Jenyfer Matthews

No garage sale-ing for me today: The moving truck is actually here – on time – bringing us our things from a storage unit we packed up and locked away nearly 12 YEARS AGO! According to my friend who watched the movers load up, the room was dusty and full of cobwebs but the stuff mostly seemed to be in good shape and even the movers were impressed how well it had all been packed originally.

It’s a blast to see all this stuff arriving – some of which I remember and some of which I don’t! It’s a bit like having a garage sale delivered to my house

I’ll update later today or tomorrow with some pictures. I think I have a few reupholstering projects ahead of me!

The time capsule, aka our storage unit in North Carolina, has been opened and loaded into a truck.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to be there in person to supervise (some might say “interfere”), but I had a friend who stood-in for me who said that other than dust and cobwebs, it all looked pretty good. Even our mattress set seemed okay! It’s all on a truck now, so now we will wait and see how long it will take it to get here. It is scheduled to be here FRIDAY MORNING but I’ll believe that when I see them roll up in the driveway!

We didn’t have children when we packed up and went abroad and while we were away we lived in furnished housing so we don’t really have much furniture coming. I’m willing to get things slowly, but we really need a couple of dressers for the children’s rooms. I haven’t been hugely impressed with the quality or the prices of new furniture I’ve seen so my husband and I decided to take a look at a local antique mall. Once furniture ends up in an antique mall, it isn’t always such a bargain, but it might at least be made of real, solid wood.

Sadly, we didn’t see anything that tempting at the antique mall. You win some, you lose some. We decided to drop in at a Goodwill we passed on our way home. We didn’t find a dresser, but I did find a cute sewing table for $5.

I’m not actually planning to use it as a sewing table though – I thought I might try it out as a bedside table. If it seems too high, I will put it in the living room as a side table. It is a solid little table with the top closed.

The question I have now is whether to try and paint it or not. The finish isn’t great, as you can see, and it already has a couple of paint splats on it. Would it look better or worse if I tried to do a “shabby chic” finish on it in white or pale green? Hubby thinks that painting furniture makes it look cheap but I think he’s crazy. Besides, it’s not as if this particular piece was ever such high quality wood anyway!

Also found another treasure while out looking for work shoes for hubby. Aren’t they beautiful?

I’m in love. I have always wanted red cowboy boots and now I have some. They were on sale for the same price the faux leather boots cost and are so so so much softer. Just have to make sure I don’t end up stepping in a snow drift / slush puddle with them!

My sister likes to tell me that I have a horseshoe stuck up my butt because to her I seem so lucky. I prefer to think we make our own luck.

If I could have picked a town to come back to as a family, I’d have picked one that was big enough for every day needs, but not big enough for traffic jams, had good public schools, nice family oriented neighborhoods, sports facilities, good thrift stores, and a short commute to work for my husband. Other than the commute and the thrift stores, we are doing pretty good where we landed otherwise.

I may not have thrift stores (or at least any good ones that I’ve FOUND yet!) but there have been plenty of wonderful garage sales to keep me entertained. If you haven’t noticed, I love a good bargain. (Even my kids know – my 8 year old son told my neighbor that my shoes were from a thrift store!) I especially love a good, useful bargain with some character to it. With us camping in a mostly empty house, I have the perfect excuse to go to garage sales.

I think I must be in garage sale heaven. The first week I was here, I saw a sign so I followed it to the sale. Then I saw another, and another, and another… it wasn’t long before I’d lost THREE HOURS driving around from sale to sale to sale. I don’t buy things every place I go, but I love the thrill you get just wondering what treasure you might find when you pull up!

So far, I’ve been really happy with the bargains I’ve found. Among the many I’ve found are:

Toaster oven $2
Iron wine rack $2
(Cheapo) full length mirror $2
Milk glass bedside lamps 2 for $1/each
pizza stone, in box $2
3 1/2 quart crock pot $2
cookie sheet $1
assorted cooking utensils $1
bag of cutlery $1
3 Pfaltzgraff dinner plates, 4 side plates FREE

I happened to stumble on a mid-week sale last week tucked down a cul-de-sac near my son’s school. I stopped by at 4pm and saw a full-sized bed frame with headboard, a solid pecan wood coffee table, and a (cheap) computer desk. I told the man I wanted them all, but that I was driving a hatchback VW Golf which made taking things difficult. He offered to deliver them in his Expedition. He ended up not only delivering the items, but he brought the bed frame inside as well as the box spring from my garage and set up my daughter’s bed for me! Also, when he picked up the coffee table, I saw that it was stamped Lane underneath. What a find! I have a very nice cedar hope chest by Lane coming from storage… someday…

