There are lots and lots of people named "joyce" in this world. I am probably not the joyce you are looking for. If you add me, I don't know you from Adam, I look at your journal and 1) there's nothing there or 2) it's obvious you're looking for someone else, I'm not going to add you. Easy enough?

Things I will not miss about this house:

- the damn acorns shelling us the entire early fall
- the gas stove
- the insect life, especially the spiders
- the suburban neighborhood


Things I will miss:

- the extra bathroom

Turkey procured. There are 7 of us for dinner, one of whom is a vegetarian, and it's 14 pounds. I see turkey soup, turkey enchiladas, and turkey salad in our future next week. And quite possibly turkey going home with Hope, if she wants it.

Since next week is the last week of the semester at the uni, and our first week in the new house, that will work out nicely.

So, this morning we fixed my car, starting with replacing the fuel pump. (Well, I say "we". In the interest of full disclosure, I mostly held tools and flashlights. Jeff is the one who got to dig around in the gas tank wearing latex gloves.) It still didn't turn over. It'd crank, and it sounded like it was thinking really hard about starting, but wouldn't. Finally, in puzzlement, Jeff started pulling spark plugs and verifying that they were sparking. He turned the ignition with them all out, then put them back in (and now I know how easy that is), and... then the car started.

Current working theory is that on Monday, when I tried to start my car, the "you're almost out of oil, you moron" (which is a bit concerning - I was almost out, it turns out; we checked that over the course of the week too) system kicked in and killed the start. However, the couple of seconds it was trying to start flooded the engine, which apparently you're not supposed to be able to do in a fuel-injected car.

I console myself with the idea that the fuel pump will now outlive the car.

Meanwhile and during and a couple of phone calls later, we decided to try to beat the rain and get a load in my cousin's freaking huge truck before the rain came down. He came over, we loaded up his car and Jeff's, and we zoomed over to the new house. His parents came over, we got unloaded, and we gave them the nickle and dime tour. They proposed coming over here to get another load while we worked on breakers, but we had no idea where to tell them to get started, so we sent them home, and we're glad we did - it started coming down about 15 minutes later.

We got some breakers hooked up - we're down to the two new breakers we need to add to finish the living room and do the kitchen and bathroom - and then packed up and came home.

Nice, productive day. Tired joyce.

Reasons I love the internet: I can watch Supernatural with faecat from across the country. :)

Today we did the farmer's market in the morning, and then took some more stuff over to the new house. We continued to work on wiring - most of the main floor is rewired now, thanks to what we did today and what Jeff has done this week. We just need to wire the fridge and the bathroom outlet onto one breaker, and attach the breakers tomorrow morning, and the main floor *should* be done.

Mid-afternoon, one of our favorite cousins (well, my dad's cousin's wife) came by the house, since she was out delivering something or the other from a church drawing. She was pleased at the house, and pleased for us. As a volunteer firefighter, she seemed happy with our wiring efforts (woot) and very unhappy with the former wiring (it's not a good sign when a firefighter makes faces continually, mutters about code, and says something about God looking out for children and idiots.) It was great big fun to show off the house, and simply lovely to see her.

We were set for a 1 to 5 delivery window for our (new!!) stove and fridge. The Lowes' delivery guys called at 5:15 to say that they were coming, but they were in Madison (a good 45 miles north and west of us). They rolled in at 6:15. They had to take the doors off the fridge to get it into the house. By the time everything was in and unpacked and put back together, it was 7:15.

Luckily, Jeff's mom took it upon herself to make dinner tonight. That was a very nice surprise, especially since we were hours later than we expected.

We're supposed to be moving big stuff tomorrow, but the forecast is "High: 48°F RealFeel®: 43°F, Chilly with considerable cloudiness; rain overspreading the area in the afternoon". I don't want to haul around my 60 year old dad and uncle and aunt in that weather, so we're postponing. Dad said he could help some this week (I love my family) and we can get big stuff next Sunday, too.

So, tomorrow before the weather opens up, we'll replace the fuel pump in my long suffering car, load up with more stuff, and go work on the breakers.

I am so glad this is a short week.

Anyone know of a good video resource that discussed non-monogamous relationships and other "non-traditional" family relationships in a sane, balanced, responsible fashion?

So, yesterday we did our farmer's market thing, then came home and unloaded and loaded up some stuff in the cars, and Jeff and his mom drove off to the new house, with me trailing. I went and picked up my mom, and took her over to the house (which she didn't know about yet.) (I also timed the drive: 5 minutes, the way I drive.) She was surprised and pleased (and sleepy, I think I caught her pre-nap.) Dad came over and looked at the inside of the house for awhile with Jeff, home repair geeking out. Eventually, mom dad and Val and went home. We walked around and started making a list of things needed for the round of repairs that needs to happen before we move in.

( cut for supply list )

We drove into Burlington for lunch and Home Depot. When we got back, we started in the kitchen, because I was not feeling patient enough for wiring. The first thing that needed to happen in there was moving a very large, very awkwardly placed base cabinet. It chopped up the wall that the fridge and stove will go on, making the fridge space too narrow for the one we want. It was floor to ceiling, making the top half pretty unusable for me. There was an outlet behind it, that the former occupants had accessed by cutting a hole in the backing of the cabinet. And so forth.

We thought this was going to be pretty easy - unscrew it from the wall, pull it out. Well, it turns out that the cabinet was taller than the ceiling. Instead of getting a cabinet to fit the space, they'd gotten whatever they wanted - probably whatever was cheap - and then sheetrocked AROUND the cabinet, so that it was stuck in the ceiling.

Long story short, the cabinet eventually came apart, not out. At that point, we discovered that during the house's history, people had put down a layer of linoleum over another layer of linoleum over some fiberboard over 2 more layers of linoleum ... over wood floors. It looks like we have wood floors in our kitchen, which you can kind of see in this picture. We are terribly pleased, and cleaning that up is on today's list.

Watching Supernatural for the first time:

(8:15:11 PM) Joyce: holy shit, has the ATF seen that trunk?

(8:47:14 PM) Joyce: it's... Dukes of Hazard meets X-Files

One of the first things up on the list is gardening. :)

I want to try no-till gardening. That means that over this winter, I need to work on getting a good amount of compost built up.

I also need to figure out what we want to grow, when they need to get started, and whether we'll want to start from seeds or seedlings. Off the top of my head, I figure we'll want (eventually, we might not start with all this)...

- tomatoes
- onions
- garlic
- potatoes
- green peppers
- red peppers
- cucumbers
- eggplant
- zucchini
- yellow squash
- strawberries (I'd like to try everbearing or day neutral)
- raspberries
- blackberries
- blueberries
- spinach
- collards
- lettuce

[eta]
- asparagus
- green beans
- baby watermelon
- cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli

Anyone have suggestions for what's easiest to get started with?

Also, we think we want chickens. Which is going to take a lot of research.