Dusting Off the Ol' Blog.....

Hello!!!!  How is everyone in blogland?  I've been incommunicado for 2 months.  Can you believe it?  I missed all of you and I miss reading all the blog posts and everything else that is going on. It has been a whirlwind of busy and too-much-to-do along with work and trips to Santa Fe and 50-11 billion other things.  Let's do a really quick catch up and then I'll try to get back into blogging again.  I also hope to get back to commenting and (fingers crossed) sewing again soon. I also need to respond to 700 emails at least so if you haven't heard from me--I'll be getting to that too.

Warning: there has been no sewing for me these past few months, although I did *enjoy* packing up my sewing room (not) and 50-11 million UFOs (double not).

Another warning:  LOOOOOONG POST follows.

OK. Ready. Set. Go. Two months in a flash-----------

September:  
Week of Sept. 6th 

S. and I drove to Santa Fe to find a rental house in his car packed to the roof with stuff.  I fell in love with Santa Fe.  I will dwell more on Santa Fe in another post.

Palace of the Governors

Downtown buildings

Our historic Route 66 hotel and homebase while searching for a place to live

After an exhausting (and at times discouraging) search for a place that would accept four cats (apparently this is an unacceptable number of cats even though they are the four cutest, most well-behaved, sweetest cats on the face of the Earth), we finally found a little adobe house and it was perfect! Wonderful neighborhood, S. can walk to work, we can walk everywhere, and it is just the cutest little house ever.

After finding a house and getting S. settled, we had some free time so we got married at the magistrate courthouse on Thursday, September 12.  Yes, we did.  We had a wonderful little civil ceremony, S. made dinner, and I bought a cake.  It was exactly what we wanted and we were so happy to get married and start our new life in our new hometown.

I came back to Atlanta on Saturday, Sept. 14, leaving S. to start work in Santa Fe.

Rest of September
Packing, packing, packing, and more packing.  Also repainting all the rooms in my house and getting house ready to sell.

Gomez was in charge of packing quilts.  

October:
More work on house. My parents came down from Michigan (Dad for 2 1/2 weeks and Mom for a week) to help.  I owe them forever for the amount of work they did and can't thank them enough.  Also, the cats loved having more people to spoil them. I know Stella misses my mom already.

We needed to get most of our furniture and stuff (including all the sewing stuff) moved to Santa Fe and leave some items to "stage" the house for sale so S. flew back from NM on October 12th to load up and drive the moving truck.  We also needed to get the cats moved so I rented a car to chauffeur them for the 20 hour drive.

Monday, October 14: Moving day.

I was prepared as one could be faced with driving 1,400 miles over 2 days with 4 cats who don't like car rides and have never lived anywhere else but our house in GA. And an overnight hotel stop.

2013 Dodge Dart fits 4 cat carriers in the backseat

Here are the cats all lined up in the back seat in their cat carriers ( from front: Gomez, Remy, Edgar, and Stella)

Gomez meowed in quiet protest from our house to past Birmingham, Alabama.  This is what he said:

MAOW
(pause)
MAOW
(pause)
MAOW
(pause)

(repeat)

The others meowed periodically just to remind me that they were in the back seat.

Otherwise they were wonderful during the drive through Alabama, Mississippi, corner of Tennessee, and Arkansas.  We stopped for the night near Fort Smith on Arkansas' western border.  5 states done!

After their first elevator ride (!), we set the cats loose in the hotel room and they all hid under the furniture.  After awhile they found their food, water, litter boxes (I bought disposable ones), and began to explore.

Gomez kicked back in the comfy bed

Gomez living it up at the Holiday Inn Express

Remy and Stella exploring the hotel room

After a take-out dinner of fabulous chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes (yes, I treated good kitties to a taste of mashed potatoes--Gomez loved them), we settled in for some sleep.








At 3:30AM, the cats decided to run off all the reserved energy for the day and woke me up by running around like maniacs, knocking things around, and diving into suitcases ( a Twitter friend of mine compared it to British rock bands of the 1970s trashing hotels LOL). It was the funniest thing ever.  S. slept through it all. I just laughed and laughed.






Day two:  720 more miles to go.
The cats were well-behaved again although I could tell they were tired of being in the car.   We drove across the whole length of Oklahoma.  The cats slept through the Texas panhandle and finally after a 10 hour day, we arrived at our house in Santa Fe.

















The cats were happy to be out of the car and happy to have their cat toys and cat tree and food dishes and a new place to explore.  It wasn't long before they were settled in and made themselves at home.
After a very quick week of unpacking (except for the sewing room), I was flying back to Atlanta to get the house in order.

And that's where I am now--getting the house ready to list and working. S. and the cats are in Santa Fe.  I miss them.