Our 25-year-old Amana fridge crapped out over the weekend. Or, not crapped out so much as went into hyperspeed overdrive. It froze everything. It wouldn’t stop running. I wanted someone to prank-call me with an “Is your refrigerator running,” so I could scream at them “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAKE IT STOP. I’m tired of drinking my milk with a fork.” It was sucking down kilowatts like candy.

So we bought a new one. It wasn’t worth it to fix the old one, which sucks.

So. New fridge. It wasn’t the bottom of the line — we shelled out an extra $6 for the glass bins.

Yaaaay.

I have awesome timing. Or maybe it’s my house that has awesome timing.

So this weekend, Friday night, there’s this sewer drain in the basement that started expressing its displeasure with us in an odiferously vehement way. To my knowledge, I had never done anything to piss off the drain, but there it was, its muddy water rising and stinking up the place. Iain’s repeated attempts to stick long sharp things in there bore no fruit, so we actually had to call a plumber. I’ve never had to call a plumber before. Also, for the first time, I had to tear my toddler off a sewer-water-covered man. The plumber, I mean. Mac took an instant and cheerful liking to him.

Fortunately, for just a little less than the cost of Christmas, Mr Rooter fixed (or appeared to fix; time will tell) the problem. Smell gone! We dance and rejoice.

Then, because I am evidently on a roll, I conclude that other, more longstanding home-improvement tasks needed to be finished with a quickness. Screw preparing for Christmas; the guest room doesn’t have curtains.

Now. A prelude. Have you ever been to Robinson Town Center? It’s a giant, giant shopping … place. Big box stores and the mall and strip malls and pretty much anything I — or anyone else in Southwestern Pennsylvania — could want to buy. And of course, on the Saturday before Christmas, we’re all there buying stuff. Hundreds, perhaps millions of people, each one intent on completing their list. I waded through all this humanity to Ikea. I bought some curtains I never would have bought were I not on a race to the checkout line. I completed my mission in a perfectly acceptable amount of time. Then I had the bright idea to pop in to Toys R Us next door, which sapped my vitality for the foreseeable future. (Honestly. Could they maybe employ a few more checkout types? Did they not see this coming?)

Wearied, but pressing on, I made two more quick stops, for primer and paint and groceries, and the I was home, a mere four hours after I’d left. I suppose in some circles that could be considered an achievement, but Iain’s face showed me that he wished I’d done it about three hours and forty-five minutes quicker.

Saturday night, some strange feeling came over me. Usually all I want to do after dinner is sit, knit, maybe drink a cup of tea. But instead, in a fit of madness, I primed the kitchen cabinets while Iain gave the kids their baths. I was like a woman possessed. I even had a modern-day romantic musical (“Once”) waiting for me in the DVD player, and still I worked.

Sunday morning, as the sun rose and the kids ate their Rice Krispies, I gave the cabinets two coats of glossy white paint. I don’t know where the energy came from, because “inert” is my middle name. I also spray painted black each tiny piece of original hardware. One door gets: 1 handle, 2 bolts, 2 hinges, 4 screws; multiply by oh, I don’t know, 20 doors? And by last night Iain hung them all — well, all the ones we had, causing me to realize the other six doors were in my in-laws’ basement, leaving our kitchen with a distinct gap-toothed look.

Anyway, the point is that I worked harder this weekend than I ever like to work, but now I have a half-finished kitchen and a non-befouled basement to show for it! (And partially hemmed guest room curtains, if we’re being specific!) I feel like maybe I should be learning some sort of lesson from this.

Oh my God. It’s not the moving that takes a while, it’s the damn unpacking. Lord. Half this house is still a disaster zone. But I do have a few teasers for you. Which, hmm. That makes it sound as though you should be expecting something awesome. You should not be. It’s still all my same hand-me-down furniture, just in a different, older, draftier house.

Whatever. It’s MY house, though. I like that. I like this house. I sense great potential here.

bedroom

kitchen

kitchen detail which still amuses me

Today begins phase-one possession-moving, as I twittered last night. My husband and some of my in-laws are moving our stuff from the storage unit into the new, clean, fixed-up house today, while I stay at Grandma’s and kid-wrangle. I have a trunk full of new curtains and a burning, itching desire to get in that house and make some decorating. It’s killing me that I have to stay back when there’s unpacking to be done. I mean, I’ve been mulling furniture arrangements in my head for six weeks and hoarding copies of Domino like they were Twinkies.

I am ready. We’re so close I can taste it. Tastes like polyurethane and Sheetrock, but damn it, people, I’ll take it. Have you seen the light this place gets? Let me at it.

Heya! Have we been living with my in-laws for three months? You betcha! Is my new house, for which I am dutifully paying the dumb ol’ mortgage every month without benefit of actually living in it, a big ol’ mess? You betcha! (or, “tu betchus!”)

I cannot believe I thought we’d get all this work done in a week or two. A WEEK OR TWO. We closed on this sucker Aug. 29 and Iain and my father-in-law (and me and my mother-in-law when we don’t have the kids) have been busting ASS at every opportunity. But as it goes with money pits, as soon as you solve one problem two more pop up. Right now the men are trying to get the wiring, which snakes through our black hole of an attic, to not be quite so much of a fire danger. Then maybe we can hang some ceiling fans, patch up all the holes in the ceilings, paint what hasn’t been painted and clean this place the heck up.

The good news is that we sort of have a deadline: Halloween. Or Halloween-ish. My sister-in-law and her family are coming in from Texas and there’s six of them, plus four of us, plus Ma and Pa, plus the dog, and those numbers do not add up to “three-bedroom ranch.” So we’re going to get us and our stuff out of the guest rooms by then and by God, if I have to do it all by myself in the rain we are going to move in to the new house.

Patience has never been a virtue I’ve been acquainted with.

Meanwhile, since we’ve been here Cormac has learned to walk and even talk a little bit, and Owen is using vocab words like “exhausted” and “autopilot.” I still drive him 45 minutes to school twice a week and last weekend I heard him say, when my mother-in-law mentioned this thing they have called Sunday School, “School on Sunday? YEAH!”

I also went to a fall festival in one of the many little towns ‘round here where I overheard this sentence, which quite perfectly sums up the region sometimes: “Oh no. You have hay in your mullet.”

Not that we live here yet, but this new town we’re moving to is Le Sweet. Did I tell you that yet? Holy shit. Stars Hollow minus Lorelai’s hyperspeed banter. I love it. And people actually TRICK OR TREAT around here, unlike the neighborhood we moved from in Baltimore, where the trick was dodging glass bottles and the treat was that mythical day you finally got your hands around the neck of the hooligan who knocked out a hole in your siding.

Ah, but that’s olden days. We’re in limbo right now, and I’ve never liked limbo, but soon (?) we’ll be in Small Town Paradise, and everything will be lovely, and you’ll all be invited to the housewarming.