As I mentioned last week, we’ll no longer be using the words “t!ny” and “h0use” together in these posts, since it attracts waaaaay too many random hits, comments, and emails. I can’t deal with it. The past week has already been enough to where I’m having dreams about glow in the dark worms crawling into my pores or being chased by Trump around a Sam’s Club with some kind of chemical weapon in a spray paint can and only Chris Christie and the Scooby Doo gang for protection. Clearly I’m stretched to my mental capacity.

But anyway, the house is aaaaalmost ready to be lived in. It got leveled and set and anchored last week (which mostly just made me realize that nothing ever looks level to my eye, even when it absolutely is) and they installed the back porch fan, back screen door, all the other drawers, etc. The next thing to tackle was the electric, which is a very long story that I’m still far too traumatized to re-tell. Short version: it took two days, a lot of bruises, more expletives than even I knew I possessed, a tractor, an electrician (who is himself most of the story), and I learned waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more about electricity than I ever thought I would possibly need or care to know. When those lights finally came on at 11pm on Friday night, I could not possibly have been more relieved (yet also totally dead inside by that point).

On Saturday the SO came out to see it for the first time, and we finished unwrapping the appliances and looking at all the measurements for furniture options. We wanted a sofa with a chaise, but we also want a lift-top coffee table that can do double duty as an eating spot, and the reality is that we just can’t fit both without entirely filling up the room with furniture. So I think we’ll have to forego the chaise. We don’t have one on either of our couches now, so it’s not a huge loss. We also went up to Lowe’s and got a few big stepping-stone pavers to put in front of the stairs so that I stop tracking so much dirt in there on my quick trips in and out. Eventually we’ll put a little pea gravel walkway down, but the pavers were a quick and cheap temporary solution.

On Sunday we finally did a “giveaway day”. By this point I’ve donated 14 big black lawn bags of clothes/shoes/bags/small items over the last few weeks, but there was still a lot of random decor, books, small appliances, christmas stuff, rugs, a couple old rickity rocking chairs, bigger household items (like a couple hampers, an old vacuum, etc), and that kind of stuff left over that I didn’t really want to have to haul away to donate because it would have been several loads in the truck. So instead we put all that stuff in boxes, put up a FREE STUFF ad on Marketplace and Next Door, and let people just have at it. There were some good little gems in there, but nothing was really worth enough on it’s own to bother selling, and it definitely wasn’t worth enough collectively to justify having a garage sale during covid. All the stuff left in the house that IS worth selling (which isn’t much, mostly furniture) can go on Marketplace individually. But anyway, we put everything out with a sign and just left it there, and within 45mins everything was gone. Massively easy, and hopefully people got some stuff that made their day. It definitely made me feel a lot better to just have it all out of the house and off my list of problems.

Yesterday I made the 5-hour round trip drive up north to pick up our gray tank (and rolled over 150k miles in my truck in the process). I had to wait an hour at the place for someone to be available to load it, because they were busy loading HUGE tanks onto big trailers. It was a little frustrating because I could literally see my little tank sitting there just on the other side of the fence. But it was fine, once they got to me it took all of one minute to plop it in the back of my truck, I secured it with ratchet straps, and off we went back to the farm to drop it off.

I had measured and re-measured 4 times before ordering to be sure I got something that fit nicely under the back of the house, and it slid right in there like it was made for the space. Thank the lord. Later this week we’ll get everything hooked up to it. The water is hooked up at the house now too, so… I think we’re reeeaaally close to having a livable space. Hook up the tank, install the turdburner toilet…. then I think we’re there. After that stuff is done I’ll need to figure out getting WiFi service and skirting/back stairs, but those things aren’t quite as urgent as everything else, obviously.

Once the major stuff is settled and done, we’ll move on to acquiring the furniture and decorating. My brain just can’t quite handle that yet. All I really need in order to live there is a bed, which we’re moving from our house, and a few kitchen items, which will probably also move from our house, and towels, which I need to buy. The rest of the stuff can slowly be added as we go. I have some ideas, and a lot of stuff saved in Favorites. There’s not really much to acquire besides the sofa, coffee table, rugs, new bathroom towels, a couple items for the kitchen, and then whatever we decide to put in the reading nook and on the back porch. Ok, confession, I did already buy one of those hanging egg chairs for myself. It was on sale.

I can’t help it, I love the porch so much and I can’t wait to sit in that thing with a book and look out at the ponies. The porch is for sure the best spot to be.

Today I’m taking a quick pause from all things house because I’ve GOT to catch up on all the work I’ve missed over the past several days. I’ve been logging in early and late to get the bare necessities done, but everything else is piling up fast.

Hopefully next week everything will be done and ready to go and we can proceed to talking about move-in and furniture/decor, which I’m sure will probably be more interesting than all of this not-very-fun stuff. And hopefully I stop having insane, anxiety-filled, trippy AF dreams. That would be cool too.