses to keep me awake for a couple weeks.

All day Saturday C was in terrible pain. She said both her stomach and back hurt. She spent much of the day hiding from the movers, curled up under a blanket with a heating pad on her back, looking miserable. By the afternoon, S was on the phone with one of her partners asking for advice. Their best guess was that C might have a kidney stone, but they also weren’t 100% convinced that was the case. The partner called in a prescription for some super Tylenol and we tried that, but it didn’t seem to help very much. Shortly after dinner, C ran outside and threw up in the front yard. Welcome to the neighborhood!

Earlier, after the movers had left, we made a trip back to the old house to load up both cars with boxes. C was in pain on one couch, crying and moaning. Then L got super emotional and was crying about leaving. I found M hiding in a corner looking down so I couldn’t see her tears. We’ve put these girls through a lot over the past six weeks. It was no surprise that they all needed a moment.

Sunday we tried to get some stuff done around here. But we kept discovering that things we needed were still at the old house. S was trying to get C back to normal. L had a birthday party. We really didn’t get much done. But we did set a new family milestone: we had our first kid ER visit!

C was still in tremendous pain so when I took L to her party, S took C to the ER. They gave her an IV with fluids and pain killers(fn) and scheduled her for a CT scan. Four hours later I hadn’t heard anything so I started running through all the worst scenarios and texted S. She said they had been waiting for scan results for almost two hours. Moments later she texted back that the results came back clean; no kidney stones or signs of other things that might be causing C’s pain. The IV with the morphine much have done the trick, as it did with S when she got food poisoning two years ago, because C seemed back to normal when the got home. Knock on wood that she remains in good health and this was just her sensitive system getting knocked for a loop by camp, the heat, and the stresses of moving.

(Update: I had to spend most of the night in bed with C because she was doubled-over in pain again. This morning she feels better, still some discomfort but way less pain than she’s had since Friday.)

Somehow that was the first time in almost 14 years of parenthood we’ve had to take one of our kids to the ER. I know some of you are shaking your fists in our direction as I mention that. We’ve been very lucky.

We still don’t have cable or internet access because Comcast can’t get a crew to come find the line that is right across the street and tie us into it. I’ve asked for updates six times now, and each time they act like there’s no reason it shouldn’t have been done yet and promise to get it moving. The joys of living in a single cable provider area! I was kind of happy to be done with AT&T/Uverse after over a decade with them. But now I’d happily stick with them if they could get service to our house.

Oh, and later today we close on the lake house.

Good grief we’ve packed a lot in, haven’t we?

We are happy to be in the new home, and roughly two-thirds of the way through this crazy process. We won’t close on the old house until mid-August, so there will be several weeks of going back-and-forth to get stuff, mow the yard, check on things, etc. Luckily the yard here is still a work in process so I don’t have a ton of mowing to do. Have I mentioned that we have an acre of land now, and I’m going to have to figure out how much I want to mow weekly, and how much I want to pay someone to come mow for us every 3–4 weeks? I was walking around outside today and said, to myself, “Holy shit this is a big yard.” I had lobbied for a riding mower but S pointed out how long it would take me to mow our yard even on a riding mower. First world problems, man…

Since Comcast can’t get their shit together and get us cable/internet, this is a test post to see if I can post from the iPad when using my iPhone’s hotspot. Cuz I gots to crank out the content, fools.

Hmmm, based on my test post, it looks like Spotify playlist embedding might be working again. Naturally I had a post based purely on videos lined up for today…

Funny thing, all three times we’ve purchased a house, the third week of June has been involved in the transaction. Fifteen years ago we bought our current home in May, but moved into it the week of June 16–21. Six years ago we closed on the lake house on June 22 and headed down immediately after. Yesterday, we closed on our new home and made three trips with cars full of stuff over last night. Our official move is tomorrow.

Pretty weird, huh?

So some songs about houses. None of these necessarily have to do with moving but who cares?

“Pink Houses” – John Mellencamp. Required for Indiana residents.

“This House Is Not For Sale” – Ryan Adams. Actually it is for sale.

“Our House” – Madness. Hopefully our girls will have fond memories of our house at the end of our street. Here’s to new memories at a new house.

“Good arms vs. bad arms will win hands down, down…”

Ten years ago today I was going through my normal morning routine of scrolling through my RSS Reader’s new article queue while the girls watched Disney shows when I came across a blog post that changed my life.

The I Am Fuel, You Are Friends blog, which was one of my favorite music blogs at the time, published an interview with the lead singer of a young band from Scotland[1]. The blog’s author, Heather Browne, was effusive in her praise of the band and its songs. I went out exploring on The Hype Machine[2], found a few of the band’s tracks, downloaded them, and listened. The first song was a mournful, country-tinged track about a breakup. It was really good. The next song was another sad song about a breakup. It was also really good. I immediately used the iTunes gift card S had just given me for my birthday to buy their album.

