Moving Chaos

This last week is coming down to crunch time. I somehow had no real concept of when we were leaving. I must have been thinking of something else or just not had a real concept that "We close on the house on the 17th" means that we are packed & out of the house. I was figuring somewhere in mid October.

Praise God, we don't have to pack though. The army is giving us one last free move. 7500 lb. for naught. The moving surveyor came by Thurs. to see how many of what kind of boxes to bring. Our bedroom set, that has been on Craigslist for 2 months finally sold before the listing expired & the surveyor came. The room looks smaller w/ out furniture.

Today Victor & I cleared out all of our container gardens, while the general contractors did the jobs the buyers required. I hate doing it; I love to do my part so that God can bring forth the increase & it just seems so wrong to kill producing food. But we had lots of lessons. He learned he can't dump vines in the fire pit, leave his work halfway done & complaining about the hardness of a chore doesn't make it go away. He had that one feeding the cat this morning too, though he's been feeding her for a year & 1/2. I also let him swing the machete on the last couple of vines, which he (expectedly) enjoyed. He has his own little wheelbarrow & everything, but though he really likes the idea of being a worker & working the reality of a chore is different.We also found 4 different kinds of caterpillars, & my first Black Widow. I was excited & telling Cid about it, he says he sees them outside all of the time. I was mostly just thrilled that it looked exactly like the pictures I had memorized when a girl scout so that I could correctly identify it for Victor so that he would know. I just need to show him an hourglass in real life.

I'm trying to get all of my goodbye's in, there really aren't that many people for me, which makes it both easier & harder. Easier just for the sheer numbers, harder because my friends are very good friends that I'll be sad to see no more. We spent all day w/ some very good friends & watched Sense & Sensibility. Her children were excited to show me what they were learning at home; I always get good ideas & encouragement from their family. As soon as we left their house Victor had to use the bathroom & it was 6:30 so we stopped in at Wendy's, much to their delight. Cid said he was glad we were gone all day, while fixing the toilet there was a 5 hour period of no water, which reminded me...my dress!

I had just finished making a winter dress from Baker Lane exactly like this one. http://bakerlane.com/images/pattern/catherineschoiceheather.jpg

However, mine is a medium weight white poly/cotton knit that is stiffer. Cid said I look like a choir girl. My intent was to have a good warm maternity/nursing dress for outdoor/ camper living, so I opted to dye it dark brown. I put the dress in the washer on hot which w/ our hot water heater setting isn't very hot, I was dumping kettlefuls of water into the machine. I'm sure the contractors fixing the trim & the garage door thought we were totally maintenance inept. But my dress just sat all day & something about the knit made the bodice & sleeves a very dark brown & the skirt much lighter, more variegated. Usually if something is all of the same color as it once was I'll not care very much about matching up knit sides, but I was sooo glad I did this time, it looks really neat. Maybe I'll get a picture someday.