THE UNEXPECTED TURN CONTINUES by Nancy L. Eady

 At the end of March, I wrote about the unexpected turn taking us from our long-time home in Tallassee, Alabama toward the Birmingham, Alabama area. Writing this towards the end of May, I am both impressed by our accomplishments and overwhelmed by what remains.

First, an update. Since April 20, we sold our house (twice), had one sales contract fall through, bought our new house (twice—we had to withdraw the first offer because of the first sales contract) and learned that with a little prayer and great mortgage company, it is possible to apply for and receive a mortgage loan in 19 days. I gave away 14 boxes of books to the local library in Tallassee, which was traumatic. We packed our old house ourselves in less than 19 days and we moved out of it three days ago, and into our new house yesterday. We learned Saturday night that you can run a Sleep Number bed without internet, and I learned (Mark already knew) that Dish TV would work without internet. I’m still looking forward to the arrival of the internet man tomorrow morning, though. I’m using my telephone hotspot right now, and it drains the battery.

You’d think I’d be feeling a great sense of accomplishment given all that we’ve gotten done so far, right? I would, except for the following:

Those of you who have moved before probably don’t think that looks too bad, as far as unpacking goes, but, like Bluebeard’s Castle, we have a room with a hidden secret.

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We had the movers store every box possible in the spare bedroom. Which was a wonderful idea until we discovered last night at nine that we couldn’t remember where the bedroom TV cord was packed. After about two hours of looking, we gave up. (We found it this morning—in one of our suitcases.)  

This is the first move for both dogs. They seem to be taking it well so far.

Darwin, who we think is 15 or 16, wondered why I was interrupting his nap for this picture.

Daisy, about 2, runs around on high alert, ready to sound the alarm should anything appear out of place. Obviously, the pillow and CPAP hose are highly suspicious objects, even though she saw the same things in the old house every day.

The good news is that it truly is downhill from here. Even though we have a lot of unpacking to do, we get to choose what and when we unpack. How will we know when we’re finished unpacking? When we reach the last box that gets moved from one place to another and never quite gets unpacked until the next move. We found the last box from our move into our Tallassee house (the move in 2006) in the coat closet while we were packing for this move. The box was still packed, but it had at least been opened.

And so it goes…