Pins and Needles

Today should be our final inspection on the new house. The last time, the inspector gave me a list of things to correct. Not a very short list, but a straightforward one.

I had to add joist hangers on the back temporary deck, put in handrails in the front and down to the basement (what I had there didn't qualify as a handrail under the new code), and post our house number so that it's visible from the street, among other things. I've done all of that, and the inspector is coming back late this afternoon to, I hope, tell us that we are ready to live in the new house.

It won't be easy. We'll all be moving into smaller spaces to start with, and there is still a lot of work to do to make the house a home. But we are all so excited about finally moving in that I don't think any us us will really mind.

Yesterday we made our annual trek to Storyland before the kids go back to school. We all had a wonderful time, despite the heat and humidity. On the way home we stopped at Bobby Sue's in Freedom, one of our favorite ice cream places. Today, though, I feel a little crippled from all the walking. I need to get over it, though; I'll be moving furniture for the next month!

Looks like we're getting a break in the weather for the move, though. Although the forecasts go back and forth on the issue of rain, it's mostly back to the normal August pattern of sunny, humid days with occasional afternoon showers, which come on quickly but not entirely without warning.

The new house is so close to the old house that everything will just be carried up the hill or brought up on hand trucks. That's what we've been doing do far: just grabbing a box or a small piece of furniture and carrying it up when we go to work on the house. Now it's going to be more like a trail of ants carrying things along three well-worn paths, one directly into the basement door, one up the back steps to the kitchen, and one around the line of trees on the north side and up to the front door.

It will be a flurry of activity for a month, and then we will collapse for awhile before we start moving things to their final place in the house, or out of the house completely if we're at all smart about it. There won't actually be that much unpacking to do, because there wastn't that much real packing in the first place.

And then finally, the new house won't be the new house anymore. It will just be home.