Zach started crawling the day we arrived. Luckily he's still fairly slow, but I know we won't be able to keep up with him for long!

The blog has been quiet for the past week because we’ve been living in 1991. Thanks to Comcast’s excellent customer service, we still don’t have cable or internet. We’re hoping that they’ll be able to “install” both tomorrow during our scheduled appointment, but I have my doubts. The cable wiring is old, and the exterior line lies on the electrical line, so I suspect some rewiring will be in order. Despite the fact that we ordered our new cable well before we moved, the 28th is the soonest they could “install” it, so we’ve been living with limited dial-up internet access, as our current plan only allows 10 hours of dial-up per month (because really, who uses dial-up anymore?!).

So, some quick facts about the past week:

• I’ve never had such a disorganized move in my entire life. I don’t know if it’s because I worked up until the day before we left or because we have so much stuff or what, but this move has been a nightmare.
  
• The drive up took us two days. We got a later start than planned on Tuesday. Zach had enough after about six hours on the road, so we stopped in don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it Coalinga, CA. After a night at the Best Western and four more hours on the road, we arrived in Santa Rosa on Wednesday. Our awesome landlords left a couple of bottles of cold water in the fridge for us.
  
• The movers delivered our stuff Thursday morning, so at least we weren’t camping out for long. Unfortunately, they brought all 187 boxes of our stuff with them.
  
• Because of a lack of time on the San Diego end, we put off going through all our stuff. So now, in addition to unpacking, we’re weeding out the stuff we don’t use, don’t wear and don’t need. The neighborhood has a big garage sale in July, so we’ll save a few things for that, and the rest we’ll give to any charity willing to come pick it up!
  
• We’ve finally made a dent in most of the rooms. The bedroom, Zach’s room, kitchen and dining rooms are just about wrapped up. We have stuff that needs to be unpacked in the living room, but some of that can’t really get put away until Bryan puts together the entertainment center and … we’re waiting on Comcast for the cable installation. The office is a disaster, and the garage is currently still populated by boxes rather than our vehicles. We’ll get there, though.
  
• Despite the fact that we’ve had phone since the day after we moved in, no one has called our landline. Bryan said this morning that if we had gone this long without a phone call in San Diego, he’d be worried that the phone wasn’t working. (It is, by the way – Bryan called from his cell phone and checked.)
  
• We’re sick of boxes, so we’re taking half a day and bringing Bailey and Zach out to Sonoma to the dog bakery when Zach gets up from his nap. Then it’s back to unpacking.

More updates as I can turn them out. If Comcast gets us set up tomorrow, then updates will probably be more frequent, as we get down to the boxes no one wants to deal with and I start looking for other things to do in order to avoid them.

(Unless you count dust)

The movers came and took our stuff on Wednesday. So now we have an empty house, instead of a house full of boxes. The boxes will meet us at our new house in Santa Rosa next Thursday.

We took advantage of our Disneyland annual passes one more time, and headed up for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.



Somehow we picked the three days of extreme heat to spend at a theme park. Temps were in the high 90s, which made life a little more challenging. It's tougher to keep yourself hydrated, not to mention the baby! So we slathered on our sunblock, took a leisurely approach to the parks and made time for breaks (like the one above, at the Grand Californian Hotel) in air conditioned places. We also made sure we had our sunglasses.


Now we're back home and cleaning. It's amazing how much junk you accumulate when you live in the same place for five years. I haven't lived in one place that long since I lived with my parents. I lived with them full time for almost eighteen years and I still have stuff in their house! Tomorrow we're going to see Jasmine and John one more time and finish up the cleaning. Bryan's dad gets into town for a brief visit on Monday, and I'll have my last day at work. Tuesday we hit the road for Northern California.

I probably shouldn't have taken the time out to blog, since there's still so much to do, but I needed a break, and I totally owe several people lengthy emails (Helene and Jenny in particular), so it's a quick update, and I promise to do replies as soon as things settle down even a little bit!

The picture says it all. Almost.

Let me add that Zach is teething. His first tooth broke through and was discovered on Sunday, and based on the fussiness and lack of sleep, I'm guessing its partner isn't far behind.

I also tried to slice off the tip of my thumb this morning with my razor. Now I have a mangled thumb that makes it hard to do anything.

Less than 24 hours and some semblance of sanity will return, as the movers come to pick everything up tomorrow morning. Let's hope I don't find something else to slice off tomorrow!

The movers come next week.

We had grand plans for going through all of our stuff, weeding out the junk or the stuff we didn't need anymore and moving without it.

We're running out of time.

I used to be organized before I had a baby. The banquet manager at Caesars Palace was impressed with my wedding planning folder. I had a great memory, things got done...It's harder these days. I'm still pretty organized when it comes to work, but home has become a different story.

First of all, I hate, hate, hate moving. Even when someone else comes to do the packing. My method of dealing with it this time around is to be at work on the days the movers are coming. Bryan can oversee operations at home.

The other problem we have is that we've been in this house for five years. That's a lot of time to accumulate stuff and cram it into various closets, drawers and cabinets. In the past, when I moved every 2-3 years, I had gathered less stuff and it was easier to go through and get rid of.

At this point, the top priority is to pull out the stuff we'll need after the movers take our belongings. There are a few high priority areas that we need to go through this weekend (hopefully), but my plans for a grand overhaul are pretty much postponed until we arrive in Santa Rosa and unpack. The good news is, our new neighborhood has a big garage sale every June, so we'll have an outlet for some of the stuff we don't need anymore.

Whew, it seems like we have a menagerie around here these days. I get to "wrestle the pig," put emu oil on him for his dry skin, take care of Bailey and now, my latest endeavor, lizard wrangling!

The lizard wrangling is not by choice. I was forced into it yesterday. I put Zach to bed early after a day of very little napping and a lot of social time getting passed around at my (old) clinic, which threw a going away party for me. I think they really just wanted to get to play with Zach, but they were kind enough to invite me, too, and feed me pizza and cake for bringing him to them.

Anyway, I was in the kitchen and noticed that Bailey was very, very interested in the corner of my old computer desk.

And then I noticed the tip of a tail disappear behind it.

Since it's my old computer desk, it's mostly a gathering spot for random stuff, and there's stuff everywhere around it. I swear, it won't be like that in the new house. We just ran out of space. At the moment, it's storing the baby bathtub, Bailey's big pillow, two file boxes, my ear impression kit, my Phonak spec sheets, my CPR books...you get the idea.

So swell, there's a lizard back behind all that stuff. I started dragging stuff out and had to get pretty much everything out of there before I could find him. And of course, he ran away, deeper behind the desk when I spotted him again. After much shooing (and, I'm ashamed to admit, a little shrieking), he finally got into the sort-of-open and I could use a kitchen towel to pick him up by the tail. I indignantly carried him out to the backyard, and dropped him in the grass with a lecture about reptiles in the house.

Why does this stuff always happen when Bryan's underway?!

BTW, this isn't the first lizard in the house, it's just been the hardest to get rid of. There was a bigger one (and this small one yesterday was probably a good 10-12 inches from nose to tip of tail) that Bailey found and herded out (much shrieking at that one!), another smaller one and assorted ones that have made it into the garage. Ugh. I don't mind when they're outside on the sidewalk or even on the windows (when the windows are safely closed, given that our screens were apparently built and installed by vandals).

Three more weeks. Let's hope the lizards can keep to themselves for that much longer.