Lamb E Umptum: From The Internet Desert

I never realized how much I have come to rely upon being electronically connected to the world until I was NOT connected. And that is how I have been for the last two weeks and will continue to be so for another two weeks with the exception of my cell phone. Which is so teeny and it doesn’t have a decent keyboard and sometimes talk-to-text refuses to work and I am using up so much data on my plan. Ugh! And, I miss having a printer during a time when we are inundated with all kinds of documents related to moving.

We are also not well connected to the world in a non-digital way. Our mail is wonky. We obtained a post office box for collecting mail during this four-week interim only we hardly get any mail! I filled out the change-of-address from 3305 Parker St. to P.O. Box 7503 to start on the day we closed on the house – July 24^th. What the postal worker failed to tell me, though, was that it takes TEN business days for the change to take place. TEN!!! Why didn’t she tell me to make the start date for July 14^th??? Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to include our P.O. Box on the papers we left for the new owner with the request to forward any mail. But, I didn’t count on the “I’ll get around to it” attitude of the nineteen year old son of the new owner. I finally sent her a post card with my cell phone and a request to please contact me if we had any mail. Thankfully, she texted me and we were able to go back to the house, to meet her and her two sons, and pick up some of our mail. But, two bills and two magazines are still missing in action! Also, we are in this kind of address no-man’s land because our current physical address is 1545 Sonora Drive so our temporary renters insurance and our car insurance needs that information. We will be living at 4018 Bates St. but we cannot receive any mail there yet so we are having deliveries made to Steven and Tamara’s house on Yellowwood. It is so confusing….

But, on the positive side – yesterday, we got to look at the house on Bates St. again. It was the day of the inspection and we met Mike, the inspector, after he was finished so he could walk us through the house and point out any deficiencies. And, there are some but nothing too monumental. Some of the windows not staying open and not enough attic insulation are probably the biggest. But, it was so nice to return and see again all the features of the house and the yard. Things I had forgotten were the two cedar-lined closets in the basement, that the master bedroom is larger than I remembered, the other two bedrooms are not the same size, and that the living room will easily accommodate the grand piano and still have room for other pieces of furniture. I had also forgotten how teeny tiny the kitchen and eat-in dining area are! Wow – it is small with hardly any counter space and NO drawers! Happily, I have found a kitchen island on-line that we can buy, as well as a baker’s rack to set by the refrigerator and, with those additional items, I believe it will be fine. There are two pantry-like closets in the hallway and I measured the one that backs up to the bathroom and it is large enough to fit a stack-able washer and dryer so I hope that will be something we can do in the future.

After the inspection, Steve and I drove the approximately three miles to Tower Grove Park and met Beckie and the Southerland clan for a lovely picnic under a large tree. We were socially distanced, as you can see....

We will be living so close to Beckie! (who is over the coronavirus completely) And, so much closer to Emily, Joe, and the grandkids. I am really looking forward to this new chapter in our lives, even though some aspects are rather daunting. We have lived in Columbia for almost forty years. And, aside from our two daughters, we will be starting from the ground up as far as knowing people in our neighborhood, in our church. We will need to find doctors, a dentist, an auto mechanic, a handyman, a local hardware store. (happily, I have found the closest Aldi). And, I have never lived this close to a city center with all its diversity. I want to be a good citizen and I don’t want to blunder into awkward situations. Bottom line, this “old dog” will be learning new tricks as we start a new life in St. Louis.

Wow, this blog is getting long. This past week, I finished Elise’s quilt top. I finished sanding and cleaning the chairs and now I am ready to paint them. I made five see-through masks for my sister, Juli, and I have five more waiting to be ironed at Tamara’s place today so I can finish them. (I am SO READY to have access to ALL of my stuff again – like my iron. So much has been packed up for over three years and all of it, including the stuff we used this past year, is in the storage unit.) Steve and I watch movies most nights. This week, we saw “The Scarlet and the Black” (a made-for-TV movie from the eighties that starred Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer. It was based upon the true story of a priest who helped hide allied soldiers in German-occupied Rome during World War II. REALLY good), “A Walk In The Clouds”, “Willow”, “Ender’s Game”, and “The Court Jester”. Every morning, Steve and I walk around our temporary neighborhood of El Chaparral. It is an older subdivision – mostly built in the seventies – and so many of the houses have fallen into various stages of neglect and disrepair. So sad. Our street is comprised of just duplexes and it is particularly bad. Some landlords just don’t do anything to their properties. There is one duplex where the central air conditioning units are broken and, rather than buy new ones, the landlord has installed window units!!! Another duplex has had a pile of moving-out type trash sitting on the roadside for as long as we have been here (two weeks). I discovered a huge gash in the siding of our duplex the other day as I was straightening the junk under the rickety deck.

I sent a photo of it to our landlord and he had no idea it was there! Although, to his credit, he has replaced our broken dishwasher this past week and he is in the process of having new gutters installed since he also just had a new roof put on. So, on a scale of 1-10, our landlord is a 9. I will close with photos of our temporary neighborhood…