3, 2, 1, 2, 3 and Counting

July 3, in Fortuna. They have indeed had a heat wave as we have arrived, but that means 75 degrees and gorgeous.

I am now in a country church again. I like it, but I knew when two of the women of the church walked all the way around the house and through a gate so they come come in the back door. Half the church has been in our home in the last three days bringing meals, checking to make sure that everything is done, offering to help unpack boxes and chatting a bit.

I am thinking about two images of moving that surprised me. Boxes and wires.

Boxes are a reciprocal process. Start with a normal mess, then piles of boxes, then an empty rooms, then empty rooms, piles of boxes and finally the normal mess. We had hoped that we would have cleaned out so the normal mess would be less of a mess at the end than at the beginning, but this whole equation will end equal. The most significant difference from one end to the other is place and soreness.

A modern move seems to be about wires and cables. (Maybe next time it will all be wifi). David made a good suggestion in Morgan Hill. Don't sort things out into their boxes, but put all the cables into one box and plug them back in at the end. Turns out that this works in theory, but doesn't account for movers who don't care about "open me first labels". (We had great movers so no disrespect intended.) A related problems is that there were a lot of boxes of cables, enough to either breed or lose -- I haven't found out yet. Finally, a box of cables is fairly light and can end up in the back and top of the box mountain and take weeks to find. Anyway, after you find them, a modern move is about plugging everything in and turning everything on. After the last two days, I figure I should dispense with a wall plug on every wall, and simply tile all the walls with outlets.

Soon, we transition from plugging in electronics to plugging ourselves into this new community. Those wires are even harder to find.