Bed without the Breakfast

We're staying the night in Sioux Falls, in a Victorian house that was once pretty elegant but now could use a little TLC. The owner is very busy getting ready for her wedding, and offered, at a reduced rate, the bed without the breakfast.

We got here late because of detours. The Missouri is flooded.

Packing Day--grace in the corners

The most important purpose of our trip--after being present for the birth of our grandson, of course--is to deliver a carload of building materials Mike accumulated from online sites over the past six months. I was already worried about how full the car would be, and then he started pulling out of the closet a lot more things that he had bought for an earlier move that never happened. Packing enough clothes and household items to live out there for a month or two is a low priority that got lower all the time as space shrunk. We literally packed our clothes in the small spaces left between the antique shutters, Victorian light fixtures, and an antique washstand that will be turned into a bathroom sink cabinet.

I confess I wasn't very happy when I saw ceiling vents and light fixtures take the place that I thought would be reserved for luggage. But Mike and I tried earnestly to make this work while maintaining a Christian attitude. We each have a modest-sized carry-on type bag. I packed with clothes I didn't want rumpled, so I'll be wearing better and less summery clothes than I would have normally wanted to travel in. Not quite as bad as The Poisonwood Bible, where the main characters wore multiple layers of clothes on the airplane, to avoid paying extra weight...

But with a few sacrifices, we have made it! One of the sacrifices was leg room for me. Not such a great sacrifice. Sometimes there is an advantage to having short legs.

We leave behind three cats:

Jubilee, the Siamese, went to German professor Gabriele: When we took her to Gabriele's house, she was angry. She had seen our other two cats leave the house in carriers, and I think she knew she was being abandoned (from her perspective). But she's starting to adjust. She and her Siamese buddy Piccolo are racing through the house at midnight. Gabriele has trained Piccolo to sleep at night and then get up with her at 5 a.m. Gabriele will try to train her to do the same. Let's see if German fortitude can win over Siamese willfulness.

Abby, the overweight tabby: A man in Jackson took our other two cats. It wasn't love at first sight. But Abby warmed to him slowly, and I think he's warming to her too. He says she sleeps beside him on the couch, and plays with the kitten he adopted a few days later. Abby must be happy. All she wants out of life is to have a buddy and to be a couch potato.

Clea went with Abby, and seemed to make a quicker adjustment. She slept on the guy's bed the first night. Then, at the first opportunity, she ran out the door and disappeared. I was pretty upset. I had trusted God to safe homes for the cats, and then Clea took it on herself to run off.

Cats do find their way home. Clea was only a couple of miles from her old home. She's a good hunter, and savvy about coyotes. I looked at a city map, and the most direct route between her new home and her old home is through city parks and quiet streets. She could actually make it. It might take her weeks or even months, but there's no real hurry because we'll be gone for a month or two.

Wouldn't it make a great novel ending for her to come home? But this is real life.

Leaving day approaches.

We're leaving for Seattle a week from tomorrow. I say "leaving," not "moving," because the house in Jackson remains as full as ever of 33 years of living, and it is not yet on the market for sale. We should be returning in a month or two. We have an apartment to rent for September, and maybe longer. Caitlin's baby is due on the 17th, and after September we will play it by ear.

The cats are gone. We are attending many "last suppers," as Mike calls them, with friends we won't see for a while.

Now to the packing. It's going to be a mega-episode of "Clean House"!