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Two-day packing blitz
This weekend has gone by in a blur of cardboard, friends, dust, and heavy lifting. “Team Garage” kicked ass on a task I have been avoiding for months. Years of accumulated junk in the garage is sorted into piles: dump; burn; keep. The few items we wanted to move are already at 555 thanks to…
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One week left
I am not sure how it happened that we are one week out from the move and I am not prepared. All these months of planning and getting ready and I am just…not. It’s all going to be fine. Really, it is. We will get there. Moves always are a pandemonium. I had a plan.…
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Mapping my Move
I started this drawing a few weeks back when I was feeling stressed and at odds with the whole project. I finished today with a few last details and a title. It really does show my route through the project or moving from this mess to the lovely fresh house up the hill. I shared…
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How to move with cats
“How are you going to move the cats?” my friends and neighbors are asking. We are a couple of weeks out from shifting houses and I feel like a new parent – all plans and no follow through. I know my cats’ personalities, fears, and whims, so I created a plan to accommodate them as…
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Starlink train
An otherworldly experience happened last night at 555 with connected magic this morning. Hitomi, Kengo, and their son Kenta, stopped by 555 in the evening. Tod & I were finishing up some little tasks as the sun set, so we got to show them around the house with all the lights on. They hadn’t seen…
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Furniture planning
We are to the point in the build where it’s time to figure out what we are moving into each room. I’ve been diagramming the rooms to figure out how we can fit furniture we already have and to see what’s missing. The bedroom gets our bed. That’s pretty much all we have, aside from…
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Concrete and carpet
Yesterday two things happened that I resisted but ended up liking more than I expected. The inubashiri is a concrete walkway all the way around the house – literally it means “dog run”. It’s a common feature of modern Japanese homes in the cities where the law says you need a minimum of 50 cm…
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Internet at 555
Fiber was connected to the barn at the end of July, Stephen pulled the LAN cables last week, and Tod activated the network at 555 yesterday. This milestone makes the house ready to live in, as far as I am concerned. We might not have hot water yet, but we can Google for work-arounds. Tod’s…
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Maura’s ouch
About a week ago, Maura showed up for dinner without his collar. I scanned him for injuries, but didn’t see anything. I put a new collar on him and forgot about it. Until two days ago, when I noticed a scabby bit on his back. It was matted with hair and hard to see what…
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Petal Loops
Doodling is good medicine. When you need a mental break from whatever you’re currently stressed about or trying to work through, art is a valuable refuge. And you don’t need to be an artist to get there. A Drawing Meditation like this one, gives your logical, conscious brain some rules to follow. While your logical…
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