Author: admin (Page 11 of 89)

Tomorrow will be 9 days until I leave. Solo/ensemble is done and checked off the list. Tuesday is the Roselawn program, so I still have to go in and practice with the various classes tomorrow and go to the dress rehearsal most of the morning on Tuesday. After that, no more going in to school, so I will have a lot of time to finish things around here.

This will be my last week of piano lessons with everyone, too. I have some special activities planned, since I won’t be assigning anyone any new pieces, but just going over their recital pieces, which are all pretty good by now.

I have over 50 of my 100 things done, and I’ll be picking up several a day from now until next Wednesday when I leave! Exciting times – just wish it was a little warmer and sunnier!

Things seem to be going pretty well at the house. Nathan was there helping Dad for a couple days, which energized Dad and helped get a lot of the deconstruction done. It sounds like the plumbing for the toilet is just about complete, too, which I’m thrilled about. Apparently most of the tearing down phase is done, so Dad can get going on putting it back together.

I don’t know if everyone heard about the water line breaking, but that is supposed to get fixed tomorrow. I discouraged Dad from doing all the digging himself before pricing out what it would cost to have someone else do it. Turns out it might be as little as $450 for the digging and the plumbing, which I can definitely live with, if it means my husband stays in one piece and able to do the rest of the necessary work. I was really worried about him straining his back or hip or knee or something that would make him unable to work! Once that is repaired, he can turn the water back on and check his plumbing for the toilet, and get that hooked up. Then on to the bathtub, which is already in place and just needs the plumbing and better fixtures (ones that won’t break if you happen to put your foot up on it to shave!)

So, I’m encouraged by the progress! I am halfway through the time alone. Two weeks down and two more to go. But these last two have the Roselawn concert, my students’ recital, solo/ensemble, and the college concert, so it will go fast!

Plus Erica and the kids come for a visit day after tomorrow!!

Yes, I am down to the last 20 days before I leave. I made a list of 100 fun things to do between the time Dad left and I leave and I have 27 of them done. I have many things to keep me busy, but a lot of them sort of depend on decent weather and it has been cold and rainy a lot lately. Typical March weather, but frustrating none-the-less.

My big accomplishment is getting all the stuff left over after Dad moved boxed and packed away in the storage area. So all that is left is the stuff that I use in my regular day-to-day life. I won’t start packing that and living, essentially, from a suitcase for another couple weeks. But I do plan to have everything packed and ready to go the day of my last concert so all I have to do is move the bed, load my pj’s and Sherlock the next day and be ready to take off. I plan to go to Bloomington, IL that day, so I want to get started before noon so I have plenty of time to take breaks and still make it before dark.  I think it is a little over 8 hours away.

Talking to Dad every day and hearing the progress is unbelievably exciting! We have a new hot water heater all hooked up and ready to provide hot water to whatever plumbing Dad gets finished. The hole is in the floor and the toilet is there, so hopefully the two will come together sometime today and we’ll have a working toilet in the house! The internet guy came today and hooked up the wireless internet, so you can contact Dad via internet now.

Kylene and Justin are coming over to help him Friday through Sunday, then Nathan is coming to help Sunday through Tuesday, so he will have company and help for 5 straight days starting tomorrow!  I can’t imagine all the work that they will get done!

Doesn’t he look exhausted? It took us 8 hours to load that thing and the car. I know it doesn’t look like it!

I’m not totally sure, but it sounds like Dad finished everything up today except putting my new counter top on, and he can do that in the morning. So the plan is, at this point, that he will leave Chetek tomorrow afternoon and go to Waukesha for a few days, then head to our new home in Bristol, TN. EXCITING!!  I think we are getting snow on Wednesday (again), so I want him to be able to head south tomorrow before the snow starts.

And I have 30 more days, but who’s counting…? I made a list of 100 things to do before I leave. Fun things and final things.

It is taking longer than Dad expected to get done. One reason – TAXES!! He has to get them done and ready to go to the accountant before he leaves, and he usually doesn’t get them done until about April 12th, so this is pushing him by almost a month. Together with everything else, it is a bit much. So he is plugging away at it – he has taken over the exercise room with tables and desks and papers, papers, papers. He assures me he is making progress. Please pray for his success in this endeavor!

Then he has some work to finish at three of the rentals – about 1/2 day at each. And he has another day or so to work here. Right now the plan is to leave sometime this weekend. We’ll see. It doesn’t really matter when he heads down. What matters is that he gets everything done to his satisfaction here before he leaves.

