Crazy. Busy. Both.

Wow have we been crazy.  And busy.  But mostly crazy. 

We've moved to Oregon.  It took three days to drive out here.   Hubs drove the huge U-haul with the dogs in the cab and towed one car.  I drove the other car with the kids.  The trip was long, but everyone did well and we survived.  Little Lady's favorite past time in the car was to tattoo her body with markers. The first night when we rolled into the hotel at midnight, she was covered head to toe in blue marker.  After her morning bath it looked like she was bruised everywhere.  But it kept her happy, so I was totally cool with it. 

We arrived at our new house around 10 pm two weeks ago and crashed hard core.  The next day we explored our new space.  It is awesome.  We are on this hilly, quiet road, with trees and blackberry bushes and birds.  And at night we can hear a pack of coyotes howl. It is so cool. 

The house itself is a bit of a fixer upper.  Blue carpet everywhere.  Well, not anymore.  We already ripped it out of the bathrooms...can I get a huge EWWW for that one?!  Yeah.  And then we discovered the nightmare.  Cat pee.  In the closets.  In our bedroom.  The staircase.  The basement storage space.  It has been terrible dealing with cat pee!  We've had to rip out carpets and walls and subfloors and insulation.  And nothing cleans it.  My gut desire was to dip my entire house in bleach.  And then I read that cat pee is full of ammonia and mixed with bleach can produce mustard gas.  Nice.  And sanitizing the areas doesn't get rid of the smell.  We tried so many enzyme cleaners people swear by.  They either don't have good noses or they didn't just buy a house with a 20 year string of peeing cats.  The only think that worked was literally ripping everything out and then kilzing the area.  I love Kilz.  Love.  Can't say I feel the same about felines.  Trying really hard to not loathe the entire cat population of the world, but right now, I'm on the fence.  Sorry if you are a cat person. 

Our house is a construction zone and complete chaos.  We are living on sub floors, the fridge is in the middle of the kitchen while Hubs repairs the sub floor behind that.  One bathroom has been gutted and waiting on me to finish painting the cabinets and Hubs to tile the floor before we can reassemble and start on the other one.  We haven't been able to unpack any clothes since all of the closets are recovering cat pee areas.  We ripped down the 15 ft lava rock fireplace yesterday and have exposed cinder block and insulation as our living room view.  We started to take down  a wall in the kitchen, but it turned out to be a load bearing wall, so we are stuck with bare studs until we can come up with a backup plan. There are ladders and shop vacs and hammers and circular saws adorning the tables and counters and hallways.  It is terribly chaotic.  And we are probably in over our heads.  It feels like a young love, two kids just starting out and learning as they go kinda thing, except that we've been married 11 years and there's not much learning going on, just a lot of cursing and head shaking when things go awry.  Well, I suppose we've learned a lot about cat pee.

And Hubs just started working 80+ hour work weeks.  I'm not quite sure what we were thinking taking on such a big project when we have no time to do it ourselves and no money to hire someone else.  At least it is clean.  And I say that subjectively.  Because dealing with all of these projects makes it ridiculously difficult to even thinking about doing normal stuff, like, say, dishes.  Or cooking.  Or remembering that I put a bleach load in the wash three days ago and I might as well just bleach it again since its still there.  And of course there is drywall dust covering all of the unpacked boxes scattered everywhere.  But every surface of this joint has been bleached, santized, Kilzed...  It may be messy and chaotic, but it is clean. 

So that's that.  For the past two weeks, we been crazy busy.  Or just crazy and busy.  I think they probably both work. 

So far the people of Oregon are super friendly.  I've met a few nice ladies at the park and one neighbor who has kids the same age as Little Man has already swapped phone numbers and brought over rice krispie treats.  And tonight they asked to borrow oregano.  I feel honored to be liked enough to share spices.  Plus, now I know who I can borrow a cup of sugar from when I run out.  Another neighbor brought over a book for Little Man and some awesome composting bags for us and wants to have a Welcome to the Neighborhood party for us. Its really awesome.  I've never lived in this friendly of a place before.  I feel very blessed. 

And very tired.  I can't get anything done with Little Lady awake, so project time has been nights until about 2 am.   I am so in love with my coffee maker.  Still. 

Well, I'm running out of gas and I have a few more cabinet doors to sand and wipe down so I can start priming in the morning.  But I'm sure I'll be back soon.  This move has been great, but meeting all new people means a lot of sharing.  Which is good, but hard.  And it makes it feel fresh and raw all over again.  And we all miss our Jameson so much.  More on that later; it is late enough already tonight.   See you soon!