The head board has a shelf (with a hole for wires) and a cupboard on either end. It was almost worth the purchase just for the interaction with the people who were selling the things. They were so so so nice! They were an older couple and the wife told me that the bed had been her first and favorite bed and that she was so happy to have someone come along who would really appreciate it. I certainly do appreciate it and it absolutely made my day to make hers

I found another fantastic sale this week. It happened to be on the way to my daughter’s school and they were setting up at 7am. I spotted a headboard and some other furniture as I was passing so I decided to stop after dropping her off. I found an absolutely lovely metal head and footboard set for $5. Yes, FIVE DOLLARS. Not only that, but once again, they delivered it for me.

I had to go out and get the proper sort of bedframe and supply my own mattresses and bedding, but is this a gorgeous bed or what? (Please ignore the wallpaper – it came with the house!) The quilt is one I made for my mother in 2004.

I still can’t believe I got it for $5. Having gone to the bed shop to get the frame and having had a look around at what bedroom furniture costs I’m nearly ecstatic (because frankly, most of the furniture I saw was expensive but cheap, if you know what I mean). My son is really jealous that my daughter and my husband and I have proper beds and he doesn’t, but you just can’t predict what you will find a garage sale.

There is, however, a CITY-WIDE GARAGE SALE scheduled October 8th!!!!!!

I think I might have died and gone to heaven!

I do believe that the city wide sale might mark the last gasp of garage sales for the season and in a way I’m glad. It takes up a lot of time and energy driving around looking!

Zen isn’t cutting it right now. I’m feeling downright sorry for myself.

I’ve washed windows, walls, baseboards, mini-blinds, vent covers, and scrubbed showers with Tilex and Magic Erasers, all in preparation for my things to arrive. I had hoped to have at least some things arrive by the end of this month. Seems like maybe I had more time to get the cleaning done that I thought I did.

When we moved from the United Arab Emirates to Cairo, I split our shipment so that some things would arrive by air and other, heavier, less-pressing items would come by sea. I told my husband to do the same this time. He said he told the movers but somehow the message was lost because when I woke up Tuesday morning he’d written to tell me that the reason the quote they gave us was so reasonable was because it was ALL scheduled to travel by sea.

Not. Acceptable.

I was whining about this to a friend of mine who pointed out to me how lucky we’ve been through this whole process overall. I know we have been extremely lucky – finding a job in such a tough economy and getting all the rest of the logistics sorted out so efficiently has been nothing short of a miracle. However, knowing that doesn’t really help in this moment. I have been living adrift for NINE MONTHS. I’m tired of making do and improvising. I want to have my own stuff, in my own place, and start doing my own thing again ASAP. Having our things shipped by sea will delay that possibility by at least another two months.

Yes, I could buy more towels and sheets and dishes and utensils, but what a waste of money – I have all these things coming to me from two different sources, dammit. It’s just getting it all here that is the problem.

In the end, I basically threw a tantrum by email. Though they are many hours ahead of EST, the movers were still in our place and my husband was able to divert most of our kitchen things by air freight along with as many of my quilts as he could find (they had already been packed). He tossed some of my sweaters in his suitcase and called it good. I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that for now.

I am still working on getting our US time capsule shipped to us as well. At this point, any of my stuff will do…

I thought I was mostly okay with not being at all involved in the process of packing up my things in Cairo. I mean, really – how hard is it? The movers – a company I have used before and been happy with – come in and pack up too quickly for me to keep up anyway then send it on. Not much I could have done had I been there, and yet I found myself really stressed out yesterday and today too.

In order to attempt to combat the anxiety, I decided to get away from the endless cleaning and go outside for a while. Might as well take advantage of the beautiful weather while I can, right?

A fellow soccer mom mentioned the local farmer’s market to me at the game on Saturday so I decided to stop by this morning and see what they had

(click any image to enlarge)

It’s a gorgeous place just to walk around and look.

Can you tell what is in season? I bought a new-to-me variety called Honey Crisp – very crunchy and tart. My children are going to love them.

I know where to go to get my autumn / Halloween decorations. Notice the bridge in the background. (more on that in a moment)

So beautiful, I wish I could buy all of these!

