When I moved into that place, I was a newly-divorced 30-year-old with a kindergartner and a toddler. A work friend of mine had moved out of it a couple of years ago and it had sat vacant during that time. He’d planned to sell it, but when he heard that I really needed a place to live he let me rent it for a very reasonable price which he never raised in all of those years.

I had about a month’s notice that I needed to move, so he started fixing it up. He left a five-gallon bucket of white paint in it one night just in time for some hooligans to break into it and splatter all of the walls and floors. He could have just walked away and told me to find a new place to live, but instead he replaced the carpet and linoleum, pulled down some panelling that had been damaged, and cleaned it up as best he could, all in a big hurry. There were scars on the fireplace brick for as long as I lived there, reminding me of the effort he’d put into it for me.

 

  

I did my best to be a good tenant. I brought the dead back lawn to life and tried not to make too many service calls to my friend. When I needed help though, he was always there, and between him and that house, I had as secure a life as I could have in that neighborhood.

 

  

I lived through some of the happiest years of my life while in that house. It definitely demarked a phase of my life. That was the single house; where I learned to live again, the home base that I always came back to. I could go play and my little house would always be there comfortably waiting for me. It saw me through breakups and relationships, a strange assortment of pets, and some truly alarming cooking experiments.

 

  

Eventually we started to outgrow it. The boys were getting bigger and the tiny little kitchen just got on my nerves. It wasn’t a house where you could do a lot of bulk shopping, that’s for sure. When Junior came along, I’d already been thinking of buying a house of my own, maybe a little bit bigger. Trying to cram six people into a space somewhat cramped for three hurried that process up, but it wasn’t the house’s fault. It was the next phase of my life starting, that’s all, and the little house didn’t fit in with that plan.

So we shopped and planned and found ourselves a house of our own. Moving has been an enormous pain, as it always is, and I was in a big hurry to get out of that place before I had to pay any more rent on it. Today was my last day over there; we took a load to the dump and one last pickup load. I stayed behind after that last load to vacuum and check for leftovers, and the place was shockingly empty. What looked so big when I really needed a place to live now looked even tinier with all of the furniture gone.

I did one last walk-through, remembering all that place had meant to me and the incredible gift of my friend of a place to live for almost a decade. That kindergartner is a surly teenager now, and the toddler has a hunting license. This new house will suit our enlarged family much better, I know, but that first house was a friendly place. I hope whoever gets it next takes care of it like I did.

Maybe it was crazy to schedule moving on top of hunting season on top of a wedding on top of my big work project finally getting off the ground. Some of it wasn’t avoidable at all, and the rest of it really needed to be slotted where it was to make the other pieces fall into place, but man, is it ever getting to me.

The moving alone is huge. I wasn’t anywhere near as packed as I should have been. I couldn’t be, since we still had to live in that house while we waited for the new one to close. I didn’t have enough boxes for quite everything, so as we empty some, they go back over to be filled again. But I can’t empty most of them until we either get shelving put together or existing cabinets cleaned of the skunge in them, and how do you find time to do that when you’re physically on the move every waking hour of the day? The new house is full of boxes that just scream more work at me and the to-do list is getting longer and longer, even with Junior taking care of the lion’s share of it.

We did get help from a couple of friends on a couple of evenings to move the bigger furniture, but really, Junior’s doing it all and mostly by himself. It kills me to see him work and not be able to help, but he was able to take the week off work and I wasn’t, so that’s that. We decided against going hunting this weekend, which lets up on the pressure some. We have to be out of the old house by Tuesday and I haven’t even touched the garage or the backyard. We’ll get it done, but not with much time to spare.

We were walking through Costco last night when we realized that we still need to buy food and alcohol for the wedding, and that’s in less than three weeks. It’s going to be a major last-minute affair. I still have to order pie and meat, and find a grill that I can bring up there, as mine has gasped its last breath. I’m not entirely sure where everything that we’d already collected for the party is, after the move. I still haven’t scanned the directions into the computer for people who’ve never been there. Can you imagine if it were a formal thing, with caterers and invites and all? I would never have got it done on time, and I would have killed myself trying.