The band was Frightened Rabbit, the album was The Midnight Organ Fight, and the first song of theirs I ever heard, on June 20, 2008, was “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms.”

That summer of ’08 I listened to TMOF endlessly. I remember one day I was walking around, moping, feeling sad, snapping at people for no reason. I wondered what the hell was wrong with me. Then I realized I had listened to the album several times in a row the previous night. That may have been too much, as Scott Hutchison’s tales of romantic failure had apparently pulled me into a funk.

I set the album aside for a bit. I couldn’t stay away for long, though.

At first the big tracks were the ones that grabbed me. “The Modern Leper” joined “Good Arms” as songs I could not hear enough in those early days. The duo of “My Backwards Walk” and “Keep Yourself Warm” are, quite simply, motherfuckers. By fall, just before L’s birth, I was addicted to “Head Rolls Off,” and Hutchison’s promise to “make tiny changes to earth.” I knew if I had done, and would do, nothing else in life, by having three daughters I had made tiny changes of my own.

But the album was about more than just those songs on their own. It was about the sequence in which they were presented and the combined impression they left on the listener. It was about Hutchison’s painful, at times cringe-worthy, accountings of all the worst emotions that come with a breakup. It was the push to the furthest extremes of pain, then drawing back for little, brilliant moments of relief. He’s mad at himself. Then he’s mad at her. Then he’s mad at the new man she’s with. Then he rages at himself for believing a one-night stand would magically make all the pain go away.[3] He begs. He threatens. He’s pathetic. He’s insufferable. He’s cruel. But, in the end, he stares all that pain dead in the eye, finds glimmers of hope, and decides to move on.

The Midnight Organ Fight may well be my favorite album ever. I still listen to it often, certainly more than I do to London Calling, OK Computer, or other albums that filled my most recent top 10 list. As much as I love all of FR’s music, I always come back to the album I discovered them on.

But it’s tough to consider it ten years after I first heard it. I was leaning toward slotting it in as my #1 album whenever I re-do my Favorite Albums list before the events of May. Now, with Scott gone, I don’t know if I can make an honest, dispassionate assessment of the album. I simply can not listed to “Floating in the Forth” right now, knowing he was predicting the exact location of his suicide 10 years in advance.

It’s a bit too much right now.

Scott’s death doesn’t change that the album is an absolutely brilliant piece of art. It changed my life, at least in that I’ve listened to it countless times over the past decade. It has given me, as some folks might say, all the feels over that time. Right now I can’t make it all the way through. I hope that sometime, in the not too distant future, I’ll be able to focus on to that big, bold moment of hope at the end of “Floating in the Firth” again and forget about how real the sentiment behind it was.

Scott Hutchison was a fucking brilliant song writer. Every song is loaded with turns of phrase and observations that are mind blowing. Here are some of my favorites from TMOF.

“Well I am ill, but I’m not dead
And I don’t know which of those I prefer
Because that limb which I have lost
Well it was the only thing holding me up, holding me up”
– “The Modern Leper”

“I’ll stow away my greys
In a padlocked case and in a padlocked room
Only to be released when I see you walking around with someone new
This is the last song, this is the last song
This is the last song I’ll write about you”
– “I Feel Better”

“I am armed with the past, and the will, and a brick
I might not want you back, but I want to kill him”
– “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms”

“I’ll turn off the TV
It’s killing us we never speak
There’s a radio in the corner
It’s dying to make us see”
– “Old, Old Fashioned”

“I’m working on erasing you
Just don’t have the proper tools
I get hammered, forget that you exist
There’s no way I’m forgetting this”
– “My Backwards Walk”

“Can you see in the dark?
Can you see the look on your face?
The flashing white light’s been turned off
You don’t know know who’s in your bed”
– “Keep Yourself Warm”

“You should look through some old photos
I adored you in every one of those
If someone took a picture of us now they’d need to be told
That we had ever clung and tied
A navy knot with arms at night
I’d say she was his sister but she doesn’t have his nose
And now we’re unrelated and rid of all the shit we hated
But I hate when I feel like this
And I never hated you”
– “Poke”

“Fully clothed, I’ll float away
(I’ll float away)
Down the Forth, into the sea
I’ll steer myself
Through chopping waves
As manic gulls
Scream “it’s okay”
Take your life
Give it a shake
Gather up
All your loose change
I think I’ll save suicide for another year”
– “Floating in the Forth”

I had been sleeping better for the past couple weeks. Well, kind of. Instead of lying awake for hours making and remaking 1000 mental lists related to our real estate adventures, sometime about 10 days ago I began falling immediately and deeply asleep, not waking until morning, and then feeling as though I had only slept for half an hour or so. I’m not as exhausted as I had been, but neither am I feeling 100% rested like I normally would have 8–10 hours of deep sleep.

