I think we finally have everything unpacked that we're going to use here and put away. We hung the last pictures yesterday and I went to Lowes and bought some plants for the livingroom. It's finally feeling more like home. Now to find a new "routine." Robert has been disappearing every morning after breakfast to his office upstairs and pretending to work. Yesterday I was able to sit down and work the crossword puzzle for the first time. I've been saving them up so have quite a stack to go through. We get the paper delivered here every morning and it's left in the driveway. Robert said he wants to be like Tony Soprano and go out in his bathrobe and get it. I hope he either ties it shut tightly or wears something underneath because we do have neighbors. Next he'll want to wake up one morning and get himself a gun.
The Asheville Citizen Times is kind of a refreshing change from the Detroit Free Press. Instead of the front page news being "13 die in house fire on the East side/5 more killed in random drive-by" there was an article on the front page last week about 38 hogs dying in a roll-over on I-40. I guess if I have to read about multiple lives being lost I'd rather it be hogs. I was looking in the classifieds on Sunday for a job for Erin and found one for a cemetery in search of individual for lawn mowing and weed eating. We were wondering if you have to bring your own goat.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
Our Rental House
Our rental house is quite nice. It's hard to believe it's just a rental. We're in East Asheville up on a mountain. It's just a short drive to downtown Asheville and is very convenient to everything. The view is spectacular. We wake up every morning and the first thing we see are the mountains. If you leave the door open when you're going to the bathroom you can even see the mountains while you pee. I don't know how to post pictures yet (not of us peeing) but will when I figure it out. In the meantime, you can see pictures of it on Erin's blog at erinmoves.blogspot.com. She took some and said she would post them for me, so she'd better.
The woman who owns the house, Cathy, lives in a separate apartment on the lower level and we have the main and upper level. She is very nice and has been very helpful. She travels a lot and is gone now so I think she appreciates that we'll watch over things while she's gone. She has been very accommodating and has been working in the gardens (which are beautiful) and got our waterfall working on our pond. We have a patio off the dining room near the pond surrounded by gardens and decks on the back and side and a deck facing the mountains where we have our coffee in the morning and read the paper. Then we watch the sunsets from there later.
Our part of the house is 2400 sq. ft. so we were able to fit all our crap in it and we also have some storage space in the garage. We arranged the garden ornaments in the garden and on the deck and it feels more like home. We have a year to get rid of things we're not going to use because I don't want to move some of this stuff again. Plus, our new house won't have as much space.
The woman who owns the house, Cathy, lives in a separate apartment on the lower level and we have the main and upper level. She is very nice and has been very helpful. She travels a lot and is gone now so I think she appreciates that we'll watch over things while she's gone. She has been very accommodating and has been working in the gardens (which are beautiful) and got our waterfall working on our pond. We have a patio off the dining room near the pond surrounded by gardens and decks on the back and side and a deck facing the mountains where we have our coffee in the morning and read the paper. Then we watch the sunsets from there later.
Our part of the house is 2400 sq. ft. so we were able to fit all our crap in it and we also have some storage space in the garage. We arranged the garden ornaments in the garden and on the deck and it feels more like home. We have a year to get rid of things we're not going to use because I don't want to move some of this stuff again. Plus, our new house won't have as much space.
Fun Weekend
Thursday night (June 21) Erin flew down to Greenville, SC and Bobbie picked her up at the airport. They drove up on Friday and we went into downtown Asheville for lunch and walked around. Saturday, Erin went on a hike to a waterfall with her 2 friends who live here and Bobbie, Robert and I went for a drive up to Mt. Mitchell. It's the highest elevation east of the Mississippi. It was only about an hour from here off the Blue Ridge Parkway. There is an entrance to the Parkway by our house. The drive was beautiful and the temperature was 21 degrees cooler on Mt. Mitchell. Now I know where to go on hot summer days. Erin and her friends came for dinner afterwards and we had a barbeque. It was sad to see Bobbie and Erin leave on Sunday.
The Move Continues...
Friday the movers arrived and had to shuttle our belongings up the mountain in 3 loads. They left the big moving van in the Ingles parking lot at the bottom of the mountain and used a smaller truck to come up to the house. They got everything moved in spite of a thundershower when they were almost finished with the last load. Fortunately, Bobbie arrived before them and she was our "checker" keeping track that all items were accounted for. She stayed the weekend and helped me unpack the kitchen, dining room and bedroom & closet. It was so nice to have a kitchen again and to eat real food after living in vacant houses here and in Royal Oak.
Robert left Tuesday and went back to Detroit on business (or so he said.) I worked like a dog for 3 days unpacking boxes and got the rest of the house in order except for hanging pictures. I had to pick Robert up from the airport Thurs. night at 11:00 and was getting ready to leave and the cats were looking out the windows as if they saw something then started sniffing all over the house like something had been there. The next morning we found a huge pile of bear scat (poo) right in front of the house on the lower level. Yikes!
Robert left Tuesday and went back to Detroit on business (or so he said.) I worked like a dog for 3 days unpacking boxes and got the rest of the house in order except for hanging pictures. I had to pick Robert up from the airport Thurs. night at 11:00 and was getting ready to leave and the cats were looking out the windows as if they saw something then started sniffing all over the house like something had been there. The next morning we found a huge pile of bear scat (poo) right in front of the house on the lower level. Yikes!
So Far, So Good
We left Royal Oak at 8:00 AM Thursday, June 14, and after a short 12 1/2 hour ride arrived safely in Asheville. The ride was uneventful except for the last leg of the trip when several bales of hay spilled off a trailer on to I-40 (the most treacherous part of the trip) and everyone slammed on their brakes and swerved to avoid the hay. I had a semi on one side of me and had to follow the cars in front of me as they went off the road onto the (non) shoulder to avoid the hay. I managed to not rollover and we went on our way. We made frequent stops for naps (Robert) and we couldn't shut off the Honda because we had to keep the air conditioning on for the 2 cats and 80 bottles of wine. Hopefully, we'll never have to make that trip with 2 cars again.
We slept in our vacant rental house the first night on a blow-up mattress. The cats kept us up all night howling. I finally got Harvey to sleep about 5:30 AM and Charlie stopped crying. When I got up at 7:30 to take them to the kennel I couldn't find Charlie. It was as if he vanished in thin air. I asked Harvey to show me where his brother was and he finally jumped up on the kitchen counter next to the refrigerator and looked behind it. There was Charlie. We don't know if he was stuck or just hiding so we pulled the 'frig out to get him. He didn't want to go to the kennel again.
We slept in our vacant rental house the first night on a blow-up mattress. The cats kept us up all night howling. I finally got Harvey to sleep about 5:30 AM and Charlie stopped crying. When I got up at 7:30 to take them to the kennel I couldn't find Charlie. It was as if he vanished in thin air. I asked Harvey to show me where his brother was and he finally jumped up on the kitchen counter next to the refrigerator and looked behind it. There was Charlie. We don't know if he was stuck or just hiding so we pulled the 'frig out to get him. He didn't want to go to the kennel again.
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