Firm and Fully Packed

If you don't count the basement, the attic (a few MORE chairs), and the barn (Oh, no!), we're packed.

On the market; everything is looking great; who knew the house was this big and you could walk around in EVERY room!

Some more painting to do, but pretty minor.

• The Left Front Bedroom has a chair, a mattress and board, and an office floor protector.
• The Right Front Bedroom has a bed, a tall chest, a side table with lamp, a sewing chest with radio and lamp, and three pictures.
• The Yellow Bedroom has a bed, a desk, a chair, a chest, a portrait of Queen Victoria, two prints from Bermuda, and a small mirror.
• The Library has a computer table and an end table.
• The Master Bedroom has a bed, side tables, a wardrobe, a long chest, a desk, a slipper chair and footstool, a blanket chest, and two pictures from the 1984 Louisiana World's Fair.
• The Shedde Bathroom has an Eastlake dresser/desk with marble top and mirror.
• The Studio has Grandpa's drafting table, a rowing machine, a model of 1363 Old North Main Street, an easel, an antique folding chair, and a set of shelves.
• The Post Office has one chair, one small table, and a picture.
• The Parlor has a Wurlitzer, two small tables, two chairs, a potted plant, and a picture.
• The Dining Room has a table, two chairs, a small bench, and a picture.
• The Office has two chairs, two desks (one folded up), and a computer station. The printer is in the closet (who knew?).
• The Shedde/Family Room has two wingback chairs (one with footstool), a rented love seat, a coffee table, a TV, a game table and four chairs (Scrabble in progress), a (roll-top) desk, and a rolling chair.
• The Kitchen has a rented table and six chairs, a maple drop-leaf table, a maple work counter, a WideBySide refrigerator, a Mexican hall table, a metal cabinet, and a child's chair that was Great Grandma Lange's.

Sounds like a lot, but it is not. The rest is gone or packed or in the barn.

It's official! It's on the calendar to go on the market...

Well, we are not staged yet...nor are we packed, fully. Seems like there's always more to do, and great reluctance to plow ahead on it...life events intervene...Memorial services, Mother's Day, Weddings...

But surely there's an end to it! There must be!

Slowly, Very Slowly

If I have to reduce my household at the rate I have been doing the last several months, the household will have grown 5-fold at the end of the period. We have taken Jenn her bicycle and gave a drawing table to Molly McK, but gosh, we still have a house full.

Phil is in the back room, mending the webbing on the wing chair.

That chair started out as brown fuzzy horsehair. Mom had it reupholstered in a white and floral nylon in the 60s. Then I got it slipcovered in cotton in the 80s. I suppose it is time for another covering, but I'll just trim the threads where the cats have shredded it, and carry on. It's pretty comfortable when the webbing holds. Not when it doesn't.

Had a modicum of (mostly pro bono) work today; back to the packing tomorrow.

Back on the job

Job? We don't need no stinkin' job...

I've discovered (isn't Google wonderful) a share-ware program for cataloging CDs: collectorz.com

The program is a  (free for few features, some $ for more, more $ for still more) download, and does not live on-line like LibraryThing. I suppose since there was such a brouhaha about 'file-sharing' that is a good thing...less temptation.

I suppose I am more than half-way through, and I was lucky enough to find duplicates that Charles adopted, so the 'pure' collection is (mostly) going to be stripped of dupes.

Open the program | push the button to log disks | pop a CD in the drive | the program reads the code number off the disk and pops the CD tray out | insert another disk, etc.

When you have a good stack done...keep it down to 10 or fewer to make it easier to correct discrepancies...push the "search" button. The program goes out and retrieves title, cover art, track lists and times, etc., etc. for each CD...if it can find it. If it can't find it, you can enter it manually by editing the record after you have saved the list to your database. That's why I suggest being conservative about the number you do at once; you'll have to research which entry stands for which disk, and it's easier with a light load or a short stack.

There is a 'comments' type field into which I can enter the box number the CD is packed into, much as I did with books. Many many fit into one box, though, so it won't be quite so critical. As the list is being built, you can specify genre (making them up if you want more than they come up with), so re-shelving at the other end will also be pretty straightforward.

