Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Departure of the Packrat
Well, the days have come to pack it up and slip the tent.
At the beginning of last year, I was just out of the hospital and facing radiation therapy. I got through that experience, had several knock backs that sent me reeling back into the hospital. One of them was a pretty nasty bladder infection. The night we were taking me to the hospital for that, I fell going down my back stairs on the way to the car. I could not get up without help. That was a sobering shocker.
Then my sister Cindy fell down in her apartment and broke her leg in several places and had a horrible time getting to the phone and getting an ambulance to help her. That was enough for me.
Michael and Christine drew a line in the sand and said we will not go on with having a second child and still paying rent on a house that is not ours.
We all got together and worked out a plan. They would find a house that had a mother-in-law suite for me and I would give them some help with their down payment.
They found a split level house that they liked, 3 bedroom-2 bath upstairs and a bedroom, bath and 'bonus' room downstairs. I looked it over and liked it, too.
Thus our merger started back in June. Christine and Michael closed and moved in. I started to sell my house.
My neighborhood is in transition. It is an older development called Ashford Park (early 1950s) inside the perimeter north of Buckhead and has an Atlanta address. The neighborhood is being 'in-filled' with $500K to $1.5M homes. MARTA is nearby. It is a sort of central location between highways 75, 85 and 400.
I have a quarter acre lot. It is three tiered, stepped to handle the steepness of the hill down to the street. It is at the end of a long down sloping street ending in my cul-de-sac. Across the street the houses are layed on their plots to accomodate a small creek that runs down the front of their properties. There is one street light on the block, across the street from my house.
The house had a long flat facade, four steps up to the door and a typical 50s ranch-style floor plan - living room-dining room, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a kitchen. In this neighborhood, there are no garages, but there are attached covered parking areas for cars. Mine happened to be next to the kitchen, so the previous owners enclosed the space to make a sort of family room with a fireplace. It was unfinished when I moved in.
The other surprising feature was the washing machine was in the kitchen, next to the portable dishwasher. It was in pride of place. It was almost as if every housewife wanted to show off her machine that had come in from the back shed and looked better than the tub and lye process they had been using to do their laundering before they got a spanking new house. It is such a Southern thing -- no garages and washing machines in your kitchen. You see it everywhere.
One of the previous owners of the house was an electrician, so the old electrical service with its fuses was replaced with a breaker box and switches to flip. The roof had two service heads poking up and made you wonder if I had a basement full of floodlights for my 'cash crop' hobby. None of the switches in the box was marked correctly for the room it serviced, so it was a lottery of flipping when you needed to turn off an outlet somewhere. Finally, in the end, the electricity for the outlets and front door light just gave up and would not work anylonger. But that was my secret.
I put the house up for sale at the end of July at a sort of 'as is' price. Most houses were selling and being torn down for replacement upgrades (in-filled). I received a reasonable offer on the first day, but stupidly got stubborn and turned it down. I wanted to see how the market would go on the price I was asking and did not yet have a feel for the house's place in the market. Little did I know it would be the best offer I would get.
I lived in an aged glass house for six months as folks wandered in and out on a moments whim. Finally, I received several offers in November and early December and the final offer was received and the contract closed on the 29th of December.
Now I pack up, discard, winnow through a house full of stuff. I have bought a new refrigerator and a new bed. I have an estimated 80 boxes of books, two full wall mirrors and about 30 boxes for my china and crystal glass collections. Slowly, no trip unpunished, I have had Michael take off the tools and gardening shed stuff. Now I only have a table and a half full of tools left to pack and move.
It seems I collect --
tools
china collector plates
china service for 12
bar crystal service for 18
misc glass objects
baskets
tin boxes
ceramic eggs
sea shells and display wall boxes
game machines (in their original boxes)
game machine games
pc games
massively framed mirrors
tvs
and books ----
history books
english books
novels from the 40s
mysteries from the 40s
Anne Rice books
childrens books
great books of the western world
economics
books on Eleanor Roosevelt
books by Winston Churchhill
a leather bound Agatha Christie collection
medieval mysteries
modern mysteries
and just about every Science Fiction/Fantasy book in existance, generally organized into complete works of Orson Scott Card, Asimov, Heinlein, Spider Robinson, Lackey, McAffrey, Auel, Norton, Zimmerman, etc..
What a pack rat I am.
After much searching, I found that the Salvation Army still comes and does pickups. So my washer, dryer, stove, dishwasher, refrigerator, old bookcases, flimsy dining table and chairs, the long front room couch and various stuffed chairs have found new homes. Hopefully, they will be welcomed into someone's home and not be bulldozed into junk when they tear down this house.
I take with me the cut-glass lamps and the framed Rembrandt poster, "The Girl at the Half Door". They are testaments to my good taste.
The painter lady is working at the new house, making my new bedroom a sort of fleshy peach and the rest of the area downstairs a brightening, light-toned bisque. I am hoping that my 14 dark russian cherry bookcases will fit in the space and not clash too much with the grey rough wood panelling.
I have been trying to keep things in perspective as I work. There are so many people sitting in the middle of a muddle and a puddle down south right now. I am lucky. I throw away the things I don't want. They had their things snatched away by the wind and the water. They did not have a choice.
I did have a moment with Michael on Saturday. In a tube hiding in the bag that I keep my rolls of wrapping paper was his drawings and poster collection. The tube had his original Star Wars posters, and his original Dungeon and Dragons campaign maps, hand drawn and meticulously inked in color by a focused 14 year old boy.
