Moving in

When the twins and my sister and I arrived in Boulder on Friday, May 3rd, the house was nearly empty. Oh sure, there was the odd piano and such, but for the most part, empty. We thought there was a chance the movers would arrive on Friday afternoon, which is why we rushed to get there that day. But when I finally reached the driver of our moving truck, Murphy, on his cell phone, he told me he probably wouldn't show up until Wednesday.

Wednesday. Five days. OK, I can live with two wild five-year-olds in an almost empty house for five days. It got significantly less fun when Aunt Baba got on the bus to go to the airport on Sunday afternoon,

but still we managed. We went to the park a lot. It's an easy walk from our house to Martin Park, where we spent a lot of time, but we're also an easy drive from Scott Carpenter Park, which has a fantastic playground with space-themed equipment, including a rocket ship

and a meteor.

Every night I called Rocket Boy on my little old cell phone (my only means of communication with the outside world since our internet was on the fritz, no TV, and no long-distance plan on our landline phone). Every night he said he was going to leave Ridgecrest the next day FOR SURE. But on Sunday night I called him and got no answer.

On Monday morning, Murphy, the mover, called me. "Uh, I think I'm going to be there tomorrow instead," he said. "Between 10 and 12. Is that OK?"

I called Rocket Boy on his cell phone. "WHERE ARE YOU?" I screamed at his voicemail. "The movers are coming tomorrow!!!"

A few minutes later he called me back. He was in Mesquite, Nevada, at the Best Western. He'd arrived there at 3:30 that morning and had just woken up. At that point I gave up. I knew he could never make it to Boulder by that night. It was almost noon and he had almost 700 miles left to drive.

So I got busy. I moved the furniture in the house into the correct position, or else outside on the back patio. I moved wall lamps that were where bookcases needed to go. I thought carefully about how to arrange the furniture in each room.

At 4 am, I woke from a dream to hear my husband's loud whisper at the window. "I'm locked out!" I jumped up and unlocked the front door for him. He'd driven all night. I gave him a big, forgiving hug and then went back to bed (I was sleeping on the horribly uncomfortable box spring of a twin bed that had been left in the house -- the twins were sleeping on the mattress).

A few hours later we got up and finished getting ready for the movers (including dragging the parts of the twin bed to the garage). Just after 10 am, the moving truck arrived.

And it very soon developed that we did not have anywhere to put all the things that the truck contained. Here is our living room after the movers left:

Doesn't look too bad, does it? But notice the window, which looks out onto our large front porch. Can you see how there is almost no sun coming through? It is stacked four boxes high.

Here is our back patio, about an hour before the movers arrived:

Rocket Boy is dusting off some boards -- maybe pieces of the bed. Here is our back patio after the movers left:

The reason (I'm sure) that the movers changed the delivery date was that a heavy rainstorm was predicted for Wednesday. It started on Tuesday afternoon, right around the time they left. Soon after I took this photo, Rocket Boy and I moved all the boxes and furniture under the porch roof (or into the house or garage) to protect them from the rain.

It rained heavily for the next few days.

So now it's one week since the movers left and we still don't even have the front porch unpacked. We do about 10 boxes a day. One day I managed 15, but most days it's 10. You can see through the window now, but there are still maybe a dozen boxes out there.

And we haven't even started on the back patio.

And the house is already full.