Jenyfer Matthews

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…

It was touch and go for a while, but I did it: I found a great rental house and enrolled both the children in school (starts next week!) in only three long days of running around.

The house I ended up renting I found myself on Craigslist. Craigslist is a service I have often heard of but have never used. I admit that most of what I have heard about is the funny / sketchy things / scams people post there so when I saw the house advertised there, I was somewhat skeptical. I almost didn’t inquire about it at all – the listing seemed almost too good to be true. If the house was so great, why was it on Craigslist?

I sent off an email anyway, requesting pictures.

As it turns out, the owners had only recently moved out to follow a job to Wisconsin. The house was for sale but in the meantime they were willing to rent. I made arrangements to see it and very quickly decided that it was the house we wanted.

The landlady is new to renting and was understandably every bit as skeptical about me as I was about her – and I am sure that when she listed the house she never expected to attract a refugee of the Egyptian revolution! She asked for rental references – all of mine are pre-1999! She settled for personal references. She asked for a letter confirming my husband’s employment. Done. Then she sent me an email late on the night before we were going to sign the lease whether or not I had power of attorney to sign the lease on my husband’s behalf (since he has the job, not me).

Um…no.

I spent the next hour forwarding emails to my husband asking him to print out, sign, and fax the 20+ page lease – which is a challenging enough task on a regular day in Egypt but it was also a holiday there and he wasn’t at work. I was so anxious that I might not have been able to sleep if I hadn’t also been so exhausted. If we didn’t get the house, I couldn’t go forward with getting the kids enrolled in school and I’d have to start the process over again. (N-O-O-O-O!)

For once the time difference worked in our favor and by the time I woke up the next morning, I had a confirmation that he had sent everything back to the landlady and we were all set for our morning appointment. Phew!

I got the lease and the key and went directly to the elementary school to register my son. Our luck was still in and we got to meet his teacher too – I think he is going to be in very good hands. After lunch we went to the middle school to enroll my daughter. More on that later!

Yesterday I left the children with my friend in NW Ohio and drove down to my other friend’s house in Hamilton (southern Ohio) to collect all of the things I left there before summer. My car was cram-jammed top to bottom but I got everything in there. I’ll spend the weekend sorting and prioritizing because with the children hogging up the backseat, it is going to take multiple trips to get everything moved!

I’ve put nearly 2000 miles on my car in a week. Not. Going. Anywhere. This. Weekend!

From sitting on my hands for nearly seven months to all systems GO in a few days: that’s me.

I. AM. ON. FIRE.

My husband called to tell me he’d accepted a job in Michigan last Thursday and from that moment I started planning our move. I must have sent dozens of emails over the weekend and drove up to Michigan on Monday to meet with a realtor, planning to stay three days, two nights. My hope was to find a house and, if possible, register the children for school in our chosen districts – school starts next week, September 6th.

My sister has often said that I must have a lucky horseshoe stuck up my butt (ouch!) because I almost always find lost jewelry, find things I need on sale, etc – things just seem to come together for me. I have to say that while I had hoped to find a house, even if it meant taking something not entirely wonderful for the short term, I wondered how practical it was to expect to succeed in only two days. I resigned myself to the idea that the children might start school a bit late.

The realtor showed me half a dozen houses, based on the size and school districts I specified. A couple were awesomely cool in a Mad Men way but too small for a family of four with two very active children, a couple were too small / had no yard, and a couple were just dirty and / or stinky. I was actually still considering a stinky one because it was in the school district we wanted when I went to see one final house – one that I found listed myself on craigslist.

The house was everything that the others were not: clean, well-kept, large, big yard, quiet street, the right school district, and it even has a basketball hoop in the driveway. Given what I’d seen that day, I jumped on the opportunity. I am supposed to sign the lease today and from there I will go and get the children registered in school.

I move in Monday. We’ll be camping on air mattresses until the rest of our things arrive, but we’ll be in time for school. Am I good or what?

And how is this for a lucky coincidence: the realtor took us by the elementary school I had in mind for my son and they just happened to be having a new student orientation. We walked in and had a tour, cookies, punch, and got a school pouch backpack. A nice little school and the cookies and punch really hit the spot!

