First Week

In our first week at Lick Skillet, we:

Unpacked and set up the house. It’s still more like camping than housekeeping but it’s fine for now.

Mowed the lawn. Mowed it again.

Trimmed and removed dead branches; liberated a grape vine from giant pokeberry plants.

Made a start on reclaiming the beds around the foundation of the house—they are over-run with trumpetvine and mulched with gravel, a hard combination to work with.

Dug up and moved several pails worth of geodes. They were placed around poles and in garden beds to be “decorative” but they wreck havoc with the lawnmower.

Cleaned out the house gutters.

Unstuck one out of three frozen faucet shut-off valves (plumbing post coming soon!).

Replaced one wall switch and swapped out incandescent bulbs for cfls where possible.

Started a compost pile.

All of this was grunt work; not particularly fun but necessary.

 But then we strung a clothesline and this place is starting to look like our house!

Kitchen Treasure Hunt

There’s nothing like moving to shake up your well-trod habits.

At Woodchuck Acres, I could bake a pizza with my eyes shut. Flour, oil, salt stored here; bowl and measuring cups there; sauce, etc. here.

The Lick Skillet kitchen is larger, true, but there is less pantry space, some of the drawers need fixing, and there's an extra refrigerator hogging one wall. To clear out some boxes, we just shoved stuff where we could in a hurry. The tomato sauce is easy to spot in the picture but how about the flour, the spices, and where oh where did I put the cookie sheet?

Somehow we did locate the makings for our weekend pizza, but all bets are off for dinner tonight.

Oh well, it’s too hot to cook anyway.

Finally

Moving is equal parts exhaustion and confusion.

(Special thanks to our help--Chad and John and Dustin, couldn't have done it without you!)

T minus 5

T minus 5 days and counting.

We are in the final days before moving. It's been a long year so far.

The idea of moving began back in December in casual conversation. The thought lodged in the brain, planted deep and dormant, waiting for the right conditions to germinate.

2012 provided nourishment--the possibility of gas drilling in our area, future changes in the arts community, the lure of family.

By late January the seed had sprouted and was pushing it's way above ground. Maps and lists and Internet searches provided moisture. Pre-approval for a mortgage was an unexpected burst of nutrients. February came and a whirlwind trip to Indiana gave warmth and sunshine and fertile ground for a new dream.

The embryo has grown roots, stems, and leaves. 

Time will tell if the harvest is fruit or poison ivy.  

We are not pack rats. In our 41 years of marriage, we've moved many times and every time have cleared out and pared down.

Even so, there are still some things you find when you prepare for another major move.

This morning we cleaned out Tom's file cabinet. Tom is a self-employed musician ( see We interrupt this blog) so he needs to keep business records, music files etc. But as we delved into his papers we found the kind of things that make you wonder "What the hey?"

• Like programs for concerts he never went to.
• Letters of rejection from publishers that went belly-up years ago.
• His 3rd place award for a radio ad that he can't remember writing.
• And our daughter's school newsletter from 1991 when she won the local spelling bee.

We could get all sentimental and nostalgic, maybe shed a tear for time's swift passage. Or we could feel guilty for the amount of stuff we will now be adding to our local landfill.

Either way, moving can be...

...bloodcurdling.