Yesterday was a huge step – Dad’s last day of work at Marshfield Clinic. He had been cleaning out his office for the past several weeks, so he didn’t have much to bring home yesterday. He was there late, though, finishing up everything so it is ready for his replacement, whenever they get around to hiring him/her.

So today we are in finishing up here mode. First we showed someone the travel trailer – we’d advertised it on Craig’s List. He didn’t want to give what we were asking, so I was on the phone with the next person on the list who was interested, and he changed his mind and decided it was worth the extra $300 not to have to run all over the state trying to find one as nice for less $$. So, once we get it turned over to him tomorrow, we will have $2,500 to use for starting the remodeling in Bristol. We have a bit more in savings, but most of it has been used up by this and that. We have bought a lot of the supplies already, though.

Then we got going on projects here. Dad put the trim up around the “new” front door (new, last summer, that is!) Meanwhile I finished up painting the doors for the pantry, so when they were dry, we could put that together. See the pictures below. (It still needs cabinet pulls – we lost the ones we bought.) Then we replaced ceiling tiles in the main living area. We didn’t have enough to finish, but now we know exactly how many more to purchase. We are going out for prime rib in Bloomer tonight as a celebration for Don’s great job at Marshfield Clinic.

We did two things this week that make the upcoming move much more real. First, we exchanged refrigerators in our kitchen. I’m a refrigerator snob and just can’t give my nice, freezer on the bottom fridge to the renter. So we brought over one from storage and put that in my kitchen for now, so that we could set aside the one that Don will attempt to fit in the trailer and take with him in a couple weeks when he heads south. Either that or we’ll just store it until we move all our furniture. It isn’t my best fridge, which is in the rental in New Auburn, but it is my second favorite, and it seems silly to leave it here and have to buy a new one when we get down there. We’ll have to buy a stove, as it is.

Second, we moved the big piano to Erica’s and brought home the small one, which is going to make our lives MUCH easier as we enter this phase of life. It has been a burden for some time to have to find a house with an extra room for a piano to live in! I don’t regret purchasing it 15 years ago, and I’m glad Erica and Tim have room for it, because that means I can still have “visiting privileges!” But I feel somehow lighter not having to deal with moving that any more. And yesterday’s move wasn’t the best, although nothing got broken and no one got hurt.

We have officially turned The Garage over to Auto Value. The sign is down and in our garage now. All our things actually fit in the garage at 123 Stout Street and in our basement, but that took a lot of sorting and arranging on Dad’s part. We still have to move a pile of lumber and our travel trailer from the alley in back of The Garage, but other than that, we are finished with that phase of our life. It seems weird, but I’ll admit that we have been so busy that we haven’t had time to enjoy being done with it. I think it will just get wrapped up with moving and all the changes that will entail.

We are down to the final three weeks until Dad leaves. My hope is that he is on his way on Wednesday, March 16. He plans to stop for a day or two at his mom’s on the way, but from my point of view he will simply be gone and I’ll be alone from March 16 through about April 21 – 5 weeks. I’ll have a lot of organizing and packing to do, plus a lot of music things, so the time will go quickly, I’m sure. And I’ll have Sherlock to keep me company, if his health holds.

I am getting one last chance to play for Mr. Jensen’s choir. It has been years, because first he wasn’t a choir director at all, then he worked at Ladysmith for many years. This year he is over in Turtle Lake and he couldn’t find an accompanist musical enough to play for his choir at a special choir clinic festival up at UW-Barron County on Thursday. So I drove over to Turtle Lake Monday and am going over again today to prepare for tomorrow’s event. I must say it is very fun working with him again. His choir sounds awesome!

And, if you think about it, please pray for the sale of our property or the Ladysmith duplex. We really need the money from the sale of one or the other in order to do the remodeling in Bristol without using our emergency fund. We had someone look at the property Monday and we reduced the price on the duplex from $117,000 to $107,000 Monday, as well.

One of the biggest areas of concern was getting a person to serve as property manager for our rentals here in Wisconsin. We had some people in mind, but none had done this before and we just didn’t feel settled enough to make it official with any of them. And Phil, who was our first choice, had turned us down.

But it was on my prayer list every day.

I went to a breakfast last Friday with the gals from the Assembly of God church I’m going to (after I play at my church). The gal across from me, in the course of the conversation, “just happened” to mention that, when she had lived in Hayward before moving to Cameron, she had worked as a property manager. So I went ahead and said we were looking for one and would she consider it? Long story short – we have our property manager and she has experience and has a personality that I feel very comfortable with and was highly recommended by a friend who has known her a long time.

But that isn’t all. Her daughter needs a place to rent and loves this place (210 Knapp). So we have a renter for here as soon as I leave.

A two-for-one answer to prayers. God is so good!