The Little Mayor Of East Jones Street

Nolan loves almost nothing better than spending the day on our big new front porch, watching all the cars come by, people walk by, and chatting with the neighbors. As I am inside unpacking boxes, I occasionally hear a squeaky “Hey Chester!!” or a “How’s it going Scott?” from the front and I know another neighbor has come home, or is hanging out or working around their house.

Right now we just line up folding chairs at the top of the stairs leading up to the porch to keep him from running down and playing too close to the street for our comfort. We will have to think of a more esthetically pleasing solution for this soon.

Project Move In- Update 5; Moving Day

Yesterday we managed to move 99% of our things from our old house to our new house. And let me tell you right off the bat- as somebody mentioned to me a few days ago; there is nothing like a move to let you know you have TOO MUCH STUFF! So much more than we need, it’s ridiculous. The amount of boxes and things we pulled out of all the crevices of our house made us look like a bunch of little hoarding, matchbox-collecting crazies. We definitely plan on spending the next couple of months going through it all and doing some serious purging. Not only because we don’t nearly have the storage space in our new house as we did in the last, but also because we just. don’t. need. all. this. stuff!

We each have our own issues when it comes to hanging on to things. Greg has various boxes of things he hangs onto for their increased value over time, things he hopes to pass on to Nolie one day so he can do with it as he wishes. I am thinking it will come in handy when college tuition is due.

I have the unavoidable curse of the crafter. When I have anything that can potentially be used in a craft of any kind at any time I will hold on to it for dear life, and I will not let go of it until I use it. Because you never know- if I throw it out and 5 years from then I am working on a craft that I need something like it and I will have thrown it out by then, WHAT WOULD I DO?!?

Then together we hold on to stuff like kids toys and clothes, my pregnancy (and after pregnancy) clothes, just in case we have more kiddels. But with all the pregnant and kids-having people around us we decided that we just needed to give it all to them, and surely when and if we need it again in the future we will probably get tons of it back.

So back to that move- Greg and a whole bunch of wonderful friends ended up having to make two trips in the 28 foot truck we rented, and as we were loading the second load into the new house, we suddenly heard tons of sirens, and saw a billowing cloud of black smoke from only one block south of our house. Most of us walked around the block to see what was going on, and lo and behold- a house was on fire! Many people from the neighborhood had come to watch what was going on, and after asking a few people who were on their front porch across the street from the burning house I found out that somebody had actually SET the fire, and the house was known as a ‘drug house’. The fact that we have drug houses in the neighborhood is no surprise to us, but somebody lighting a fire to one was not something we expected. Not this soon anyways. The story has been on the news, and you can read more about it here

We spent last night on our new house for the first time, and it was great. Mid move, when we had finally finishes packing up all the loads at the old house I was getting very tired and worn down. But as soon as I walked in to the new house and saw all our stuff albeit piled in boxes and paths barely visible between them from room to room, I got so excited about finally moving into this cool old house, in downtown Raleigh, with all the painted walls and refinished floors, that I was entirely re-energized and was able to move boxes, unpack boxes and build beds as if I had just been on a 3 week vacation.

Today, however it’s a different story. I am sore and tired and all I want to do is sleep. A lot. Possibly this has more to do with the four beers I drank on our wonderful new front porch at the end of the day.