The Farmer’s Market is located downtown, just next to the Midland “tridge”, so called because it is a three legged bridge. Or is that tri-branched?

A pedestrian bridge, it connects three different park areas where two rivers meet and fork, the Chippewa and the Tittabawassee. Kind of neat looking, isn’t it?

I am definitely going to have to come back on the weekend so the children can run back and forth and also in other seasons. It’s a very scenic and restful area.

Now I’m going to head outside to my yard. Digging in the dirt is more productive and therapeutic than worrying…

If you thought that I must have too much to occupy me here in Michigan to fret about what is going on with my stuff in Cairo, you’d be wrong.

Normally when we move, I sort things in to keep, sell, and purge. I have a house sale and lighten our load as much as possible before starting to pack. I know what things are easy to replace and what things are sentimental and precious. I know what clothes the kids will get more wear out of and which can be donated.

My husband is a very capable guy, but he has never been left in charge of one of our moves before. He’s never gone through the process of purging and sorting for packing and doesn’t know off the top of his head what things stay and what things go. I created a pretty exhaustive list from my memory of what items are stowed in which cupboards, nooks, and crannies but we’ve still been exchanging frequent one line emails with admonitions to “don’t forget!” and questions about this or that. He’s sold a few of our bigger items, but hasn’t had the time for a proper sale.

There is however another complication.

When we were preparing to move to Egypt, we were told that we needed to create an inventory of all of our things for customs purposes. Basically, the university supplies a letter of guarantee to the government that all of our possessions are personal and therefore tax exempt. The catch? We are supposed to take everything we arrived with back out again.

That doesn’t sound so very bad until you get into the nitty gritty of it. We were told for instance that with things like DVDs, CDs, and expensive or “special” books we needed to list them by title – this was also to protect us from sticky fingered inspectors. Have you got any idea how many books two avid readers and writers can collect?? Because of this stupid rule, we are going to be exporting a set of Wiggles VHS tapes that my children outgrew almost immediately after our arrival in Cairo five years ago!

The books and DVDs I can live with, but how this rule applies to electronics bugs me. Before Egypt we’d lived in the United Arab Emirates for six years. Both countries use 220v electricity and electronics are way cheaper in the UAE than in Egypt so we brought many items we already had along with us when we moved. However, since these items appear on our inventory, now we also have to take them out again – whether they work or not. Even if they do still work, they won’t be much good to me here in the US where the current is 110v. Using them with a converter is an option I suppose but I suspect they will end up being donated to someplace like this for children to tinker with.

Whatever – not much I can do about it now.

In short, I told my husband when in doubt, pack it. I’ll sort it out when it gets here…

I’ve cleaned the stove top and wiped out the oven, I’ve cleaned all the cupboards in the kitchen and laid new shelf paper (Is it wrong how much I like the smell of shelf paper?). Overall, the kitchen is ready for action. The problem?

I have very limited tools with which to work.

My things in Cairo have not even been packed up yet, and as yet I have no firm date for when my storage items will be delivered either. All I have is what I came with: an enameled cast iron pot I bought in a thrift store (too beautiful to pass up!), a nonstick pan donated by a friend, and a small cast iron skillet that used to belong to my mother.

As you can see from the mug of tea in the orange pot and the butter knife laid across the cast iron pan, none of these pots is very large. Since I tend to do a lot of one-pot type cooking, it has been a bit of a challenge to produce anything decent for dinner around here lately.

Did someone say challenge?

I admit that I have bought some prepared food here and there. I can hardly help it when I’m always exhausted and crunched for time lately. I have also managed to make some fairly decent dinners. One thing I made earlier this week that was a hit was sauteed onions, garlic, zucchini, and yellow peppers over pasta, topped with a bit of Parmesan cheese. No leftovers that night. Split pea soup was also a hit. I improvised one night and made a pizza using a square boboli crust on the top of the broiler pan (it did at least have bell peppers on it). I also have a small Pyrex dish with a cover that I used to make broccoli in the microwave. Broccoli is my fall-back, make-a-meal-healthier vegetable. I want to make a new recipe I got from a friend for pumpkin chili, but I’ll have to wait until I have a bigger pot!

(Confession: If it were just me, I’d probably eat more like this.)

I miss my gas stove top from Cairo, but that is another topic all together!

Other accomplishments this week include getting phone / internet / TV service. Hmmm… maybe I could just call out for dinner…

All I ever seem to do anymore is clean.

