Month: March 2016

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.