For some icing on the stresscake, we moved the dogs over to the house yesterday. Last night, while we were standing in the shop, I heard Angus licking something up on the other side of the truck. I walked around to see what he was into, and it was rat poison. Fantastic. I got him to the vet this morning, and he’s on Vitamin K pills for the next month. He has to stay isolated and calm for the duration too, because any little scratch he gets can make him bleed to death any time in the next 60 days. He may or may not make it.

I have no idea how to keep him contained when we’re gone every weekend, so he’s coming up to camp with me. He’ll have to stay in the truck and away from those nasty biting chihuahuas at camp lest they kill him, but it’s better than him getting into trouble at home when I’m not there to take care of him. Fortunately, M’s giving us her old kennel, so I can at least keep him contained at home.

There’s always one dog in your life who’s the best dog, and Angus is it. The thought of losing him over something so stupid is eating me up inside, on top of everything else. I’ve had my share of minor meltdowns over the last crazy month, but it feels like it’s getting worse. I feel like I should be able to handle this load, even if it’s tough, and I’m just not. It’s not fair to Junior or the kids and I hate myself for being grumpy with them, but I’m doing the best I can to keep all of the balls in the air. And I’m failing.

My only previous cat had this moving thing down. I owned her while I was in college, so I would truck her from my folks’ house to our apartment and back for long stays. I moved her eight hours north after college. She moved three more places with me while she lived, and she toughed it all out.

She’d yowl in the carrier and make a stinking mess on the longer trips, but once we got the wherever we were going, I’d let her out indoors and she’d regally inspect the premises.

But Booger’s only been in a carrier once or twice, and never has been moved. He’s much more outgoing than Stinky was, so I thought he’d handle it fine, but cat-moving is never going to be high on my list of fun life experiences. He stunk up the carrier in only fifteen minutes, so when we got there, I put him in the back bathroom with all of his stuff.

I wanted to leave him there for a day or so to give him time to get a feel for where “home” was, and to keep him safe while doors were hanging open for furniture moving. He was feeling frisky and bored enough to detroy a roll of toilet paper by yesterday afternoon, so I scared up some shampoo and an old towel and proceeded to give him the second horrifying bath of his life.

He was pretty good about that too, only ripping one of my fingers open in his frantic attempts to escape the water. Once he figured out that I wasn’t letting him out of it, he stopped using claws and started trying the slippery eel move, but I’ve bathed enough cats in my life to be onto that one.

He eventually got bathed and sort of dried and his dignity majorly affronted, so I set him down to prowl. Until I did, he looked like a meerkat, stretching his head up as high as his neck would go to see where on earth I was taking him. But then he slunk around all of the edges and discovered that our good old furniture was there. It took him about as long as it did to dry off to completely relax, but now he owns the place again and is supervising the unpacking. Booger would like things to please be taken out of boxes now, so he can properly inhabit said boxes.

The dogs come home this afternoon, but they’ll be cool. New things to smell, new dogs to talk to, and a front gate they can actually see through. They’re travelling experts though, so this is old hat to them.

It’s starting to feel like home, with the cat on my bed at night.

Opening Day was this weekend, an event that’s capitalized in our house and not to be missed for such trifles as moving day or being sick. This is what we live for; we work our butts off for nine months a year in order to play even harder for these next three. It’s not only opening day for deer around here, but also for bear, so there was much fun to be had. We lucked out and had it to ourselves kid-wise, so I took off work a little early and Junior took off from fixing up the house a little early.

Saturday morning started out with a disappointment when we saw that there was logging going on in Junior’s favorite place to deer hunt. There wasn’t last week when we were up there squirrel hunting, but this weekend it was all ripped up. Besides, it was absolutely full of people. So we eavesdropped on the bear hunting channel, and figured out that they were just down the road from us. That was all the excuse we needed to switch tracks, and off with the hounds we went.

