And the pahty’s ovah? Dagnabbit! Well, I’m baaaaaack! (At work, I mean). Our phone, internet & cable TV are scheduled to be hooked up at home tomorrow. We have been effectively cut off from the rest of the world since last Thursday night. Downright disorienting, I tell you.

Ohhhhh, what an experience this has been! I highly don’t recommend it! I was never so glad to arrive at my office, hang my coat on my outdated brass coatrack, and slump gratefully into my chair. Took me fifteen minutes to walk around the corner to the elevator and descend to the employee’s lunchroom to get myself a cup of coffee. It seemed heavier than usual. <sigh>

Okay. We (DH & I) are simply too old for this kind of craziness. The move was nightmarish from start to finish. The renovations in the new apartment were completed (thanks to my DS putting a last coat of sealer on the hardwoods in the living room, dining room & foyer just the day before) and it sat there awaiting us, but the old house simply refused to empty itself out. I had created boxes to go to DD3’s shelter clients, boxes to go to designated offspring, and furniture pieces that nobody wanted (and we hadn’t even used at this house:they were either in the basement or the attic) set aside for a junk removal service to come get, and still had more than sixty (maybe seventy or eighty; I didn’t exactly do an accurate count) boxes to be transported to the new apartment, not including eight big wardrobe boxes that just held (and still hold) our clothes. But, as the movers were loading the truck, I kept coming across more, more and more - and was, as a result, STILL PACKING as they were taking things out. Suffice it to say that they loaded a huge truck to capacity - wedging things in every crook & cranny - and we still ended up, after they moved everything to the new place, making four or five trips back & forth with DH’s van and DD2’s DH’s pickup truck. I don’t know what we would have done without all the kiddos helping. They did a LOT of schlepping back & forth annd carrying. DD2 & DD3 brought all my oriental rugs over beforehand and got them laid on the newly refinished hardwoods (and then laid old sheets and dropcloths over them)  so that the movers wouldn’t scar up the new floors. As of this writing, we have our living room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms & bathroom furniture all in place. It is simply surrounded by, and in some cases, obscured by boxes and crates and plastic bins of every conceivable shape & size. It may remain that way for quite a while. Really. I’m out of energy, and that’s the truth.

DS’s flight home to LA (Imagine considering LA home!) was at noon on Sunday, the 30th. DD3 & I drove him into Logan Airport in Boston. He beat the snowstorm by about eight hours. I’m so glad for that! When we got back to Worcester, DH and I went back to the old place to clean & polish and tie up any loose ends. We worked there until 8:00 Sunday night. Then DH took his last shower - and I took my last bath - at the old place, we put on some clean clothes, threw our towels and our dirty “work” clothes in a bag and said “sayonara, baby!” I was never so glad to leave anyplace in my life. But we wanted it to be nice and clean and looking it’s best for the new family who will be making their lives there. So much more appropriate, really, than having two old fartz taking up all that unnecessary space. I guess I was just too tired at that point, too, to have any separation issues. We even left them one of our fireplace screens & andirons & tools because we had spares.

The new place is lovely - and just perfect for us, and has the requisite guest bedroom for when DS is home visiting. My bathroom evolved every bit as I had hoped it would - mine has a big oversized clawfoot tub (you KNOW I claimed that from day 1 !!) and I had my first bubble bath in it Monday night. Pure heaven. I mean, PURE HEAVEN! I still haven’t made the curtains for in there, but the colors are wonderful, and I did manage to get the brass urn with the dried baby’s breath put in there, so it feels a little decorated at least. I have no idea where the box is with the towels & rugs and such that go in there, and I’m not looking for them at least until this weekend. DH says that the shower in his bathroom is great, and someday I’ll get around to making his bathroom look nice, but for now, it’s pretty utilitarian and plain. (No brass urns filled with baby’s breath for him! C’mon! He’s a guy! )

The khats have taken well to the move. We kept them in the studio at the old place with their food & litter boxes until all the rest of the rooms had been emptied, and then we plopped them into their carriers and took them to the new place with us. They stayed in the spare bedroom - along with a monumental pile of boxes - until everything else was moved in, and then they came on out to join the festivities, and seem remarkably un-traumatized. Most probably because while the place is different, all the furniture and stuff is the same, and smells the same, etc., and of course WE are still their same slaves.

And so begins 2008! Yay! Oh, it’s been snowing more than I’d like, but there’s nothing to be done about that, after all. I’m figuring by the time the weekend’s over, we should have the place looking a lot more like a home and less like a warehouse. That’ll be nice, eh? Oh, and in the kitchen there are two windows that are just far enough apart to hang one of my all-time favorite paintings that DH did “on commission” (LOL) for me about five years ago to use in my (then) kitchen. My kitchen table has a heavy round stained wooden top set on a thick pedestal painted “Ralph Lauren barn red” <shrug> (It just looks to me like a dark red). And, I have heavy wooden ladderback chairs with rush seats that are painted the same red as the table’s pedestal. I have a lot of other red stuff - baskets & such, and red bookcases that fit across under the two windows - and the painting is of big, stylized red flowers, and it’s quite large - about 2′ X 5′, I think. I was never able to use it in the house we just left because the windows in that kitchen were too close together, but here in the new place, it fits perfectly. Yay!

OH! I haven’t eaten “on-plan” since before Christmas, and was scared to death that I’d gained back ten pounds. But, I guess all the activity has served as exercise and burned off a lot of calories, because when I pulled a suit out of one of the wardrobe boxes this morning with great trepidation (expecting it to be snug) it was actually much LOOSER than when I last wore it! Hooray!

Well, I have caught up as best as I was able with reading my lovely blogmates - and am still in the process of catching up, which I shall do throughout the day and send some comments your way when & if I have some more free moments (I just used up a whole great chunk of those writing this!). We’ll have our own computers up and running tomorrow, though! Yipee!

Sending you all much, much love and wishes for 2008 to be your best year yet!

Z