I say had been because I’m typing this at nearly 1:00 AM Monday morning. I don’t know if it is the heat or my brain getting wound-up for what promises to be a crazy-busy week, but I could not sleep tonight. So seems like the perfect moment to get all ya’ll caught up on what’s gone down over the past week and what’s on the calendar for this week.

Our main home remains unsold. Although Sunday night we heard that a potential buyer requested some more information about our house, whatever that means. We went ahead and scheduled a painter to come in next week, after we move, to make some changes that our agent believes could help us. Yay, spending money for other people to enjoy!

Thursday I went down to the lake house and met the buyers, who wanted to take the boat for a test drive before deciding whether to buy it. That went well on several levels. The test drive went well and they decided to buy the boat! Granted, we had to drop our price a bit, but we set the original price high anticipating that. Negotiating 101, fools.

The other aspect of the night that went well was learning about the family that is taking our place. Just the wife came, with two of their three kids. After we introduced ourselves and started toward the dock, she asked, “So, which one of you is the Jayhawk?” Turns out she has two degree from KU – we were on campus at the same time although she was in law school when I was an undergrad – so that gave us some immediate common ground. She had seen a couple KU things in the house and said, although she already loved everything about the house, that’s when she knew it was the house for her. Her husband went to IU. Those of you who have been to our lake house know that each weekend we spent down there, we hung IU and KU flags from our dock. With a Hoosier and Jayhawk taking our places, S and I decided to leave our flags for them. We laughed at folks who know us stopping by when they see the flags and then getting confused when there’s a completely different family there.

One bad thing happened that night: I lost my wallet. Or at least I thought I did. On my way home that night I passed an Indianapolis cop shooting radar on I–465. I was going about 77, as was the car in front of me, but the cop must have been hunting bigger game, as he didn’t even look our way. I chuckled to myself and thanked the traffic gods for their help. A couple hours later, as I was getting ready for bed, I realized I couldn’t find my wallet. I searched through S’s car, which I had driven that evening, and couldn’t find it. I looked in all the stuff I brought back from the lake house, no sign of it. I looked everywhere I had been in the house before and after my lake trip. Nothing. I went to bed for 10 minutes, got back up, searched through S’s car again. No luck.

So I stressed through the next couple days knowing we would stop at the lake house Sunday when we took C to camp. Sunday we looked all through the lake house, up and down the yard, checked every nook and cranny of the boat, and again nothing. I was deeply perturbed. We hadn’t had any strange charges on our credit cards, so I figured it was safe, but had no idea where it could be.

When we got home I took another look through S’s car. After about five minutes, wouldn’t you know it, I found a “secret” shelf in the central console that I had apparently pushed my wallet into at some point in my drives. Stupid. I say secret shelf because neither S or I knew it was there, and she’s had the car over a year and had one almost exactly like it for three years before that. Apparently the engineers at Jeep are cleverer than we are.

Dropping C off at camp went well. She was super excited to get down there. Two classmates are in her cabin and at least one other St. P’s girl is too. It looked like there was a group of 4–5 girls from another school together in her cabin as well. Hopefully they all get along. It looks like she’s going to have a hot, muggy week down there.

As we were driving down S looked at the car’s temperature display, saw it was 95 outside, and wondered, “Why does it always have to be in the 90s when we drop them off at camp?” My response was, “Well, at least it’s not pouring,” and we laughed.

So of course on a day when there was a 20% chance of rain, there was a pop-up storm that sat right on top of camp and unleashed heavy showers from the moment we parked until the moment we got C to her cabin. Seriously, it was rain stupidly hard. We were thoroughly soaked, but at least it was rain and not sweat like normal.

Oh, last Thursday we also had our home orientation. It was a two-plus hour walk-through where we learned about the home warranty program and then went room-by-room through it pointing out things that needed attention like nail pops, paint touch-ups, etc. I guess that’s the good thing about buying a brand new house: everything should be in perfect shape when we move in.

Friday L got her new bedroom furniture. She bumped up to a queen bed and added a new dresser and side table to replace the stuff we bought for her sisters when they bunked up 10 years ago. She was very excited. We haven’t gotten her a new mattress yet, so we have an air mattress on the new bed frame. I kind of think she’d be just fine if we left it like that.

We have a steady flow of other Amazon deliveries bringing various items for the new house. And we have a long list of big furniture purchases that we are actively searching the perfect piece to fill.

Now comes our big week. Wednesday two of my sisters-in-law have rented a Uhaul to come clear a bunch of stuff out of our home that they’ve either been storing here or that we are handing down to them. Thursday we have a final walk through at the house, close at 1:00, and then will start taking stuff over on our own. Friday C comes home from camp; one of her friend’s parents volunteered to bring her home so I can work on moving stuff. And Saturday the movers come to do all the big stuff. Next Saturday night we’ll be sleeping in our new home.

