Over the Hump

We are more settled than NOT right now so that feels good. We’ve had such fantastic weather these past few days, I’ve hated that I needed to be inside all the time packing up Ruth’s things, cleaning and unpacking our stuff, but such is life. We woke up on Tuesday morning to winter, with an inch of snow on the ground, but by afternoon it was mid-summer around here and I had to change into a short sleeved shirt and shorts, it was so hot. Weird. Today I even managed to sun myself out on our deck for a few minutes when I needed a little break, but it was so hot I had to go back inside. I can’t stand how much I love being here. The view from our deck is inspiring (see photo taken at 10:30pm tonight with the sun still shining on the mountain peaks – it trumped the photo I was going to post of our new curtains – that will come later.)



Today was the first day I tried to get Kaleb back on some kind of school schedule. Boy does that kid know how to drag his feet. He did pretty well on his grammar assignments, he skipped piano altogether and he nearly flunked out of his on-line science course. We had to go to the library so he could use their computer (it is so close I really could hit it with a rock from our balcony). The headphones on the computer didn’t work so he couldn’t hear the lecture. He tried to read the words at the bottom of every screen, but he just couldn’t concentrate enough for that. The library has a one hour time limit and it wasn’t until he’d used up 33 minutes that he let me know he wasn’t learning anything. I wasn’t too happy about that. He switched to a different computer, which worked, so he finished up the lecture then had to take the quiz using my laptop because his minutes had run out. He was over two hours late to go play with his friends after they got out of school because I told him he couldn’t go until he passed his science quiz. He decided to listen to the lecture a second time to be on the safe side and he got 88%, so that wasn’t too bad – considering the subject matter was pretty foreign to him (it was on heredity and genomes, etc. I never would have passed it no matter how many times I watched the lecture.)


We didn’t bring up a single box from the basement today as we decided to just keep unpacking the boxes we had in the condo. I got the kitchen totally clean, decorated and things organized. I didn’t realized until I was done that I had used every single cupboard for dishes and kitchen things and didn’t have any place to put food. Since we had only purchased things we ate right away, we didn’t have any food inventory around for me to even think of it, until Kory brought it up. I had a little reorganizing to do after that. Aunt Ruth had a lot of different kinds of dishes, and Kory didn’t want to get rid of any of them. He used a very cool plate to set his lunch on, and he accidentally bumped it off the bread board, so it went crashing to the floor along with his slice of bread and stack of sardines on top. I told him I liked that plate a lot so I was sorry it broke. He told me, “I liked that plate too, but what I liked best about it was that it had food on it!” He was pretty hungry so he had to make his lunch all over again. Kaleb thought that was pretty funny.


I love setting up house and decorating things to make our place feel homey. After having done it in the recent past here, and now doing it again, I feel like those people who have affairs just because they like the newness in relationships – I somehow feel like I’m cheating on our house back home.


There’s been a non-stop parade of relatives coming through our condo since we got here. I totally love that. Once the word got out we put up new curtains, everyone had to come see them. They all agreed they let in more light and they love them. When we moved the furniture around from the way Aunt Ruth had it – they all had to come take a look at that, too. There isn’t a thing we do that they don’t gush over. Tante Kari even asked me today if I’d come over to her place when I have time to help her redecorate – she thinks I have a gift. Not really, but it’s nice she thinks so.


I’ve debated heavily about what to do with the toaster cover Tante Ruth left behind. It’s sort of a white plastic fabric with the silhouette of two dancing black poodles on the side. It’s so out, I’m sure it’s in. I’m keeping it for the time being, but it’s certainly not my style. But either is the elephant lamp that we ended up with because no one else wanted it (it was the last choice on the lamp selecting process the other day). I like the shade on the lamp, but the black elephant figurine is just too much. I can’t imagine where it came from, but I’ll be sure to ask. Lord only knows it’s probably worth a fortune in the US antique market.



I haven’t even touched the bathroom, so that’s tomorrow’s focus, as well as putting away the rest of our clothes and getting the bedroom and "my office" (i.e., desk) finished. We haven’t unpacked the boxes with all our wall decorations yet so by the end of tomorrow we should be looking rather complete, once we finish up with those things. We retrieved out BBQ tonight from a cousin that babysat it for us while we were gone – can’t wait to enjoy our deck with a little shrimp and salmon on the “barbie.”


I got a great night’s sleep last night – good bed and totally over jet lag. My camera is back in action now that I found the battery charger for it (the battery went dead on the flight over here). My computer can now get charged up since I found the power converter, and there is clean underwear in my drawer. All is pretty great in my world right now. It’s amazing how good a simple life can be.