Paint and shine

Phil has finished fixing the ceiling in the yellow bedroom. It all looks gorgeous, and we moved Grammy Grammer's sleigh bed, my childhood maple desk, and Mom's antique chest of drawers in, to furnish it. The sleigh bed had been occupying the post office, so it's nice to gain more packing space in there, too.

Phil and I also moved the tall chest with the mirror into the front bedroom (the blue room), and that room is looking more settled. As things move around, we get closer and closer to actual packing of our own stuff.

Happily, we had company Friday night: Dawn, David, and Jon came through on their way further north. So we had nicely furnished space for them to sleep in.

So we move steadily onward. (Who knew we had so many sheets?! Some MUST have been from Mom's stash.)

How nice to see that box truck backing into the d'way

Sold a load of furniture last week; enough to furnish a small apartment. I think we owe them a couple of pieces, still, but they also took all our tropical plants. As Ren says, maybe the plants would have been happier in Texas. But I wasn't interested in finding out how to pack and ship; we can grow more.

Video Glut

We've seen these movies in the last week: For the Boys, Crooklyn (first 1/2 hour), Alice, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, An Ideal Husband, and The Indian in the Cupboard. All go into the "give away" box.

Not the first time for most of them; PDEtheD was a first.  1960 seems so long ago!

Best: Indian. All (except Crooklyn) worth watching. We felt that Crooklyn sang true, dialog-wise, but did not appear to have a plot. Which makes it difficult as escapist video.

I'm not telling how many more we had rejected out of hand, having remembered them vividly, or kept out of hand, ditto. THEN, we will be on to the home-recorded vids; probably we'll fast-forward through most of them.

Music Mashup

Started "final boxing" the Music today...sheet music in Box 1; band music (and some piano) in Box 2; Vocal sheet music in Box 3. Or something like that. Feels good to be this far, but there are still bends in the road before we see Mount Joy.

And for your entertainment...

Today, we resumed sorting through the studio. It has never had the privilege to be used as a studio, and has been a repository of all things family that came in from Laconia, Charlestown, and so forth. After we clean it out, we're moving the bedroom in there, so we can clean out the bedroom and paint the floor, etc.

Some of what we found:

P's grandparents' 50th Wedding Anniversary scrap book, a scrap book that perhaps Georgia Cheney kept (1889+), many pictures of all and sundry, a recipe book from 1931 (suitably austere, though the cover is red).

P sorted through photography equipment from college days, drawings and plans also from college and from Hughes Associates, a circuit board (perhaps he designed/drafted it?) that was not "printed" but wired in layers, many obsolete road maps and a geodetic survey map(s)...patched together...of New Hampshire....wallpaper-wise.

B sorted through boxes of boxes, all neatly labeled, and not used by their boxer since 1960, which is when my maternal grandmother died, she who did the boxing. Such delights as feathers for hats, ribbons, lace collars, and other fabric things. I thought to enumerate them here, but I have not yet actually LOOKED through them, saving that pleasure to enjoy with Barbara S and Sarah W sometime soon.

Oh, yes, I found more books...Volume II of Queen Hortense (I think I already gave away Volume I), Michener's Poland, The Story of the Pilgrims for Children, and others. Not as fun a box as the box of Nancy Drews, but more material for the church book sale.

The boxes labeled "purses" actually had purses in them, meaning that I had already sorted through those once. So we're getting there, in the studio.

As I worked my way through the boxes of boxes (sewing and fabric pieces, etc.) it occurred to me that much of that material had probably been sitting since maybe the early forties. I can't imagine my grandmother doing much sewing after my mother went off to college and marriage, etc. And then I spent a few moments musing on how clothing wears out. Remember, that my mother and I KEEP our clothing, even when it does not fit...we gifted many many pieces to Goodwill after she died. But wearing clothing out...the usual worn-through dungarees, elbows, cuffs, and collars...and clothing MUST get worn a bit in the wash and dryer. Why else would there be such a handful of lint to remove from the filter before every load? So clothing that is not terrorized simply washes away, gets thin, and goes into the ragbag. Well, not much as gone into the ragbag in my tenure. It's mostly still in the closet. 

That's another conundrum. After living in this house without a closet for so long, we build an addition 6 years ago that included a fine closet. But I have no idea how to use it effectively. Is that a reasonable excuse? No, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I ran across the box of buttons again today, too, ready to go through with Sarah and Barbara. quantities of shoe buttons, bone buttons from navy whites, etc. I sorted through them some years ago...at least, some of them...but it will still be fun to look at.

