Unfurnished House: Day 2

Until our PODS come on Jan. 6, I’ll be living in an unfurnished house with a dog, the Internet, the stuff we brought in our car, no job, and no cable or rabbit-ear TV.

Unfurnished House: Day 1

Day 2: Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Get up with John at 6 a.m.

Take Darra out. She only does half her business, but I’m too cold to care that I’ll have to go back out again soon. She’s distracted by every noise and enjoying herself. I’m not.

Eat breakfast. Darra also eats hers, which is good. Unload dishwasher. Make list of things to do today.

Back upstairs to unpack John’s remaining bags that he brought home yesterday. 4 piles of laundry to do.

Shower. Start first laundry load. Set timer downstairs in kitchen to remind myself the laundry is up there by the bedrooms.

Eat breakfast. Check email. Check Facebook. Post “Day 1” to blog. Ignore timer for laundry. Realize too much time has been spent online this morning. Typical.

Reboot laundry upstairs.

Feel guilty about ignoring Darra. Bring her toys to basement level where there’s carpet and play with her. Liveliest she’s been (INside the house) since we arrived.

Eat a snack.

DSL guy comes to set things up. While he’s busy, I do a walk-through for the rental company to indicate any pre-existing defects in the townhouse that they haven’t caught. I’m pickier, so I write down more than they did on the form. Don’t want to have to pay for damage that we didn’t do.

Check on laundry. Open double doors of laundry closet to find water dripping from cabinet knobs. Didn’t realize it would get that humid in there. Will keep closet doors open from now on. Discover that dryer didn’t dry at all. Change setting and try again. (We don’t have our washer/dryer now anyway, but when the POD comes, we’ll keep them in the garage instead of lugging one set down 2 flights of stairs, and lugging ours up 2 flights. Then repeating in reverse when we move out in 13 months.)

Walk Darra. She stops at the base of the stairway to each house, thinking it’s ours. (The front door of each house is on the second level, so you have to walk up a flight of stairs to get there. The stairs end at the sidewalk.)

Finish walk-through of house. Darra sleeps in sun on second-level deck. I scrounge for lunch. Spend way too much time on Facebook.

Reboot laundry. Discover that the lint trap in the dryer is NOT REMOVABLE. What kind of dryer is this. Does GE want the house to burn down around us? Have they not read the studies that show how easily lint in a dryer catches fire?? Reconsider switching out their dryer for ours, even with lugging up and down stairs.

Darra sleeps in sun on deck outside the kitchen while I look up dog parks in Raleigh.

Waste time on Internet.

Answer question on phone for person who replaced me at my job when we moved.

Reboot laundry. Take Darra outside to do her business.

Tired of house. Gate Darra into our bathroom, then go to mall down the street to check it out.

Crabtree Valley Mall is probably the biggest I’ve ever been to. It has a major parking garage that is, frankly, confusing and intimidating to someone who is the polar opposite of adventurous!! I’m mentally exhausted just trying to get in and park.

Walk the mall all the way around on level 1, then on level 2. Feel like a Mall Walker. Consider joining their Mall Walker group (hey, one holiday mall sign said that the mall walkers had a holiday party and got treated by Trade Secret!). Lots of “northern” fashion that is unfamiliar, but I would never wear anyway. (Try knit knee-length dress with tights and boots.)

Stop at a styling salon for prices. Stop at Payless. Stop at Franklin Covey store. Weirdly excited that there’s a Franklin Covey store! Never been to one. Linger for a long time, looking at planners. Wonder if I could get a part-time job there. And then get discounts.

Finish up at the mall, ready to go home. Mission accomplished: got to know the mall, and didn’t buy anything. Next hurdle: trying to get out of the parking garage. Even though my M.O. is to return the exact way I came in since by default it’s already “familiar,” that way involves awkward awful left-turn intersections in the parking garage. So I go out the back way, which is not familiar. But successfully leave the mall.

Come home to find that Darra broke out! She somehow upended the gate in the master bathroom doorway and has been trapped instead in the carpeted master bedroom. Good thing I shut the door just in case. Relief: no bathroom accidents or chewed up items. Just a wildly ecstatic dog who has no idea that we’re bummed the gate is no longer effective.

Darra and I go for our first mail run at this new address. We have real mail!

John comes home. We look up directions for how to get to various stores. Darra starts to play with her toys, the first time she’s done so by herself since we arrived.

Start dinner. Watch Reba on the plasma TV. Talk to John’s mom on the phone.

Clean up from dinner. Watch a British crime show, Wire in the Blood, on the plasma TV. Eat a British dessert called spotted dick.

Walk Darra, work our way through the neighborhood next to ours. Start a new book before going to bed.

Unfurnished House: Day 3

Unfurnished House: Day 4

Unfurnished House: Day 5

Unfurnished House: Day 6

Unfurnished House: Day 7