The dogs are fresh and excited so they strike at any sign of a bear. Sometimes we can find a track, and sometimes not. Sometimes you turn them out to start one, and it trickles off to nothing and they sheepishly come back to the truck all, “Oops, sorry, false alarm.” They’ll get the hang of it again in a week or two, but on this particular weekend, it took a few starts like that to get an actual race.

Once the race looked like a real one, Junior and I went around to the other side of the ridge to listen over there. On the way, we passed three other sets of hound rigs, with nine dogs out potentially where ours were. It was like Grand Central Station for houndsmen over there; there were more rigs than deer hunters. It seems that someone got the word out that we’d had a real good year last year, and people were coming in from all over the country to take our spot, nevermind that they didn’t know the terrain or the roads, or even basic courtesy.

Those extra hounds burned us too. When we got to the tree, there were three dogs from some other pack, and they were all barking up the wrong tree. As near as we can figure out, the two packs heard each other and moved towards each other, each thinking the other set had something. Or else these other dogs were complete idiots, which is also possible. Whichever, there was no bear anywhere near there. We did get a small bear later in the afternoon.

The next morning, we put the dogs on a track right around daylight. They gave us an outstanding race; we saw them cross the road a couple of times; they ran for miles and miles. We had a hard time locating them when the race moved into an area without accessible roads, so when we stopped hearing them and a few came out, we thought it was all over.

Four dogs were still missing though, so before we left to get home and move, Junior and I headed up to where we turned out to see if any had come back up that way. We’re not a ton of use without a tracking receiver, but they often go back to where they started so it was worth a shot. We spent a little while hollering and honking the horn when we got word on the radio that the signal had been picked up elsewhere and for us to come on back down.

We’d just turned the truck around and started down the road when skipping across the road went a deer, the first one we’d seen all day. We both recognized that it was a legal buck at the same time. I was the only one with a deer rifle on me, so while Junior got out to watch where it went, I jacked a round into the chamber. The deer was not terribly alarmed but was still going the other way, so Junior whistled at him. Deer are curious, which is probably why he hadn’t bugged out when we were honking the horn, so when he heard the whistle, he slowed down, stopped, and then turned his head to see what we were.

That was the end of that deer, as my favorite deer rifle doesn’t miss. It was a good clean kill too; he was dead before we got down to him. We took our pictures (which are still in the camera, see: moving) and Junior dragged him up to the truck while I filled out my tag. We’d no sooned got him up there when word came over the radio that they’d found the last four dogs, but they weren’t just running; they were treed, and all the way on the other side of the country. All of our rigs were spread across 20 or 30 miles, so we tossed the buck in the back of the truck and hauled ass to get down there and help them. Especially with a bear that keeps coming out of the tree, we had to get those dogs off him one way or another. They were exhausted, but that doesn’t stop a good bear dog.

 

The tree was a cluster, as the bear came out again, but at least it was after the first kids there got the dogs tied up. Junior didn’t make it to the tree in time to see the bear, and I didn’t even get to the tree. I’d taken off just a hair after him so I could get the truck locked up, and by the time I caught up to him, he was stopped at a really steep spot that wasn’t worth trying to get me up, so I went back down to the truck. 

By the time I got back down there, Senior (he was right behind us on the road) had gutted out my deer so he didn’t spoil. We tried to listen to the story over the radio while other friends trickled in, but eventually the men and dogs came back and that was good enough. This chase had brought us back down to my camp, so we could pick up the stuff we needed to take from that. Then back to Junior’s camp where Senior volunteered to butcher the deer out after it hung for a day, and on home to start moving after thirteen hours of frantic activity. We were never so glad to see the bed as we were last night.