I'm enjoying these careens down memory lane, even when they're not my memories. I don't know why it's so difficult to get started on each sorting stint, but it's a lot easier when I discover that I've actually gone through and sorted it some time ago! 

Washing dishes and packing to move

Before I got waylaid by a detailed description of doing dishes, I mentioned a similarity between that activity and packing to move.

I described packing recently as "the lists of the past..." We've packed over 57 boxes of books so far, and have found (of course, did you doubt it?) an additional 6 boxes full to give to the church book sale in January. I have also noticed the cookbooks in the kitchen, and have wondered where the knitting books are. So we are not done with books.

F and I went through ALL of M's research and resource material, as well as manuscripts and drafts of her book. That has been reduced to half of its original quantity, which (though half is a big reduction) is still a lot of boxes.

P has packed many many boxes of china etc., and there is still more to come, but we have also given away a lot of dishes. It's harder when it looks familiar or I remember using it when I was a child...easier when it is ugly or otherwise immemorable.

I have looked through and organized much music (see my December 3 post), and have been able to give away some of it, earmark some for Batahola Cultural Center, and throw out partial copies of some things...surprisingly few partial copies, considering that much of the music is at least 50 years old, and most of it is more than 70 years old.

We have packed all beads (I think) and are in process of consolidating sewing tools, etc.

We have given away another bookcase and a set of drawers. We have an alarming amount of furniture and bookcases and filing cabinets yet to go.

Well, this account is breaking down in its clarity as anxiety begins to take over, so maybe I'll go pack something.

Progress, Fingering, and a little Vocalizing

I come to the part of my packing when I examine ALL the music in the house. Not in detail, and I'm not even sitting down to play much of it. The piano will go (God willin' and the crick don't rise) to nephew Peter's family on Saturday, so it's all future fingering I'm practicing.

As the repository for

• a satchel (since discarded...the leather deteriorated) of Mom's Massachusetts Youth Symphonic Band music from the 1940s (instrumental parts for MANY instruments)
• a carton of sacred music of varying stripe from Ruth Perkins's collection
• vocalises...Lutgen, etc.
• a handful of recorder and ukelele and guitar music
• M's violin and fiddle music
• vocal sheet music ranging from the late 1870s to the 1960s from Uncle F, Mom, Ruth, Grammy Carter, etc.
• quantities of piano exercises, etudes, and simplified Rachmaninoff, etc., including a book on figured bass
  
• many Oxford University Press collections (in triplicate) from our summer Choral Symposia with Sir David Willcocks through the years
• many masterworks...Bach, Beethoven, Siegmeister, Britten, Bernstein, Mozart, Vaughan Williams, Haydn, Handel, etc. etc....also in at least duplicate
• folk song books, Scout song books, part-song books for glee clubs, choirs, and groups
• hymnals from the Congregationalists, the Tabernacle, the Presbyterians, the Spiritualists, and the Unitarians (among others!)

I especially love the sheet music...lovely covers, stylized according to the decade of publication, photos of "as made famous by" Rudy Vallee, Bing Crosby, Kate Smith, and many many of whom I have NEVER heard. The occasional music for something done in revival by Mama Cass...Dream A Little Dream of Me...and so forth.

There should be no doubt that music is in our genes...

OK, so it's really 322 years worth of packables

I think I've now figured out that I am not packing my own 22 years at this address, but also an additional 10 at the previous domicile, AND all the way back to that pesky "Civil Wars" book of 1676, in chunks that relate to Mother, Father, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother, et alia, and many unnamed owners of that "CV" aforementioned. Good grief, no wonder it seems to be taking forever.

CAPITALS AT LAST!!!

No, this won't all be in CAPITALS, but I have wanted to quote Archie the cockroach for many years now... (thank you, Don Marquis!).

This is the premier entry for our Stroudwater 2 The Woodlands blog.

Even as I type, Philmar is packing yet more books for our big adventure/move from Maine to Texas. If you want to see what we're taking with us, go to www.librarything.com/catalog/zabeth69  Although there will be more, this is the bulk of our library. I think we have finally discovered what has been holding our house on its foundation...keeping it from floating off into the ether...books!