Our temporary home

Here is our new place of residence in El Chaparel subdivision

Steve was the hero bathroom cleaner

We brought our bed over.  We don't have a chest of drawers so we have our undies in little bins along the wall...

the living room with our "office area" and my sewing area

the kitchen and our downstairs storage area

The garage where Marcia is storing not only her stuff but things from two friends.  And, my Adirondack chairs are there to be sanded and re-painted while we are hanging out at the duplex

And, the kids room where all of Marcia's things are now being stowed.

WHAT A WEEK!!!!!

Well, I knew when I last blogged that this past week was going to be crazy and boy, it was a doozy! But, we are at the other end of it and all is well….

Monday morning, July 20^th, at 8:45, the electricians and the power company were at our door and our power was shut off so the electricians could finish their work. Steve and I left the house to do our signing for the close of the house and we hung out at Steven’s place the rest of the time. Power was back on by 2:00 and James came over at 4:00 to put up new sheet rock and the first coat of mud. That evening, we had a woman we minister to,Vikki, over for steak dinner. She never has room in her little above-the-fridge freezer and she had purchased three family packs of sirloin steaks about three weeks ago and I brought them home to put in our chest freezer. But, chest freezer was getting unplugged the next day so I said, how about we cook up some of your steaks and then you won’t have to find so much room for the rest. So, that was Monday.

Tuesday was packing day – all day. And, we got much of the cleaning done and spent the night at Steven’s.  

below is Steve on our last day to walk / pick up trash in our neighborhood.

Wednesday was moving day. It started at 8:00 with the professional piano movers taking away the grand piano. Boy, what a process. It will be kept in their climate controlled storage until we actually move to St. Louis. 

Above are what we took to Steven's to use the four days we stayed with him.

Below is what we took to the duplex

 Then, Steve and Steven went to pick up the U-Haul and Beckie arrived from St. Louis. We moved all the furniture in the morning to the garage of Aaron and Laura Howard who graciously offered the space after my Facebook plea. Thankfully, we don’t have a LOT of furniture but it was still tiring work and the heat made it harder. We got lunch at Jersey Mike’s and headed back to the house to load all the things to be taken to the duplex we are making our temporary home. Nothing heavy but lots of little things. We are keeping all the DVD tubs, CD shelves, musical instruments, tubs of family photos (ours and our parent’s) at the duplex in air conditioning. We brought over our bed and mattress/box springs. All of our food. (not dishes, though – we are using Marcia’s). The both morning and afternoon trips took about two hours each but the heat and humidity made it seem longer and harder. We just unloaded but did not unpack and clean. Except, Steve DID clean the refrigerator. Marcia has been gone since March so the fridge was a petri dish of bacteria! After returning the U-Haul, we four went to Steven’s to cool off and have dinner and then Beckie drove back to St. Louis. Steve and I went back to the Parker house so I could paint primer and a first coat (James had returned earlier to sand) and to clean floors. We literally fell into bed that night.

Below is the progress of the circuit breaker box

Thursday we returned to the Parker house so I could paint the second coat, to pick up our bicycles and load them onto our newly purchased bike rack, and Steve sweep the garage. And then we put the keys on the counter and locked up for the last time. It was a wonderful house for 24 years and very bittersweet to leave. Then, we went to the duplex and, with the amazing help of the two sister missionaries (Gonzalez and Miller), Melanie, and Kathy Stull (Marcia’s mom), we tackled the huge task of cleaning the place. Marcia is a lovely person but I wonder if she doesn’t have a bit of attention deficit because there was NO rhyme or reason to her place. First of all, trash and clutter everywhere and second, when things were “put away” they were in no logical order. All of Marcia’s things in the bedroom, bathroom, living room were boxed up and put into the kids room. We will use her kitchen things but I reorganized everything so the glasses are in one cupboard, plates and bowls in another, etc. And, we cleaned dishes with five months of food dried on them and cleared off a countertop completely covered with stuff – and not all kitchen related. All of our helpers were amazing and, by lunch, we could send them on their way. That afternoon, another church friend and her 12 and 10 year old grandkids came to help and we used their young legs to haul stuff up from the downstairs room where we had just dumped them the day before (too hot and tired to go up stairs). With their aid, the downstairs room we are using for storing stuff was put into good shape. Back to Steven’s for dinner and bed.

Friday Steve and I moved into the duplex by bringing everything we had at Steven’s over. We finished unpacking and putting away and by 3:00 in the afternoon, we were all settled in. The duplex is not in the best of neighborhoods but we feel safe and it is only for a few weeks, happily. Steven treated us to dinner at Culvers that night.  I will create a new blog with photos of our temporary abode.

