Battling Through the Homestead

Hey players...

I'm beginning to appreciate the trials and tribulations of America's house dweller.

Over the course of the last week or so, we've slowly but surely moved in all of our belongings and begun the after-work/weekend process of moving, unpacking, cleaning, hanging up, consolidating, and rearranging.

This process is oodles of fun.*

Fortunately, Dad and Cindy flew down and were able to help us out a ton (which was nice of them, seeing how when they bought their tickets initially, they had do so under the pretense that they would be enjoying a peaceful, low-key weekend with the grandkid in our old place - apologies have since been widely distributed).

Again, the Voigts were also able to help us out a ton, which was also nice of them. Adam spent an afternoon in our attic in an attempt to remedy our dryer dilemma (yes, we can't dry clothes for whatever reason - good times, but to no avail.

Aside from repeatedly borrowing his tools and manual labor, we've had to purchase all sorts of new home/lawn pleasantries - all kinds of crap for the place, as well as a lawnmower, weed wacker, tools, fertilizers, pesticides, and everything else one could think of - in order to turn three years of negligence into awesomeness.

That's been met, thus far, with moderate success.

Part of our rental agreement was that we'd pay less in rent each month if we put some work and 'love' into the place, so we knew going in that we'd have odd jobs around the place to keep busy. Making the place livable from the get-go, however, definitely proved harder than we once had anticipated.

Again, it was because of others that we can really claim victory, here. My folks and the Voigts were invaluable over the last week or so, and now that we've got most of the big stuff out of the way, there's some breathing room. Breathing room, folks, means we can now turn our attention towards work (hooray), grad school (double hooray), and bills (mega hooray).

Cheers,

- Brian

* I wanted to try using this word in a sentence. Having done so, and not feeling great abou it, this will mark the only time in this blog's existence that I do so.