It seems there are some things it is worth being a packrat over.
At the beginning of last year, I was just out of the hospital and facing radiation therapy. I got through that experience, had several knock backs that sent me reeling back into the hospital. One of them was a pretty nasty bladder infection. The night we were taking me to the hospital for that, I fell going down my back stairs on the way to the car. I could not get up without help. That was a sobering shocker.
Then my sister Cindy fell down in her apartment and broke her leg in several places and had a horrible time getting to the phone and getting an ambulance to help her. That was enough for me.
Michael and Christine drew a line in the sand and said we will not go on with having a second child and still paying rent on a house that is not ours.
We all got together and worked out a plan. They would find a house that had a mother-in-law suite for me and I would give them some help with their down payment.
They found a split level house that they liked, 3 bedroom-2 bath upstairs and a bedroom, bath and 'bonus' room downstairs. I looked it over and liked it, too.
Thus our merger started back in June. Christine and Michael closed and moved in. I started to sell my house.
My neighborhood is in transition. It is an older development called Ashford Park (early 1950s) inside the perimeter north of Buckhead and has an Atlanta address. The neighborhood is being 'in-filled' with $500K to $1.5M homes. MARTA is nearby. It is a sort of central location between highways 75, 85 and 400.
I have a quarter acre lot. It is three tiered, stepped to handle the steepness of the hill down to the street. It is at the end of a long down sloping street ending in my cul-de-sac. Across the street the houses are layed on their plots to accomodate a small creek that runs down the front of their properties. There is one street light on the block, across the street from my house.
The house had a long flat facade, four steps up to the door and a typical 50s ranch-style floor plan - living room-dining room, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a kitchen. In this neighborhood, there are no garages, but there are attached covered parking areas for cars. Mine happened to be next to the kitchen, so the previous owners enclosed the space to make a sort of family room with a fireplace. It was unfinished when I moved in.
The other surprising feature was the washing machine was in the kitchen, next to the portable dishwasher. It was in pride of place. It was almost as if every housewife wanted to show off her machine that had come in from the back shed and looked better than the tub and lye process they had been using to do their laundering before they got a spanking new house. It is such a Southern thing -- no garages and washing machines in your kitchen. You see it everywhere.
One of the previous owners of the house was an electrician, so the old electrical service with its fuses was replaced with a breaker box and switches to flip. The roof had two service heads poking up and made you wonder if I had a basement full of floodlights for my 'cash crop' hobby. None of the switches in the box was marked correctly for the room it serviced, so it was a lottery of flipping when you needed to turn off an outlet somewhere. Finally, in the end, the electricity for the outlets and front door light just gave up and would not work anylonger. But that was my secret.
I put the house up for sale at the end of July at a sort of 'as is' price. Most houses were selling and being torn down for replacement upgrades (in-filled). I received a reasonable offer on the first day, but stupidly got stubborn and turned it down. I wanted to see how the market would go on the price I was asking and did not yet have a feel for the house's place in the market. Little did I know it would be the best offer I would get.
I lived in an aged glass house for six months as folks wandered in and out on a moments whim. Finally, I received several offers in November and early December and the final offer was received and the contract closed on the 29th of December.
Now I pack up, discard, winnow through a house full of stuff. I have bought a new refrigerator and a new bed. I have an estimated 80 boxes of books, two full wall mirrors and about 30 boxes for my china and crystal glass collections. Slowly, no trip unpunished, I have had Michael take off the tools and gardening shed stuff. Now I only have a table and a half full of tools left to pack and move.
It seems I collect --
tools
china collector plates
china service for 12
bar crystal service for 18
misc glass objects
baskets
tin boxes
ceramic eggs
sea shells and display wall boxes
game machines (in their original boxes)
game machine games
pc games
massively framed mirrors
tvs
and books ----
history books
english books
novels from the 40s
mysteries from the 40s
Anne Rice books
childrens books
great books of the western world
economics
books on Eleanor Roosevelt
books by Winston Churchhill
a leather bound Agatha Christie collection
medieval mysteries
modern mysteries
and just about every Science Fiction/Fantasy book in existance, generally organized into complete works of Orson Scott Card, Asimov, Heinlein, Spider Robinson, Lackey, McAffrey, Auel, Norton, Zimmerman, etc..
What a pack rat I am.
After much searching, I found that the Salvation Army still comes and does pickups. So my washer, dryer, stove, dishwasher, refrigerator, old bookcases, flimsy dining table and chairs, the long front room couch and various stuffed chairs have found new homes. Hopefully, they will be welcomed into someone's home and not be bulldozed into junk when they tear down this house.
I take with me the cut-glass lamps and the framed Rembrandt poster, "The Girl at the Half Door". They are testaments to my good taste.
The painter lady is working at the new house, making my new bedroom a sort of fleshy peach and the rest of the area downstairs a brightening, light-toned bisque. I am hoping that my 14 dark russian cherry bookcases will fit in the space and not clash too much with the grey rough wood panelling.
I have been trying to keep things in perspective as I work. There are so many people sitting in the middle of a muddle and a puddle down south right now. I am lucky. I throw away the things I don't want. They had their things snatched away by the wind and the water. They did not have a choice.
I did have a moment with Michael on Saturday. In a tube hiding in the bag that I keep my rolls of wrapping paper was his drawings and poster collection. The tube had his original Star Wars posters, and his original Dungeon and Dragons campaign maps, hand drawn and meticulously inked in color by a focused 14 year old boy.
It seems there are some things it is worth being a packrat over.