Saturday we drove to St. Louis and we looked at five houses. And, of the five, four were clearly not going to work. Too small, too wet (it smelled like mildew the moment we walked in and the basement walls were WET), no master bathroom, or a kitchen that was straight out of the fifties and way over priced. The one we did like we will make an offer and see how it goes. At first glance, it would not seem ideal. It is in the city and, getting there you drive by some rather run down neighborhoods. But, it is in a decent neighborhood and it has been completely re-done from top to bottom. It is small but we can fit in it. And, it is within 20 miles of the temple and our Emily and about three miles from Beckie.  I will include photos once we know we have it for sure.  Or, you can go to Zillow and search 4018 Bates St.  St. Louis

We woke up this morning to a dismaying text from Beckie. Back on the 13^th, she was exposed to a co-worker who tested positive for Covid 19. She was tested the next day but didn’t show any symptoms other than a cough which could have been allergy related. She got a negative result on the 20^th so she felt fine about coming to Columbia to help us move. Any nausea or fatigue on Wednesday she attributed to the heat. But, when she started running a fever Thursday and Friday evenings and still completely exhausted, she went to urgent care this morning and was tested again and she does have the coronavirus! Thankfully, she doesn’t have severe symptoms yet and we pray she will not develop them. Steve and Steven and I will get tested tomorrow. Apparently, the best time to get tested is five days after exposure and Monday is that day. And, Steve and I will self-quarantine until we get the results back. So, stay tuned…..

Almost out the door

Last Sunday evening, we celebrated Elise's birthday and here she is with her Raspberry Zinger cake which was AMAZING!  My mouth waters just remembering it.  

Speaking of Elise, she got the upright Baldwin piano that I had in my music studio.  It was a piano we bought shortly after moving to this house so maybe in 1997?  I bought it for $1,000 (my parents actually paid for it) from a co-worker at the hospital, Toni James.  It hadn't been played in years and we  discovered a dead mouse inside when pianotuner, Michael Butterworth, and I opened it up!  But, it was still a solid, well made piano and it served me for many years.  So, on Thursday, she hired some "piano movers" to take it to her place where she made room for it in her bedroom (she rents a room in a house).  I use the quotes because these guys were amateurs!  First of all, they just had two men to make the move and one was clearly weaker than the other.  They hefted it onto a run-of-the-mill flat dolly with teeny wheels that could hardly handle the smallest bump so the piano kept shifting - as it went over the threshold, as it went over the brick in the lawn at the gate, as they pushed it over the lawn.  And, they didn't have a ramp so, when they finally managed to get it out to the street, they still had to lift the piano up into the trailer!  I shudder to imagine how it went on the unloading side.  My grand piano is to be moved this Wednesday morning and I have hired a different outfit - a "professional" company, I HOPE!  I will pay them to store it in their climate controlled facilities during the month we are in limbo.

We finally got an addition to the "For Sale" sign.  The electric repairs started on Friday and will be finished on Monday.  It ain't a cheap fix - $3,100.  Which will be taken off of the sale of the house.  James returned on Friday to repair the damaged siding and I painted it on Saturday.  James will also come Monday afternoon when the electricians leave to put up drywall around the new electric box. 

Monday was Nora's last cello lesson.  I started her back in February through the Music Suite.  Then Covid19 hit and we went to Facetime lessons.  Hers was only a short-time committment anyway - just some lessons to get her ready for high school.  I will still teach Ethan - his family will come to St. Louis maybe once a month and the rest of the time we will do Facetime. And, I will still Facetime teach Erik, my Arizona student who I taught while living there and who returned to me a couple of months ago when is new teacher took a hiatus.  

Every morning last week, Steve and I made a trip or two to our storage unit with our Element full of boxes and totes and we are now just about at capacity.  We have saved room for our kitchen stuff that will go in on Tuesday. By the end of last week, we had packed up about all we could and by Friday, there was nothing to do!  I was SO bored.  So, I texted my friend Elizabeth, who I knew was struggling with motivation to finish her home fix-up projects (she fights depression and is not on meds) and I said "I am coming over tomorrow and we are going to work on your two bathrooms" .  And, I am happy to say that her upstairs bathroom is now done!  It had hardly anything left to do:  daubs of Kilz on the ceiling and the baseboard where she accidentally got red paint, touch up on the gray parts of the wall, painting white on the baseboard, scraping off red paint from the shower where it meets the drywall.  (seeing a pattern here?  Elizabeth is a rather messy painter).  While I worked upstairs, Elizabeth sanded some drywall patching in the downstairs, painted the patch, and started cutting molding for the doorway.  She has all the tools and all the knowledge and, once she gets started, she does fine.  She just needed me to kick her into gear.  