So frustrating that Spotify and WordPress still don’t appear to be working well together. So I guess I’ll stick to videos for the time being, until I can figure out why playlists no longer embed.

https://youtu.be/BmRovgZsvAQ

“Africa” – Toto. The song that blew up the Internet a couple weeks ago. I have mixed feelings. It’s pretty faithful to the original. Which makes it seem a little lazy to me. But, then again, why try to remake what has been a classic for over a quarter century now? “Africa” is one of the greatest bad songs of all time. Seriously, it is full of cheese and schlock and I should hate it. But those synths and that chorus…how can you not love it?!?! I’ve enjoyed my girls reactions Weezer’s version. They, too, love the OG. I guess it’s been on some show(s) they watch or something, and as our generation learned back in 1982, once that synth line gets in your head, it will never get out. We heard the Weezer version the other day in the car and the girls all agreed that it is terrible and the first one was way better. I just chuckled to myself rather than point out there’s hardly any difference between them. Oh well, it’s nice to not have to hide my love for this song.

I haven’t posted anything about Anthony Bourdain. Although he didn’t impact my life as much as Scott Hutchison did, Bourdain’s suicide still struck me deeply. I watched his shows for years, read several of his books, and was a fan of his overall approach to life. 
I’ve written before about the irony of my love of travel books given the general lack of traveling in my life. Bourdain lived a life, at least the one that we saw on screen, that I would have loved to have lived. Spending most of the last quarter decade traveling to places big and small, familiar and unknown, and finding ways of connecting with the people in those locations while sharing their stories with Americans in hopes of broadening our horizons. So many people these days live in fear of anything that is different. Bourdain’s shows were a forceful plea that we’re more alike than the people fanning the flames of nationalism, racism, and xenophobia would have you believe. 
I saw this map yesterday and thought it was the best distillation of what Bourdain was all about. He didn’t travel just to fill his passport or check boxes on a list. Every dot on this map is a testament to his efforts to get people to open their eyes, get outside their comfort zones, and understand that most of the world – whether around the block or on the other side of the globe – live very differently than we do. 

I’ve long documented on the pages of this personal website (aka weblog, aka blog) that Mother Nature is a bitch.

She proved that to be true once again this weekend.

After six weeks of hot, dry weather, she decided to unleash a torrent of heavy rains on central Indiana. Just in time to, more or less, ruin our weekend at the lake. We had about two good hours Saturday, between our first guests arriving and the first storms hitting, and then maybe 45 minutes Sunday between storm waves, to take kids out on the boat for tubing and boarding. The rest of the weekend was spent holed up in our home with three other families, 10 total kids from 14 to 3, trying to make the best of the weekend.

This was significant because it was our final weekend at the lake.

We showed the house for the first time last Wednesday and those folks made an immediate offer. They are paying full price in cash, so things are going to happen quickly. We are currently scheduled to close on July 2. However, the inspection is today and unless anything major comes up,[1] we anticipate them asking to close even sooner.

So that was it. Which made it a weekend full of mixed emotions. As I documented last week, I’m well past done with all the prep and clean up that goes into hosting people. I’m done with moody kids who sit around and pout. I’m done with kids of our guests who make huge messes and neither attempt to help clean them up or apologize for making them.[2]

But I also spent the weekend trying to enjoy the good moments while remembering the high points from the past six summers, of which there were many. When we bought the house it was a little earlier than we had planned. But we wanted to do it while the girls were still fairly young and would be able to make memories that lasted the rest of their lives. They’re not pleased that we’re leaving the lake life behind us. But I know they will always look back and remember swimming and tubing and fishing and all the other fun things they did in our time down there.

The only bummer of the deal so far is the buyers decided not to make on offer on our boat. So I’m furiously working various angles to try to sell it quickly, preferably to either someone down there or to someone who is capable of hauling it wherever they want to take it. I’d really like to avoid dragging it back to Indy one last time, and/or having to store it somewhere for awhile as we attempt to sell it. I have a few leads, I have no idea how promising they are. But some information has been sent out. We’ll see if I can get any bites and hook them before we have to be out of the house.

We will go down at least one more time. We drop C at camp next Sunday, which is right down the road. We’ll make a stop to grab our final personal effects, load the trash up one more time, and then depart. Knock on wood we can include wrapping up things with the boat that day, too.

Anyway, it was an immense relief to sell that house quickly. Obviously any time you are buying and selling properties there are endless stresses involved. When you could potentially own three homes for a stretch of time those stresses increase exponentially. We still need to sell our main home – traffic has still been slow although we had an open house Sunday while we were gone, and are contemplating some changes we can make if things don’t pick up in the next week – but getting the lake house moved in a day was monumental.

First world problems…