It was a good start to the season though. I got the first buck in both camps, although there was another one taken later that evening. We got to a tree and saw a good race, and incidentally took four quail and a squirrel on side hunts, which are on the agenda for dinner tonight if I can find the frying pan. It will take us a couple of trips to get back into the swing of this always-on thing on the weekend, especially on those with the kids, but this is our thing, after all. We can’t call ourselves hunters if we don’t actually go hunting, and hunt we did this weekend, and hard.

 

I don’t have photographic evidence to back it up, but we did finally get the keys yesterday. It was sort of anticlimactic, a day late and surrounded by frazzle. Junior got up early for the event, we ran out there, and our realtors just plopped them in our hands. Then I went back to work and he started to change the locks; no time for a big ceremony.

It’s been that kind of week. Besides the house deadline getting slowly pushed back into the land of fines, my big project started at work yesterday too. I really wanted it to go over the spring or summer, but the wheels of local government move slowly and they’re the ones footing the bill. So of course, we start it the week before hunting season. It’s going to eat up at least three of my weekends. At any other time of the year, I’m really OK with weekend work, but not this time. And I have to.

I’m learning why project managers seem to always have a phone attached to their ears. Everyone wants you all the time. Add into that the juggling of house-related things, and I’m surprised that my cell phone hasn’t just blown up on me in overload.

When I have a minute or two free from the job, I switch gears and work on the list of repairs or order parts that we need. As soon as I get off work, I scoop up Seamus for a fun-filled evening of cleaning. I’ve become a little too attached to my vacuum cleaner this week too, not just my cell phone. And yesterday was the first evening; I have to try to get the majority of the rest of it done tonight.

Tonight’s also packing night, because tomorrow we’re headed up to the hills for opening day. Both of the trailers are already up there and I have no intention of doing any fancy cooking, but I still have to get some food and ice, and get our stuff together. Junior’s juggling every bit as hard as I am, and he’s throwing two nights a week of school into the mix too. He’s only getting a few hours of sleep a night, and I worry about him. If there’s one thing I can do, it’s stop working to sleep once in a while.

But things are coming along. The dishwasher, microwave, and new refrigerator were delivered today. Junior was there, but they were early and his phone was dead so I couldn’t verify that he hadn’t run off on a parts run, so I had to run out and be there for the deliverymen. I didn’t get to stay to see them install the fridge, because work was screaming at me by that time. He’s there working on things though, so it’s all good. I can’t imagine trying to juggle all of this by myself; it’s hard enough with two adults.

The house isn’t as dirty as one would expect in a repo. They obviously tried to sell it themselves first, so cleaned it for that. I’m only dealing with about a year’s worth of bugs, dust, and spiderwebs. After all of the inspections of ten-years-abandoned buildings I’ve done, this is nothing. Nothing that still requires a lot of work, I grant, but not as bad as it could be. We skipped on repainting it; we’ll do that later in the year, and have carpet-cleaning people coming in tomorrow morning.

We plan to get home from hunting in time to move the bed on Sunday, and start sleeping there while we move everything else. I tell you what; I’m not unpacking anything in that kitchen until I get a chance to disinfect everything. White laminate shelves are easy to clean, but show the dirt much more than plain wood.

By the end of next week, we should be mostly moved. I’ll clean up the other house and get to working on unpacking this one over the next few weeks. With any luck, we’ll be mostly unpacked by the time we get married. I figure my change of address will go through right about the time I start working on changing my name. I’d just like it all to be done, and it will be. That’s the beauty of loading all of the stress at once; it’s a giant relief when it’s over. So wake me up then; I’m on efficient autopilot for now.

I’ve been cleaning and packing the house for a couple of weeks now, and I’m making progress. I’d forgotten how much of a pain moving is, or else I never quite knew.

I’ve never made a move of this caliber before. I’ve moved to and from college, back when all anyone had fit in one pickup load. You could move on a day’s notice, and I did once. It took scrounged boxes from the liquor store down the street.

I lived in a town for four years before we moved down here, but that was a company move. Movers paid by someone else swooped in, packed up everything at once, including trash in the cans, and put it in the new house when it was ready.