Now, next week, she will have to kick start herself because things will get busy here again....

Other events of the past week:  Steve and I met the landlord of the duplex we will be sub-leasing.  I turned in our safety deposit box keys.  We enlisted the aid of our missionaries and they moved a very heavy portable generator from our storage unit to Steven and Tamara's basement.  They bought it from us.  We purchased it about eight years ago and never needed it.  In fact, it was never taken out of the box!  Going forward, we'll just use the many emergency candles we have acquired over the years (assuming they are still good) and skip the generator part.  Just lots of tying up loose ends.  

Last week was a THREE movie watching week.  We saw "Hamilton" on Wednesday.  Steve and I both enjoyed it.   I am very glad we had close-captioning, though.  SO MANY WORDS.  (and thank-you Disney for bleeping out the profanity)  I had some Amazon points almost to expire so we rented "Call of The Wild" with Harrison Ford and a bunch of CGI dogs.  It was surprisingly good.  And will rent "The Other Side of Heaven part 2" today.  We also watched our own copy of "The Lake House" last night.   

It's been a weird week

This is James Remus, our contractor, who has been an important part of our lives for the past five months.  Don't be deceived by the missing front teeth.  He is extremely intelligent and skilled.  He is thorough and does excellent work.  His prices are very fair.  We will miss his expertise when we move to St. Louis.

I have been battling Japanese beetles this week.  They are a horrible, invasive species and they LOVE my cherry tree and grapevine leaves.  This is what they do to them...

And, this is what I do to the beetles...

Every morning, I take a bucket of soapy water and I hold it under a leaf holding the beetles and I tap the leaf and they fall into the bucket and drown.  Then I flush them down the toilet.  Happily, I see less and less beetles as the mornings progress.  And, eventually, their life cycle ends and we don't see them until next July.  When it will be the new owner's problem....

House inspection report:  Our air conditioner died the night before our inspection on Tuesday morning!  Happily, we were able to get it repaired by Tuesday noon for a small amount of money (less than $150).  But, of course, when the inspector was here, he had to note in his report that it was not working so that was on the "to fix" list that came back.  I have scanned the repair receipt and sent it to our realtor.  Check that off the list.  Another item was a small amount of siding located underneath the deck that was missing.  The inspector said it was due to rot but, actually, it was broken off by the backhoe that installed the foundation stabilizing piers under the deck.  The damage was actually more extensive with the soffit completely torn out so James put in a piece of plywood to fill that hole. I have contacted James and he is coming this week to patch that hole up with a small piece of siding.  So, that will soon be checked off the list.

 

The final set of issues in the report are not so easily resolved because they are electrical.  Our circuit breaker box has to be moved out of the downstairs bathroom.  Not surprised about that.  I can't imagine why it wasn't done when the bathroom was originally installed.  Other electrical issues are some ungrounded outlets in the basement and other outlets that need to be converted to GFCI.  We learned of these problems Friday afternoon and we reached out to a friend who is a licensed electrician that day and he has yet to get back to us.  So, Monday, when everything is open again, we will reach out to another electrician.  Can't check that box off yet!

Moving update:  Not wanting to seem lame, I was reluctant to state on Facebook that we were in need of a place to stay end-of-July/part-of-August and that we could use someone's garage or basement to put some of our large furniture items (washer,dryer,freezer, bookcases).  So, I didn't do it.  But the thought kept coming to me that I should.  And, finally I did.  And, within 24 hours, we had a garage offered to us for furniture and a duplex to stay in that is currently empty because the owner is out of the country for a couple of months.  Blessings from heaven! This, then, is our timeline:

Coming week through Tuesday, July 21st - we continue to pack up, to take what we can fit into our storage unit, call utility companies, set up a post office box for our mail (ya can't forward to where ya don't know, right?), pin down a grand piano mover (I TRIED to do that last week but phone calls/emails were never returned), and find an electrician to make the changes listed in the inspection report, reserve a moving truck.

Wednesday July 22nd - move big furniture items to Aaron and Laura Howard's garage; move temperature sensitive totes, our beds, my sewing machine, small musical instruments, and food items to Marcia Custodio's duplex in the southeast part of town;  finish filling up the storage unit (if it has not already been done), supervise the moving of the grand piano, and broom-clean the house.  Lock it up and drive away.