I know, I know – B-O-R-I-N-G!! You don’t want to hear about how I had to dust the ceilings and walls because they were furry. (Boring!) You don’t want to read a description of the toxic brown sludge the steam cleaner pulled out of the carpet downstairs. (Boring – and gross!!) You probably could care less that I shed blood when I cut myself several times scrubbing baked on goo from under the burners on the stove. (Boring – and painful!)

What can I say? It’s kind of what I do these days.

My husband has movers scheduled to come and pack our things in Cairo next week, and I have a moving company working on getting our things out of (long term) storage for us. That’s kind of why I’m working so hard at the moment to get things in shape : it’s much easier to clean things when the house is mostly empty!

I hope that soon I can turn my attention to other, more interesting topics. For instance: what is up with Michigan and biscuits and white gravy for breakfast??

Since I last checked in I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing – cleaning the house. There is nothing to speak of in it yet, but there is so much to do.

Like cleaning the mini-blinds. Now I know why people so often throw them away and just buy new ones instead of cleaning them. What a pain-in-the-you-know-what. It probably took me an hour per set of blinds. They look great, and I will keep up with dusting them now, but I actually hate mini-blinds and would prefer some sort of more easily cleanable fabric shade. Another day.

On the up side, in terms of my writing and current work-in-progress, all this work to settle in is giving me a better perspective for what it is like to move in to a “new”, less than perfect, house. On the down side, it is exhausting.

This week’s goal: internet / cable service and carpet cleaning. Do I know how to have fun or what?

My time hasn’t all been spent at drudgery though. My luck prevailed and I was able to get the children registered for the local recreational soccer league. I just made the deadline for late registration. I got emails telling me what teams they were on Friday night at 9pm – first game was Saturday morning at 11:30am! We got up promptly at 8am and went out to get cleats and shin guards and showed up at the field to find the coaches. The children were both excited and nervous but quickly forgot all that in the heat of the game. They both got back into the groove and made 2 goals each in their respective games. By the end of the games, everyone knew their names if they didn’t know anyone else’s!

Overall, so far I am very happy with this move. The children like their schools – my son said he didn’t want it to be the weekend because he wanted to go to school! The neighborhood is also great – three different sets of neighbors have come over to introduce themselves and offer assistance and advice on the area. One neighbor brought me a Sunday paper when I mentioned I wasn’t sure where to buy one. No one I have talked to yet has had one bad thing to say about anything which is great – and also a little eerie. I’m actually not used to living in places where the neighbors interact!

If anyone shows up on my doorstep with a pie or a jello-mold I’ll know for sure I’ve moved to the 50s…

What can I say about this week except that it’s been busy? Moving is hard work!

The children seem to be adjusting well to their new schools. My son is a very personable sort of child and he came home on the first day with a thumbs up and an “awesome”. Can’t ask for more than that. My daughter had a locker to deal with in addition to changing classes and just the general newness of middle school so she wasn’t as enthusiastic to start, but even after the second day she came home saying that each day gets better.

What a relief. I have marvelous, adaptable children.

I myself have been busy. Some days I feel like I do nothing but run around and spend money, but yesterday I finally felt like things were coming together a bit – with what we have so far anyway.

My mythical lucky horseshoe must still be at work. For one thing, my little car keeps chugging along. It seems to get louder by the day and it occasionally belches a bit of smoke from the back, but it hasn’t left me stranded anywhere on the highway with a load of stuff and two children. Lucky!

I bought a washer and dryer this week and when I got the automated message for the delivery time, wouldn’t you know it was smack dab during the time when I go to pick the children up from school. I asked the neighbor across the street to look out for the truck, but as it turned out, they arrived at the house just between my two school run trips. Lucky!

I wrote an email to the local tennis center this week and they were able to see my daughter to “rate” her the same day. I also called the soccer club about recreational soccer. I just made it – their late registration deadline is today. Lucky! (The children are wait-listed and there may not be room for them, but they can’t say I didn’t try!)

Otherwise I have been spending a lot of time cleaning cupboards, bathrooms, and floors. I am not a neat freak, but I do like things to be clean and what better time to clean things than when you don’t have anything? I talked to a moving company about getting our things out of storage and it sounds like they might be able to do the job in the next 10 days. Lucky!

Sometimes you just have to open yourself to the universe and trust that things will work out…