Which Comes First?

Everyone (I presume) is familiar with the phrase that’s less argument and more cliché about the chicken and the egg, although you really could have a deep philosophical discussion about which preceded whom. Well, Lynn and I don’t have to discuss; we’re starting to live it.

After another weekend of not packing nearly as much as we needed to, we are trying to think logistically — and failing.

Dusty is trying to work it so that we would be able to move items into inspected bedrooms and garage starting Saturday, Aug. 3. But Lynn and I are feeble, if not old, and looking to hire strong young people to do all the heavy lifting. Even the medium lifting. Possibly the light lifting. And I don’t want to hire any lifters while we’re still using our current house.

This is all compounded by a series of unknowns, starting with the part where Dusty has had a hard time delivering on deadlines that are controlled by other people, like electricians and inspectors. I noticed just yesterday that while one side of the house got all its outlet and light switch faceplates first, the overhead lights are still not in on that side.

Then there’s the part where we have no idea when our house will be deemed habitable, so do we move all our everyday living things (bed, basic cooking utensils, toothbrush) when we have muscular help, and where do we move it?

I have decided it would probably make the most sense to do the big moving the weekend of Aug. 10, although we’re still likely to have to hire people after the fact to come back to move really heavy stuff from the garage into the house once we’re officially in our house in December, assuming the stucco crew didn’t mean the third week in June 2020 when they gave Dusty an estimated start time. They clearly didn’t mean the third week of June 2019. Probably not even the third week of July.

Every time I think about emptying a bookcase, I look at the plants on top of it and wonder where they will go and when. And do we even move the bookcases to the house, or take them to the storage shed to see whether they’re needed or not before we just clutter up the new house with unnecessary items?

We gave a tour yesterday to Kara’s mom Trish and her husband Randy, in town on their way to an annual gathering that Randy has been going to for decades, and somewhere during the tour one of them said something about not having much wall space for art. We are going to have that same issue, which hit home yesterday as I was putting smaller art pieces in a box and eyeing all the larger pieces still on the walls. And I don’t know where all the bookcases might go. I’m going to have enough bookcases and shelves to line three garages or an entire second house.

I still just have no idea how this Some Day house is supposed to be bigger than the old one.

So while we could be clearing stuff out of the current house, there’s no good place to go with it, and as I default to boxes bigger than I mean to for books and then think, “This is good, right here in the middle of the floor,” the thought of moving them someplace else without young muscular assistance loses all its appeal.

(I don’t mean to be ageist. I’ll take muscular people of any age, any gender. Any religion, any color. Alien species. I don’t care, as long as I don’t have to lift these boxes I am carefully filling as full as I can get.)

There’s so much to coordinate. As I look at the loveseat that Lynn has banned from our new house, which always has at least one animal lying on it (I know — it is long past its prime and the animals can find new spaces to recline), I wonder when and how we get that to the dump, or do we put it in the ever-growing pile out back for Golden Eagle Trash to come pick up? And when do we do this? The animals are going to be stressed enough, especially if there’s an interim move, that we should probably not be adding to it any earlier than necessary.

I feel completely disorganized and ill-prepared, and the days just keep marching past. I don’t know where we’re going to go with things, nor when, and while we’re not at a panic stage yet, those waters just keep rising, until soon enough I’ll be in over my head.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep packing books and wondering who is going to move them, and when, and to where.