Absent - and the Dog Ate My Homework

You were all very kind with your comments and good wishes about our move-in yesterday.  Thanks so much!

By and large the Post-It Notes worked like a charm.  Only one lamp was broken in the mayhem, which I take as something of a minor miracle, compared to other moves I have made.  Did I ever tell you about the time decades ago, when someone who was helping us move grabbed a pot of cooked beans right off the stove and put in on the tailgate of a pickup truck that was pulling out of the driveway to go over to the new place?  If not, we will just save that little cautionary tale for another day.  Talk about gas up and go.

But you know it is always the "little foxes that spoil the vines" and just to double-up on the cliches, the devil is in the details.

My dad hated moving day, even though we moved often, because of the nature of his work.  He was also extremely superstitious and would not allow my mom to move a broom from one house to another, as that was supposed to be bad luck. 

Now everyone knows how irritating new brooms are. They just won't behave; they keep flipping stuff back in the direction you just swept because the bristles are too stiff, and you have to sweep the same area about four times with a new broom, as compared to one that is well broken in.

Poor mom (who did not have a superstitious bone in her body) probably hastened her own demise from over-sweeping because she could hardly ever keep a broom long enough to get it properly broken in.  Once she hid the broom, and thought she would be able to sneak it into the new place.  When dad discovered her deception, he about had a coronary and declared that everything from rickets to world famine was going to ensue all because mom had dared bring the darned used broom to the new place.

Now how did I get from our move to brooms to rickets?  Oh, yes, I was absent for a good part of the day yesterday (at the clinic with my son) and thus the LOC and the movers were left free to do their best....or worst...depending upon your point of view.

When I later returned for a quick walk-through, I found things mostly acceptable, but some details were disturbingly confused.  For example, lamp shades had been screwed onto the wrong lamps.  I politely asked the *LOC why he couldn't tell which went where by looking at the style of the finials?  (*Lovable Old Coot)

He gave me a look that said, "Lady, if you had been here during the last excruciating hours, keeping the dog from chasing her new friends, the squirrels and the three deer walking brazenly down the lane, and keeping the movers from attaching cables, wires and hoses to things that were never designed to accommodate them, you would not be asking me about finials.  What the heck is a finial anyway?"  (The LOC can say more with a look than most people can with a dictionary.)

Well, there you have it folks.  It is not pleasant to be present in the middle of a move, but it really does not pay to be absent either.  In any case, all finials have been restored to their proper location and all is well with the world....or at least the 1/2 acre of it that we now occupy.

Until next time...guard your finials as best you can, and if they get away from you...just chalk it up to experience! ...Marsha