The Great Unknown

Tomorrow is Moving Day; we know that much. What we still don’t know is how many of us will actually be moving.

Everything in a box is going, along with most of the furniture, but as for living beings, that’s out of our hands. Lynn is moving, we know that much. She is spending Tuesday night in her new house with or without inspector approval. If we have inspector approval, the rest of us will join her; if not, the rest of us will stay in a skeletal house.

I think the universe is still aligning, although that was in grave doubt for most of the weekend. On Thursday Dusty assured us that Ben the plumber was going to work “all weekend” to be ready for the state plumbing inspection today.

But Saturday morning when my sister Terri and I took a truckload of stuff to the house (and most of it really is “stuff,” as we discussed with the electrician), Shawn was there wiring the boiler, but Ben was nowhere to be seen. I asked Shawn if his work meant Ben was done with the boiler, but he didn’t know.

We did not see Ben on any subsequent trip all day Saturday, and yesterday before breakfast Lynn (Ms. Patience) drove us out there to ascertain that there was still no plumber.

We sent Nancy Gauss home post-breakfast with instructions to look for a truck as she went past the Some Day Ranch, and that’s when the news turned positive: Ben’s truck was finally there.

By the time we carted our last load of stuff —

[I have given up any aspirations I might have ever held of being a delivery driver. Loading the Weatherport, driving to the front of the house, loading more stuff, driving to the storage shed and both unloading and loading, driving to the new house and unloading, five times I think it was yesterday, and I was baked just like a potato.]

— out yesterday, Ben was gone, but the stove is operational, the dishwasher’s in place, the refrigerator (once we reminded him) is producing ice cubes (our first ice-making refrigerator! And we only had to wait for half a century!), Lynn’s sink and weird-looking faucet are in place, my sink and conventional-looking faucet are in place (photos will have to be forthcoming), and two of three thermostats are on the walls.

Yes, two of three. That means, if you’re doing math as we like to do around here, that one of the three is not yet on the wall. Nor are my washing machine and dryer hooked up. I’m hoping both of those tasks, plus anything else I might be unaware of (not being much of a plumbing expert), are quick fixes prior to the arrival of the inspector, ETA unknown.

Then Ben’s work has to pass muster (Dusty seems to think the plumbing inspector is easier to please than the electrical inspector), and then Dusty has to get the county building inspector out tomorrow morning.

That seems doable, right?

But just in case, four of us are still kind of on hold as to our moving date. It’s going to be upon approval or Thursday morning, whichever comes first, and three of the four of us have no idea their moving date is a moving target.

Three of four of us may not know they’re moving at all. I mean, they must have some idea — people have been coming and going, boxes (great cat scratchers, despite the cats never once scratching any cardboard we purchased for that purpose) are everywhere, stuff is leaving the house.

Na Ki’o is doing more hiding than usual, or hopping onto a bed with Marrakesh, which isn’t really typical behavior. Oz did spend one morning tucked right against my knee, which is always helpful when carting full boxes down stairs, but he’s generally doing all right as long as he gets to be part of the Stuff Delivery Service. (He doesn’t know this, but tomorrow he’s going to work without me. Hopefully Gilly will ply him with so much string cheese he won’t even notice I’m not there.)

I know we don’t have a firm move-in date, and this would be making me neurotic if I thought about it. Fortunately, there’s still enough to do (like driving stuff all over) that I have more things to think about than room for thinking. So my thoughts dart to the recycle run I need to make today (I don’t think our sub-contractors have been big on this, since I fished a truckload of cardboard out of the trash in our new garage), figure out where and if I can recycle fluorescent tubes, clean out the bottom drawer in my bathroom vanity, sort and box financial papers so I don’t lose them (I’m a few days behind on some bills for some reason), make at least one trip to the storage shed and at least two to the house, figure out if bikes are getting pedaled to the house or trucked there, and do I need a bike here for any reason . . . who has time to worry about when the official move takes place?

So I need to get moving (in every sense of the word), and here’s your official warning (or relief) that you won’t be hearing from me tomorrow, at least not in the morning. The moving crew said they’d be here at 9 a.m., and I have a dog to walk to work and cats to corral . . . am I sounding stressed? Surely not.