Not every weekend is a castle or a cathedral. Invariably, we continue the everyday business of unpacking and rediscovering treasures which have remained boxed since we first arrived almost a year ago. We’re determined to make our home here in this flat for the next three years, so we’re continuing the process of reviewing the contents of each and every box, making organization out of nostalgia. If we can’t use whatever possession, then that possession will leave us, as we refuse to store it (whatever “it” is) for the next three years, only to drag it with us to our next destination, wherever that may be.
Despite the fact that we overlook a common courtyard, there is bright sunshine during certain times of the day. Thus this weekend’s task was to discover how one goes about washing a window with the lower sill almost five feet off the ground. The answer, of course, is to climb into the sill! After some treatment with soap and water, vinegar and water and a lot of crumpled paper, the windows now are only streaky, rather than simply muddy from the last major rainstorm. No one, of course, can wash windows perfectly without someone washing from the other side! It’s a work in progress… and since it didn’t rain today, at least the progress is, for the moment, on the side of them staying clean(ish). (Why is it you only see the streaks when everything is all done?)
With unpacking comes rearranging furniture, as T. seems afflicted with her the same illness as her father and periodically feels an urgent need to wrestle with the couches. We swapped the beds, and now the guest bed is actually larger than the one in the Master Bedroom… note to all future visitors! This is all in the interest of organizing everything so that we know where it all is … and so that we can continue The Epic Struggle™, which has begun once again.
In some families, it’s simple rounds of miniature golf and the occasional game of Hearts. In T’s, its cutthroat Monopoly at Thanksgiving (*ahem* It’s on this year, by the way.), and a continual war for wordplay dominance with Scrabble all year round. T.’s parents played games which she and her siblings were only allowed to watch from a distance, so great was the battle, and so she has brought the insanity to D., and to anyone else who wanders into the house.(Van, we miss your triple-word scoring ways!) Please note, D. put down Jungian, and raked in big points, giving him a forty point lead. And all T. had to do was add two little letters…. And get twice that!
We’re playing hard, and finding a lot of time to get outside and amuse ourselves, as the days are beginning to shorten. It seems so odd to be able to see and feel it — we’d really gotten used to the sun rising before we were awake. We’re down to 16 hours of daylight now. That will fall to 14 by the beginning of September, 12 by October, and will keep on plummeting until it reaches the low point of right around 7 hours by the end of December. By that time, we hope to have found some decent airline tickets to someplace warm and sunny! Icelandair is looking good so far as a low fares/direct flights provider — who knows, maybe this winter we’ll take a stopover in Reykjavik, just to see what real darkness is like.
– D & T
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But in Reykjavik you can enjoy the thermal springs. Who cares how dark it is!
Nice board. Does there seem to be any evidence of British words coming into play?? 😉
Question for you two: did you have all your stuff shipped/ flown over from America? If so, how much did it cost? and what company?
We never got to break in Super Scrabble with the quadruple word score – my preciousssssss! Maybe it will have to be in my carry-on bag next trip. To the big bed.
Jennifer: It cost us around $3,500 for our move, including all port charges, x-ray customs inspection of our possessions, etc. We shipped things using Cross Country Van Lines. We moved 225 cubic feet of stuff, the vast majority of which was books. The reason we chose CCVL was that they based their charges on cubic feet rather than on weight, so we could get away with vacuum-sealing our clothes (using those “as seen on TV” bags) and packing a heck of a lot of books.
Are you looking to move?
No, not looking to move but I am missing some of my Canadian stuff and have thought about shipping/ flying them over to Glasgow. Alas, I fear I am too skint for that price!
You may be surprised at how voluminous 225 cubic feet really is. We found that it was quite enough, and that it would have cost us far more if we had stored things.
The question is: how much are you paying for storage? And do you really like the stuff that you’ve got stored?
Wow you guys invested in your move, eh? We decided to go along the route of “store everything in my old bedroom in the parents’ house and begin to appreciate the temporal nature of the material world”. 🙂 We brought 2 suitcases each for Joel’s 4 years and my 3!
We love scrabble! But our rules state that you can make up words and add them, and the other players vote on if they are amazing/ridiculous enough to stay on the board. Try it sometime!
Heather, because I have younger and older sibs, and D. doesn’t have that relationship with his family, the family-storage route was out. My Dad tends to “clean” with a dumpster, so it’s risky keeping too much around our house. Selling our cars and everything allows us to be free not to look back, and just go. Mostly.
We were advised to do it the way you did, Heather … but we're glad for the few things that we did bring. You'd be surprised at how little 225 cubic feet really is – particularly when you consider shipping bicycles & things like that, which take up lots of room.
The downside would have been paying for storage of everything, and we decided that we were either going to get rid of it or bring it with us. Thus, aside from owning a home back in the US, we're entirely "here," as it were.
Lori: I think that we play by … different rules than people are used to. You see, we own a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. Thus, if it’s in the O.E.D., it’s fair game. There may be a bit of squabbling as to whether the person playing the word knows that it’s a word, but that’s just for the fun of words.
Barry: Big bed’s all yours, dude. But we’re going to start playing Scrable for haggis and tatties. Fair warning.
T, you are delusional sweetheart. I plan on trouncing you as soon as you are back on American soil. I long for the day…HAHAAHHAHAHAH!!!!