I may have accomplished what I set out to do for now, but I’m not done yet: now I have to go back to Ohio and collect my things from my friend in Hamilton (near Cincinnati), then go back (come back?!) to Michigan on Monday.

I’ve put 11,000 miles on my car since March and I’m not done yet!

That’s how fast life can change.

My husband has been looking for a job back in the US since this spring. I haven’t talked about it here because it is a long, uncertain process – also, I didn’t want to jinx anything. I’m not generally a superstitious person, but why take chances?

He went for an interview at the beginning of the month that he felt went well. Then we waited, and waited some more. His summer vacation ended and he had to head back to Cairo and we still didn’t know whether or not he’d gotten the job. I didn’t know what I was going to do because I didn’t have airline tickets to go back to Cairo, but the children were going to have to start school somewhere, soon.

It wasn’t until I was driving back to Ohio, on the highway just about to arrive at my friend’s house, that my step-mother called to tell me that my husband had sent her an email saying that he had been offered and accepted the job. I finally have a course of action: we are moving to Michigan!

It’s been a long and stressful year and it will likely get a bit more stressful as we try to coordinate an international move, but at least now we have a plan. This will be the first time in a little more than a decade that all of my stuff will be in ONE place (my fascination with glassware, dishes, and purses is about to be exposed in a big way!). Exploring the contents of the storage unit we locked up and left behind in 1999 is going to be like opening a time capsule!

I started this blog in January 2007, a few months after we’d moved to Cairo and I’ve spent much of the time since sharing the things I learned about Egypt and all the fun, frustrating, and interesting experiences I had there. Now I’ll get to share the exodus.

I’ll be in Michigan this week looking for a rental house and I hope getting things set up so the children can start school on time. Wish me luck!

I had this great idea for a blog post the other night as I was on my way to bed and then the next morning…POOF! Gone. Only the lingering feeling of what a great idea it was remained. If it was such a great idea, it will probably come back to me, however I have the feeling it was probably one of those night thoughts that seems so good at that moment but pales by the light of day.

I’ve been really making progress getting our new house to feel like home. I’m still finding things in odd places – like the corncob fork I found in my tea canister this morning (that could almost be construed as a boobytrap as sharp as they are!) I’m having some friends over on Thursday night so of course I want everything to look as nice as possible (and if I skip my bedroom on the tour, they ought to be impressed!) Yesterday I got out the really tall community ladder and washed the windows in my living room (that was just for me because they wouldn’t be able to see the dirt and smears at night) and I even made a start on hanging a few pictures. I worked so hard all morning that I could have used a nap by afternoon!

Why was I in such a frenzy? Because I hadn’t realized it until yesterday, but my children have a two day holiday this week so will be underfoot until Sunday. They are old enough to entertain themselves, but not when mom is up a tall ladder! Today I’ll have to confine myself to surfaces lower to the ground. I also have a few errands to run, including buying more nails and looking for some lamps.

If I’m really efficient, I’ll even get to wash and iron some of the fabric I’m planning to use for the commission quilt. As much as I dislike ironing, it would be more fun than cleaning the disaster zone that is my bedroom!*

*I only wish I could blame the move for the fact that my bedroom is a disaster zone. The truth is that it was pretty bad when we moved and the movers simply transferred it as is. I’ve compounded things by moving all the things I don’t want to see anywhere else there, including my husband’s mountain bike, an item I defy any decorator to work around…

It’s been a productive week – in terms of unpacking that is. I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked, but then I think that sometimes I have unrealistic expectations of how much I’ll get done in any given time frame!

Putting everything away has been a monumental task, but I’ve tried to find pleasure in the process where I can. It makes me happy to see all my quilting fabric unloaded and stacked by color in its new home – TWO big cupboards at the top of the stairs. I’ve found useful items like empty notebooks that I had tucked away and forgotten about. I’ve tossed things that never should have been moved in the first place.

I’ve also rediscovered items that I’d forgotten I had, like this vintage purse. I found this purse at a thrift store in little Minnesota town my mother lives in and paid no more than a $1 for it several summers ago.

I don’t know enough about fashion eras to know exactly what period this purse is from (50s? 60s? earlier?) but it’s in such good condition that I suspect it was someone’s special occasion purse. I’ve treated it that way myself (before I lost track of it completely, that is) But I took it out with me to a friend’s birthday party last night, and it was a lot of fun to use. It has a sturdiness of construction that most modern purses (in my price range!) lack and a true personality that makes it a stand out accessory in the way my other purses aren’t. This purse doesn’t end up hanging off the back of a chair – it displays itself on a table like a piece of art.

