I’ve been completely absent from social media for the last week or so because we’ve been in the middle of moving. Anyone who has ever moved knows what an all-consuming, body-and-soul-battering experience this is. I’ve been in over my head, is what I’m saying.

Because Sugar has been home for two and a half days of this move—his paycheck is a key component of this entire project—my parents have been in town to help me organize. Mamma is especially good at pantries and all things kitchen. Dad toted a thousand boxes of books upstairs to my office, then broke down the boxes after Mamma alphabetized and shelved my books. I don’t know what I would have done without my parents this last week.

But the crazy happened Sunday night after we’d dropped Sugar off at the airport to go back to work. Mamma and Daddy went to bed about ten thirty. We were all exhausted. I turned in about twelve thirty after a long hot shower. I slept pretty well until exactly five thirty when I woke to loud moaning and groaning. I hopped out of bed and ran upstairs to the door of the guest room, thinking something was bad wrong with one of my parents. But all was quiet on the other side of their door. I went back downstairs, checked the doors and windows, and went back to bed thinking maybe I’d been dreaming.

At six thirty, I awoke to an alarm. I hadn’t set an alarm. I checked the clock. It was silent, as was my phone. The beeping came from a box I hadn’t unpacked yet. I tore it open and dug through a mess of unrelated items until I found the weather station that has occupied the corner of my bedside table for years. It displays the temperature indoors and out. I never knew it also has an alarm clock feature. We’ve never used it, and it hadn’t gone off the previous three nights that unpacked box had sat in my new bedroom.

I finally got the dang thing to shut up and went to powder my nose before returning to bed. Y’all, when I sat down on that toilet, I nearly fell in—ladies, y’all have experienced this I’m sure. It happens every time a man you live with leaves the toilet seat up. Except Sugar had gotten on a plane at three that afternoon and my daddy has his own bathroom upstairs and a powder room downstairs and no reason whatsoever to wander into my bathroom. Also, I had used the bathroom in question myself before going to bed, and I assure you I did not raise the seat.

Let me tell you, I was spooked. I started wondering about the lady we’d bought this house from. She’s such a sweet lady. She and her husband built this house in 2008, but her poor husband passed away two years ago. I never asked her if he’d left this world for the next while in this house because I didn’t want to know.

I think we have a ghost.

Sugar has offered all manner of far-fetched explanations for all of the above, but I’m not buying any of them. I think we have a ghost who likes to play pranks. All things considered, this isn’t a bad thing. I can get all sorts of inspiration for Colleen from him.

Peace, out…

Susan   

I can write about this now, because it’s over. But, I’ve danced perilously close to the line between sane and crazy these last few months…

Sugar and I are blessed with a large family, and we are grateful for each and every loved one. We love it when they all come over to visit. We were not, so much, prepared for five of them to move in for an extended stay. But, the economy and other disasters made it necessary. This is what family does, right?

The guestroom became an extended-stay bedroom, which meant all my off-season clothes had to either fit into my closet or be stored in the basement. Both my office and Sugar’s also became extended-stay bedrooms, which meant that everything in those offices, including all the stuff stored in the closets, had to go downstairs. All of this had to happen quickly, which meant we ended up with what looked like the aftermath of a tornado in the basement.

When we first bought our current home, the partially finished basement served as an overflow area. It was eclectically furnished, and we could hang out there when all the family was around, or when we felt like rounding up a group of friends for Karaoke and didn’t want trouble with the HOA. (The sound doesn’t carry outside from the basement.) Also, there was a nice-sized storage room, the laundry room, and a pre-plumbed, but unfinished, bathroom.

We tried carving office space out of the storage room, but the Christmas trees wouldn’t fit in the bathroom, which was the new storage room. With all the stuff now in what used to be the unfinished-but-not-too-bad Karaoke/Family room we were low on space for everyone to hang out separately when we started getting on each other’s nerves. And, as I am slightly–okay, maybe much more than slightly–OCD, the chaos in my house was driving me to the brink of a breakdown.

Suddenly, the basement we might finish one day became the basement we needed finished lickety-split. All the stuff that had just been moved to the basement had to be moved to the garage. The cars had to be parked outside. Never one to pay someone else to do something he can conceivably do himself, Sugar drew up a construction plan, got a permit, and got to work–during the one day a week, some weeks, but not all, when he was home.

Progress was slow. Nerves frayed. Construction dust drifted upstairs and covered everything, no matter how often we cleaned. After about eight weeks, Sugar looked at me and said, “Call somebody.” I did, and the work is mostly finished now. We had a few bad moments when we were cleaning the aftermath and moving things back in from the garage. Several pieces of furniture are worse for the experience, and one didn’t make it.

But, we have a fully-functional family/Karaoke room now, with more than one bare bulb and a disco ball for lighting, and more than one electrical outlet to replace the two power strips and spaghetti bowl of extension cords. The Christmas trees have their own storage space. Sugar has his office back, and I have a killer new writing cave. And boy, does that extra bathroom come in handy.

Peace, out…

Susan