The packing/loading/driving/unloading process - all of which was compressed into a roughly 36-hour timeframe from 8:30 AM Monday morning (movers arrive at old place and start packing) to 4:30 PM Tuesday afternoon (movers depart new place having offloaded all packed boxes) kicked my ass worse than anything in recent memory, and was similar for Carrie, I think.
Side yard view
But: We have the kitchen, bedroom, and office set up. We've turned the second bedroom (which will eventually be the guest room) into a Den of Sin where we retreat in the evenings to listen to the radio, surf the Net on our laptops and drink beer (there's only so much unpacking you can cope with in a day.)
The great room is still neck deep in boxes and will be for a while until we figure out our bookshelf situation, and our "kitchen table" is a card table and folding chairs yanked from Mom's house, but yeah, this already feels like home.
Gato was pretty freaked on Day 2 of the process but by Day 3 (Wednesday) was strutting around like he owned the place. Chow Bella, sweet as ever, just follows us from room to room and plops down in the doorway to guard... she wore herself out protecting us from the Weird Men Who Had All Our Furniture And Stuff on Tuesday, but still takes guard duty seriously.
The house is situated on five acres on what used to be the outskirts of town, in a region that features McMansions, middle class homes (the nabe right behind us) and trailer parks all cheek-by-jowl, in the way that only a Southern town of about 40,000 people could pull off. The local supermarket boasts two aisles of food designed to appeal to homesick Mexican folks and two aisles of yuppie/organic (organic dark chocolate, etc.) in addition to all the regular grocery-type stuff you'd look for.... it's like that. I shop in all the aisles happily. The noodle soups designed to appeal to the Mexican market, for instance, are pretty awesome (beef ginger pot noodles = massive win).
The Carrboro Farmer's Market is the bee's knees. After breakfast at Elmo's Diner (perfectly nice, inexpensive) we headed to the town square, and bought local hothouse tomatoes, half a lemon poundcake, goat cheese, homemade relish...
Carrie bought locally produced and spun yarn. I predict Farmer's Market blogging from her soonest.
There's more unpacking to cope with, but we've prioritized well.
The new crock pot is slowly simmering a cut-up chicken and veggies, and we'll be eating that in six hours or so with warm flour tortillas.
Life is good, full stop.
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