Dolphin’s Dock

Since last time I updated you on the house, our closing date got moved AGAIN, but this time it got moved in the right direction (earlier). We’re now closing on Friday! It’s hard to believe that by the end of the week, we will be homeowners. I’m excited and nervous, but mostly I just want it to be over so we can get settled into our new home; and, just as importantly, out of our old place. Especially since our old place is pretty much packed up at this point.

Just about everything is completely packed up. We have even broken down the bed and are sleeping on a mattress on the floor (more on that in a minute). All the clothes hanging in the closet are packed except for only what I’ll be wearing this week (clothes in the dressers stay where the are because what are dresser drawers if not just a stack of boxes to begin with. What remains to be packed are the dishes, the television and entertainment stuff (NetFlix box and DVD player), my computer, and the larger paintings on the wall (they are safer left hung up until there’s a place to put them on the truck). We dropped off about five bags to GoodWill and have a couple of boxes of old books to take to the local bookstore.

We still have to toss out the cat trees. We will be replacing them, but these ones are old and tattered. We were supposed to toss them last move, but I argued that we should bring them so the cats would have something with their scent on it to ease the transition and then once they were settled we could get rid of them (the trees, not the cats). Over a year later and we still have them, so I guess that argument isn’t going to work this time around. We also probably need to toss the bed.

The bed we’ve slept in as long as we lived together has been the daybed I had growing up. It’s a single with a trundle unit which we had popped up and pushed together forming a king-sized bed. Between the gap between the two beds and the sheer age of the bed, even the two layers foam we had piled on top did little to make it all that comfortable. But a new bed isn’t in the budget. It was also a concern to my parents though (what is that bed doing to our backs), and they have offered to buy us a new bed as a housewarming gift. Meanwhile TheBoyfriend™’s mom was getting rid of a queen size mattress that was not in great shape but tolerable for a guest bed. So we broke down our current bed last week and put that mattress directly on the floor. It was only after we broke down the old bed that we realized that the “queen” was actually a full. Nonetheless, that’s what we’re now sleeping on on the floor and will be after we move until the new bed comes in.

What had to be in the budget was a new fridge. There is no fridge currently in the new house. So we went to BestBuy last weekend just to look around, since it happened to be a tax-free weekend. We wanted brushed stainless, side-by-side or french door style (though I figured french doors were outside of our budget) and under $1,000. We found a Frigidaire that we liked pretty well for $899. But one of our fraternity brothers is the supervisor of the appliance section at the local BestBuy. He happened to be working that night and saw us and of course came over to say hi. When we told him we were interested in that fridge, he commented that they just got a brand new Whirlpool in that hadn’t been put on display yet that we might be interested in instead. He told us that they get alot more service calls about Frigidaires than Whirlpools (I’m not knocking Frigidaires, never owned one, just repeating what I was told). So after he brought the fridge out from the back so we could get a look at it, we decided we’d go with the Whirlpool. Some how, he was able to offer us the Whirlpool, priced at $939 for the $899 of the Frigidaire. Combine that with tax-free weekend and free shipping and we purchased our beautiful new fridge for only $900.00 even. It will be delivered on not this Friday (which is closing) but the next one. So for the first week, we’ll be getting by with my old college dorm fridge. Fortunately, we don’t have to be out of the current place until the 31st so we can leave or frozen stuff there in the meantime since the freezer in the college fridge is of course tiny as can be.

All in all, it’s very exciting and I just can’t wait to be moved in. I took Friday and Monday off of work. Friday to close and Monday to continue to unpack and hopefully take some time to just breathe. Electric and water is scheduled to switch over on Friday. I need to call on gas because they didn’t have an online form to start new service, but the only thing gas powered in the house right now is the furnace which we won’t need right away (in August) so I’m not super concerned about it. Internet is scheduled to be turned on Saturday (Monday at the latest). I’m counting down the days…