Hurry up and wait: a moving experience

Those of you who follow my blog know I've been helping my friend Dana move to her new home. She and her husband hired a moving company to move them about a mile from one home to another. Now I have moved, but I have either done it myself (when I moved to Wichita), or my company hired movers to pack and move me. I've never been on site when movers were involved. Here is the saga of Dana's move.


The movers were supposed to be there between 8 and 8:30. They were late, but Whisper took it all in stride.

Before you ask, this is NOT BLEUBEARD. It's Dana's cat Whisper, who could be Bleubeard's twin, except he doesn't wear a collar and Bleubeard does. Whisper is unaffected by the hustle and bustle as Dana, Richard, and I finish all the details of the move.


While waiting, Dana and Frankie spend some quality time on her back patio.


Finally! That's my motto, too: GET A MOVE ON.


Richard is showing the guys where to park as they block the street.


After about an hour and a half, they are making a bit of progress.


About 1:oo pm, Dana and I head to her new house, where these things are waiting to be loaded onto the truck going back to Dana's. They will be sold at her sale.


It's time for me to make coffee and Richard's brother John and his wife Jenn show me where the coffee is stored.


Still no movers, so Jenn and Dana head to the back yard to inspect the new gate


while Dana's dog Roxie meets her new neighbor.


Wow, the neighbor doesn't want to play. Might have something to do with the fence being in the way.

Still no movers. We thought we were just ahead of them, but John, Ryan (Dana's son), and I had time to remove the built in microwave above the new gas stove while we waited.

Finally. It was my responsibility to show the movers where to put the basement furniture. You can see Dana's loom in the background and the chairs the movers dumped in the center of the room. It took them over 11 hours to move the furniture and everything was boxed and ready to go. I think I know who I wouldn't call if I had to move, but that's just me. Dana said Richard was quite happy with the move. And that is all that matters in any moving experience.

Today's blog is all about recycling. I could not end the month without one final recycling blog. This one is called Olympia Dumpster Divers. Olympia's own Ruby Re-usable started the project in 2006. Here is the blurb quoted directly from the site:

Olympia Dumpster Divers was started in 2006 by Ruby Re-Usable to promote the appreciation of art from recycled, reused, discarded, unwanted, unloved, tossed and found, pre- and post- consumer waste materials.

Challenging perception and creating new ways to look at the world is what artists do. Recycled artists do this not only by their choice of subject matter but through their deliberate choice of unconventional materials, forcing the viewer to reconsider preconceived notions of what materials are appropriate for creating art . The most successful recycled artists elevate recycled art above mere novelty and whimsy, beyond egg cartons and cardboard tubes, past the goofiness of randomly gluing a bunch of junk together and calling it modern art; they are serious artists with a sense of humor, engaged in heroic acts of trashformation. Ruby Re-Usable, March 23, 2007

I agree that these artists have a sense of humor. Some of the art will make you laugh and some will have you marveling at the amount of waste that can be salvaged when confronted by an artist's imagination. Enjoy this fun site.