A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

Goodbye to the old house, and into the new! It served us well, having been home to my daughter, Jenny, and her kids Zach, Gianna and Dominic, as well as myself, for several years. But Zach is now grown and has a house of his own; it was time to downsize, into this lovely little place that has a separate apartment for me and is located much closer to my son, John, and my grandkids' dad.

But this was not a simple operation. In case you've never had to sell a house you live in and buy another, there's a fair amount of logistics involved if you don't want to pay for a hotel for a few weeks. It goes like this:

1. Put old house on the market

   This involves sterilizing the old house and basically packing to move even though there's no place to move to, yet

2. Look for, select, and make an offer on the new house for new owners of old house to sell their old house

   so they can pay for ours

3. Make deal on new house

   contingent on the buyers of the old house's old house to come up with that money

4. Everything has to be signed
5. Movers have to load everything into pods

   (we used 5, plus a U-Haul)

6. Money has to be moved around by the banks

   which they do only on weekdays so they can use the money over the weekend

7. Get the keys to the new house
8. Have movers deliver and unload the pods

   To save money we hired landscapers to unload the pods. Maybe not the best idea, since they just dumped boxes willy-nilly and it's taken days to reorder them into the correct rooms.

After things were packed, Jenny and the two grandkids stayed at the kids' dad's. I stayed with my ex, Michael, on his sofa, along with the two dogs.

Lilly and I used to live in the same apartment complex, and I think she remembered it. It was new to Finley, of course. It was nice to be reminded of the exquisite sunsets I used to enjoy there!

But the fact is, our space was pretty cramped. The dogs went from a queen-size bed and a huge backyard with a pool, of which they had free rein, to a sofa and a small apartment balcony.

It's hard to tell what Finley thought of all this, as he always looks a little pissed.

I moved onto Michael's sofa thinking it was only going to be two or three days. But it wound up taking a whole week! During this time I had to walk the dogs, instead of letting them go in the yard on their own. And there were other dogs on property, of course; and the first time they spotted one they charged toward it, of course, and dragged me off my feet. I only got one bruise, but my whole body was sore for days afterwards. Still, as much as walking them literally hurt, I also felt it was good forced exercise, which I definitely need. So I did it in pain, but without regret.

So it was a big relief when the word finally came in that the keys had arrived! Still, I spent one last night at Michael's to give Jenny and John time to reassemble my bed.

Finley, especially, seemed to appreciate the new back yard space. At the old house he used to like to go in the back yard and lie in the sun for a bit. (Dogs need Vitamin D, too; their fur acts like fiber optic cables to bring the sun's rays down to their skin where Vitamin D is synthesized.)

And they both were as happy as I was to get back into our own bed!

John, who is now just 7 minutes away, came by to mount TVs. Because the new house is smaller, we have more TVs than we have rooms…but so far, no remotes!

They are probably in a box somewhere.

Finley is quick to make himself at home. After he's pee'd everywhere. (Yes, he pees outside on his own but he still wants to mark things, probably because he was neutered late. But he only wants to do it once to claim the space. So I let him, and clean up afterwards.)

His nickname is "Puddles."

Lilly is properly housebroken, but also happy to make herself at home.

However, there was a problem. My apartment door is glass. There was someone in the area who was supposed to cut the glass to allow for a doggy door. However, he simply never showed up.

Now, it seemed extreme to me, but Jenny found and bought an in-wall doggy door, something I hadn't even known existed. And a specialist came and installed it in the corner of the living room I hadn't figured out yet what to do with. Then the task was to show the doggies how to use it.