Thursday and Friday, July 23rd & 24th - stay with Steven and Tamara while we clean the duplex.  Marcia left in kind of a hurry and her place is in disarray and kind of dirty.  Happily, not too overwhelmingly so.

Saturday, July 25th - drive to St. Louis to start the house hunt again.  Return to Columbia and spend first night in the duplex.

Then, going forward, we will continue to drive to St. Louis to look at houses until we find the right one and our offer is accepted.  HOPEFULLY, we will have this done in the last week of July.  Then, we hang out in the duplex until the mortgage paperwork is completed and we get to move into our new home by the end of August (if not a little bit sooner).  

We celebrated two birthdays this week.  On Tuesday, we had our good friend, Elizabeth Crippen over for a pork steak dinner and a carrot birthday cake.  Then, a rousing game of Scrabble (her favorite game)

On Thursday, Elise turned 41 years old!  She came over for a birthday breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and raspberry/white chocolate muffins.  Her birthday dinner celebration with everyone will be this evening.  We are having cold BBQ chicken wings, corn on the cob, watermelon, and a raspberry zinger cake.  

Yesterday, the Southerland clan came into town.  We haven't seen them in Columbia since the end of February and they wanted to see the house one last time.  We did our best at social distancing - spending time outdoors in the afternoon exploring a portion of the Bear Creek (good to get our feet wet) and having a simple dinner in the back yard.  We did have to be indoors for part of the time - partly because it is SO hot and humid right now and partly because the kids needed piano lessons.  

Thursday was my last day at the Music Suite.  (breathes a big sigh of relief)  And, of course, I would mess up the close on my last day!  Sigh.  

Just a small P.S. I made some see-through masks for a teacher friend of mine.  She teaches pre-school and I guess the kiddies will do better if they can see her lips move when she speaks to them.  Steve and I had a Lord of the Rings movie watching marathon Monday and Tuesday.  It was glorious. We have three apple trees  but just one lone apple.  And, our spring-blooming saucer magnolia bush decided to bloom again last week.  Weird.

House hunting update

We didn't get the house in St. Peters.  So sad because I really loved that house.  We returned to St. Louis on Wednesday, July 1st and looked at three more houses.  We bid on two of them and we didn't get those either.  We have bid over the asking price for all three houses (on one, we bid $7,000 over!!!).  Rejected by all three because our offers are on a contingency (meaning we cannot buy until we sell our house here).  The old saying "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush" rings true in this situation.  And so, we have decided to shelve our house hunting until after the 24th of July when we close on our house here.  The inspection happens in two days and we pray all goes well because our buyer could back out if there is anything on the report he doesn't like. This coming week I will start looking for an apartment to rent for the month of August.  Hopefully for just a month!  We already have most of our belongings in a storage unit (since March) and we can fit even more inside.  I am working on a temporary home for the grand piano.  And the rest of our stuff will just go with us to our short-term abode.

Honestly, these past two weeks have seemed like two months!  It has been so stressful that I am relieved to have things ease up a bit.  And, I have plenty to keep me busy until the 24th.  The weeds keep coming, the house needs packing, I have sewing projects to do, and there is always Disney + 😁

Steve and I kicked off the 4th of July holiday Friday night by watching "Murder on the Orient Express".  We have now both decided we need to read some Agathe Christie...

Independence Day morning, we hosted breakfast for the Ellingson family, some good friends of ours who moved away nine years ago to live in Alaska.  Derek is a pathologist and he is going to receive additional medical training in Iowa so they have come back to the lower 48 for a year.  It was so fun to catch up. 

They departed mid-morning and our next visitor was Julina!  She left Indiana on Friday and drove as far as St. Louis where she spent the evening with Beckie and Emily, Joe, Noah, Lucy, Quinn, and Larkin watching Hamilton in an outdoor theater setting in the Southerland's driveway.  She came to spend the afternoon/evening with us here in Columbia.  We walked around downtown Columbia in the afternoon following a portion of the Parley P. Pratt Freedom Run path that took us to several sites that represented the freedoms found in the First Amendment to the Constitution.  It was a hot, humid afternoon so we didn't visit all the stops.  Thankfully, there was lots of shade along the route.  And, surprisingly few people so we went mask-less.  

That evening, we went to Steven and Tamara's house for grilled burgers and homemade strawberry ice cream.  Yum!  Julina left to drive back to St. Louis at about 8:30 and we all went home.  No viewing fireworks this year.  But, we could sure hear everyone else celebrating all around us.  Good thing we don't have a sound-sensitive dog anymore or he/she would have been miserable.  Here's to a good, fast-moving month of July!