Mission Accomplished

Yeah, Mission Accomplished - I should be shouting it from the deck of an aircraft carrier. Which is to say, we are officially out of the other house and officially splattered all over the new house. The dishes are in the cupboards, and the beds are made. The rest of it looks like the factory where the Ark goes at the end of Indian Jones. Except imagine all those boxes in one room the size of Chevy Suburban. Madeleine knows better than to ask me to find her rain boots, scissors, alarm clock, little brother, etc.

A few signs we've left the suburbs:
-Our new neighbor with the hubcap art is a professional piano tuner. His wife is an urban gardener. Her friend across the street is a bird rehabilitator and the guy two houses down makes hand-carved birdhouses. They carry their groceries in cloth bags and pretend not to notice when the temporary paper shades fall down in the bathroom mid-BM.

-Yesterday when both toilet were plugged (damn Heffeweizen) we all walked to the corner store to get a plunger (our two are probably packed with the champagne glasses and antique linens, given the spastic packing in the final days). The store didn't have one, but the owner offered to lend us hers. We declined and received two other offers on our walk home. Yes, I did openly advertise our over-active bowels. Apparently this is how you make friends in the city.

-We've taken to locking our cars at night. The first night we did this, and neglected to see that the passenger doors were wide open on the opposite side of both cars. The urban gardener shut them for us. I was a little disappointed, hoping someone would come along and steal the 800 lb hand-me-down sewing maching. What the hell is a sewing maching anyway?

-Sirens. Last night there were many. A guy a mile from here blew himself and his garage up while tinkering with homemade fireworks. Jim and I, not less than one hour earlier, were wondering if we could implode OUR garage like they do with old buildings. Now we know - yes, but we may have to be airlifted out of the wreckage.

-Birds live in the city. Lots of them, but they all stop singing when the unruly pack of crows come along and crash the party. Crows are the Hell's Angels of the avian world.

Moving wasn't terrible, and the new house fits us. I'll be back later when I feel more articulate. I seem to have lost some of my faculties in the sea of cardboard and crumpled newspaper.