This Week Will Make My Autobiography Interesting

Real adventures usually get off to a rocky start. And this is the short version.

As you may remember if you have read my recent blog posts, we sold our home 18 days after we listed it for sale. That was the easy part, as it turned out. Our contract allowed our buyers to research our property up until August 10th before committing. They tried to get more money out of us by bringing in contractors who gave estimates on what it would cost to tear down our bowed back deck, which they knew about when they made the offer on our home. We agreed to pay for radon remediation and a small amount for a new water pressure valve, as showed up in the inspection, but not the amount they asked for. Fine, they said. All was well, except that we fell behind in packing our stuff. (Well, I had packed my stuff already, but DH had held onto lots of stuff he didn't have time to go through. Monday the movers came to remove everything we had packed.

They packed everything into what they called "vaults," similar to pods or U-boxes.

We all worked until 8:00 PM, when the boxes/vaults were full, they drove off to put things into storage for us until we find a house in Bend.

At the same time, we had a cleaning lady affiliated with the woman who received our piano and came back to help us get ready to move. She worked tirelessly, moving around as needed to accommodate our moving workers. She finished at 8:30. Everything was cleaned except the floor under the items left in the house: bags of food and cleaning materials not possible to include in our shipment.

We had decided to give our guest bed and the matching dresser to our buyers, if they wanted it, and they did. Here's the bed.

Here's the dresser:

(It needed refinishing. We did find the connectors for the mirror, and we left them on top. He can repair furniture, and I hope they will send us photos when he's done.) With all the other furniture removed, our plan was to sleep on the spool bed. That was when we found out that the trunks under the bed (now removed) had been holding it up. It collapsed under our weight. We moved the mattress to the floor to sleep.

We were expecting to have to be out by the end of closing day. However, a U-Haul truck showed up early on the day of closing with three U-boxes full of the buyer's stuff. Shortly after that, the buyer showed up. I had been moving everything to the garage to have the house clear, but the buyer said he had to have the garage clear for him to unload the boxes, and we had to accommodate them because his wife had taken off two days from work. We hadn't even closed yet. We wanted to do our part to help with the situation, so we offered to move everything we could to our storage unit, instead of going for our trailer and moving everything we needed to take with us into it. With almost everything in the storage unit, DH went to pick up the trailer to take it to our local RV campground. He had misplaced the piece of paper (never use paper in this day and age) that had the site number on it. The office was closed. In the process of turning around, he took the corner at a tight angle--too tight--and the corner of our 5th wheel removed the rear window of the pickup. I found out from another camper that they had a folder with the list of who had which campsite by the laundry. Whew! We settled in for the night there, and DH discovered that not only was the pickup stuck in 4X4, it wouldn't start up again. He took the Honda went back to the house, where he worked until past midnight, removing everything left in the house and putting it on the front deck. I had put everything from the refrigerator/freezer into an ice chest and four refrigerator bags, and that was now in the storage unit. Unfortunately, they close up at 10:00 PM. Of course, all the canned and packaged food was in the storage unit, too. I had one bottle of water for myself and the pups, and no way to get food or more water except by walking several miles in the dark.

When DH returned after midnight, we hadn't eaten all day. "Hey," I said. "We're homeless. There's a homeless packet in the Honda. Let's eat from it." (It's a plastic bag of food and other items we give out to the homeless we encounter while driving around.) We had chili beans and canned mixed vegetables from the homeless packet, and the bottle of water from the bag. We could have had the can of tuna, but we were full enough.

The next morning, we called the Auto Club to help with the pickup. They towed it two blocks up the street to the Chevy dealer, where it was determined that we needed a new battery. It seems that if the battery goes out, nothing works. That took two days, and then we needed to put in a new rear window. That meant we had no way to remove everything from the front deck, and the new owners were getting upset. It looked liked this...

...and this.

The new owner had told us we could leave it for the MS pickup on Saturday, but his wife apparently nixed that. (I don't know for sure, but he said it was OK, and then it wasn't, so I'm guessing.) I got on the Facebook group "Park City, Utah, Online Yard Sale" and said I was ISO someone to cart everything off for $50. I got a reply right away, but he wanted $100. We met him there the next day. I noticed the tarp was off, and the stuff had been picked through. Peeking through the front window, I saw some of the things we had left to be picked up, so it was clear that the new owners went through to see what they would like. I wouldn't have minded, if they had been more tolerant about our leaving the stuff on the deck. 

They also demanded we remove some items from the side yard. DH went back and picked that up to take to recycling, and we were done. 

My takeaway: They were not legally permitted to start moving in before closing. We did everything we could to accommodate them and allow them to move in early. Doing so created a number of problems for us and eventually caused us some difficulty in removing everything from the property (although some of that was caused by our problems with the pickup, not entirely because of them). When we were not legally allowed to have things on their property after closing and could have used some understanding, there was none. Things work better when everyone is cooperative.

The pups were happy to be able to lie down in the trailer, after spending so much time sitting in the car.

Of course, Jolena would be the first one to stick her head out of the bag to investigate her surroundings.

We had planned to go down and pick up another U-box on Saturday, but that had to be postponed until (because of the long weekend) Tuesday. 

While all this was happening, a new "Chosen" doll (limited to 250) was due to be released by My Doll Best Friend. I was only mildly interested, because the past Chosen dolls had been on the market for a few months before selling out, and I had no idea what the new doll would be. Lo and behold! the new doll was a nonwhite doll called Mariah. Of course, I had to have her to add diversity to my stories. So there I was, with no real address in Bend other than my BILs. I thought I would wait until I got there to order. Here she is:

Well, as the hours went by (I had nothing else to do, right?) it was clear, that I could miss out. I decided to order her and have her sent to my BIL's house and deal with whatever complications arose. Within hours after I ordered her, they were all gone. 250 dolls gone in 36 hours!

DBIL will be out of town for a few days later in the week, and we may not be there yet, so I may have to recruit our real estate agent to pick her up, unless I can reschedule delivery. I believe it will all work out. Our current plan is to leave on Friday, if nothing else goes wrong.


Fortunately, I had scheduled the stories through the middle of September, and the latest one came out on Friday.

On a bright note, we have been wondering what happened to DD's dolls. We found this lovely treasure trove in the storage unit on Sunday:

And Pumpkin and Bye-Bye saw the light of day for the first time in decades. (Bye-Bye needs new eyes to see, but I'm sure he felt the sun on his face.) Pumpkin wears a size 1 and had our DD's baby bonnet on when we found her.

We're now scheduled to leave Salt Lake City on Friday. Stay tuned. Next week's blog should be interesting.

What's on my needles: Still the Kisu Cardigan for Jolena, and still att the BO for the neck. Also the Coastal Skies shawl for me, no progress this week.

What's on my Sparrow 15: Packed away in my Honda.

What's in my hoop: Still the Spring Flowers quilt, no progress this week..

What's on my wheel: Stanzi is still waiting patiently. 

What's on my iPad/iPhone: The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill by Julie Klassen. No chance to listen this week, but when we hit the road, it will be my entertainment.

What's in my wine glass: Bota Box. (Does a box wine have a vintage?)

What's my tip of the week: Get rid of stuff when you buy new. Life is too short to spend a week going through things and tossing them out or giving them away.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.