My purse was a hit at the party. My friends were astonished when I told them where I’d found it – and they all want to come thrift store shopping with me now!

ETA: the inner lining has the label “Etra” written above the brass zippered pocket. Some quick research has made me lust after more vintage purses…

I have moved several times in my life – in fact, this is the 17th time in my life I’ve moved to a new residence. Granted, I wasn’t always responsible for packing and shifting everything, but the process leaves an impression nonetheless.

First of all, I’m much more a purger than a pack-rat. Since I have never known what it feels like to have a house as a permanent home, I just don’t tend to keep many things past their useful life. It’s not to say I’m not sentimental, but you tend to get pretty ruthless when it comes down to having to move things from place to place – not everything makes the cut. I’m also an excellent packer. I know not to pack books in large boxes and I like to use towels, blankets, etc as packing material – it all has to get moved anyway and by using soft items for cushioning, I’m also saving on volume. Stuffed animals are excellent buffers for fragile items

I’ve only ever had the luxury of using professional movers a few times in my life – most of the rest of our moves were accomplished under our own steam. The first time was when my family moved from Wisconsin to Louisiana when I was four years old – mostly what I remember about that move is that the moving men had an eighteen wheeler truck and they let me sit up in the cab and play. Also, one of them made my sister a tiny horse saddle for one of the many model horses she had in her collection.

The second time I hired professional movers was when my husband and I moved from Cleveland, Ohio to North Carolina. Normally we’d have hired a U-Haul truck and done it ourselves but once I’d seen the warning on the sun visor in the truck about overheating brakes and possible brake failure on downhill slopes I didn’t much like the idea of driving the truck down through the mountains of West Virginia! That was a terrible move – we ended up camping in an empty rental house because the movers ended up being 10 days late. I called the company nearly every day to complain. When the truck finally did arrive, the movers refused to open the truck and unload our possessions until we had paid them! Several items were damaged as well. I ended up fighting the company and getting several hundred dollars back for delays and damage but I tell everyone I know not to use that particular company (though no one I tell has even heard of them so that probably says something right there!)

Our move to Cairo from the United Arab Emirates was a huge job. We’d been in the UAE long enough to have had two children and accumulate the possessions of a family of four. And it wasn’t as easy as just packing up – every box had to be inventoried in detail so that the university could write the customs authorities in Egypt a letter of guarantee so we would not have to pay duty on our things. In short, everything we bring in, we take out. Being a librarian by education I went a little overboard on the itemizing – I kick myself when I see “Mr. Potato Head” on the list when I could have just written “toys”!

The only bad part of our Cairo move was the aftermath: I ended up rupturing a disk while unpacking all of our many boxes. Six months in bed sounds like a lot of fun until you can’t do otherwise. Ouch.

My back has since recovered and at last check my other disks were in reasonable shape, but I wasn’t anxious to injure myself again. The university would have moved our boxes for free if I packed them, but not our personal furniture. So when the moving company I called about the furniture offered to pack everything, move it, and unpack for what was a mere pittance in the grand scheme, I decided it was worth it. Honestly, the move last week went so much better than I expected. I’ve never let anyone else pack all of my things before and they did a great job all the way around. They moved my stuff, they took a couple of large potted plants to the apartments of friends of mine, they retrieved the TV satellite off the roof, and they installed my washing machine. The whole time they were at it, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop – they were going to tell me that the move was a bigger job than they expected and I owed them more, for instance. In fact, they finished up and left and never even asked me to pay! It wasn’t until the next day that the owner of the company called me and arranged to come over and collect the fee – which was exactly what he had quoted me.

It was totally worth the money and the twenty five tea bags and kilo of sugar the five guy crew consumed in their tea breaks over two days!!

I’m busy nesting now and making the new place our own – and really hoping I don’t have to face packing up and moving for at least a couple of years!

It’s amazing how much trash you find tucked away in the nooks and crannies, put away because it might be useful one day. Well, guess what? I’M NOT MOVING IT. Throwing. It. Out. There’s plenty more where that stuff came from…