The last time I moved was to this place, almost a decade ago. I was getting a divorce and had to do a hurry-up packing job because I wanted out of that house so very badly. I overlooked a lot of stuff, some of which was eventually returned to me, some I wrote off, and some I deeply regret, like the kids’ baby pictures. I rented a small van and got a couple of friends to help with the heavy stuff. When I got here, the space was much bigger than my possessions called for, but there were three of us. We expanded to fill it.

 

 

And fill it we did. I had no idea how much stuff I’ve accumulated in nine years. I’ve been decluttering for most of the year, giving away or throwing away as appropriate, and it’s still a lot. I’ve got almost everything packed that we don’t need to live with for the next ten days, and there are boxes everywhere.

 

  

I got a little carried away in the kitchen. I kept out some basics to cook with, but apparently not enough. Every time I think of something I’d like to make for dinner, I realize some crucial tool or spice is in a box. Sure, it’s a well-labelled box, and I did break into one to get the cheese grater back out, but I’d like to leave things packed if I can. We’re doing a lot of grilling, and eating on paper plates when we can. I had no idea I owned a whole box full of plastic containers - no wonder I can never find the one I want! A whole trash bag of them went to the recycling bin too. If I didn’t know they were there in the back of the cupboard, I do not need them.

 

  

The kids are bored and the house is weird to them. I let them play with the toys in the bins that are easily repacked, but next weekend is the last at the house and they need to get it all put away. The floor space the girls have to sleep on in this house is slowly being encroached on by towers of boxes; they are ready for their own room at the new house, where the threat of avalanche isn’t quite so severe.

And me, I’m just ready to go. I’ve got some serious cleaning to do at both ends, and we’re going to have to cram both that and the actual moving into weekday evenings, because hunting season opens three days after we get the house. We’re not missing that, so the juggling of the locksmith and the appliance delivery and the carpet cleaning and the moving and the sleep schedules has begun. It’s going to be a frantic couple of weeks; after this, a wedding will be a breeze. And in five weeks, it will all be done but the hunting, and we can sit back and breathe again.

I don’t intend for this to become an all-wedding, all the time website, but with only six weeks to go, that’s not really a hazard. Besides, I’m still stuck on yammering on about the house all the time. We close in two weeks.

We made a little progress on both this weekend though. We got our dishwasher, fridge, and microwave ordered, and bought wedding rings over the internet. The money we saved on the sale prices on the appliances more than paid for the rings, but we’ve got simple taste. I wanted to be able to wear mine all the time and since I work with my hands a lot, that precluded anything fancy.

We picked a date for the wedding too, and started making plans. First on the list is to consult with a lawyer to make sure that his lazy leech of an ex-wife can’t make a money grab for my income if we get married. I don’t think that’s the case; I think any gross inequities in living situations for the children between one house and the other can be equalized through the stepparent, but not basic income levels. And since we have four kids to provide for at our house and she only has two, it shouldn’t matter. After all, he didn’t get any equalization when they were living with their mother each in their own room and they were all crammed in together at the grandparents’ house while with him.

On the off chance that she can grab my income, we just won’t get married. I will see her in hell before I work my ass off so she can sit on hers. She can go get a damn job like the rest of the world.

But assuming things go well there, we’re planning to move forward. My sister is going to fly out for the weekend, and Junior got a preacher friend of his set up to come perform the ceremony. It won’t be anything fancy, just a BBQ up at hunting camp. Most of our friends and family will be there for the season anyway, and the rest will come up for the day. Half the people there will still be in their hunting clothes and it wouldn’t be all that unusual to have a deer or bear hanging in camp. We’ll just throw a little party, stand up and marry each other, and get back to partying. There isn’t anything to stress about; no flowers, no music, no photographer, no fancy clothes. Just a relaxed and fun afternoon in the setting that got us together, and pie, beer, and tritip.

That’s my kind of wedding.