Yet Another Moving Report

This one about the cats and dog:

The little dog adjusted right away. He loves it here. He especially loves all the many windows that run floor to ceiling that he can look out of, watching vigilantly for bunnies and birds and squirrels, but also leaves that blow across the yard. Each time, he barks wildly and demands to be let out to chase them.

The cats have finally emerged from hiding, but now they wander the house wailing. Once they find me (specifically me, mostly, but sometimes Dr. Skull) they are fine; but until then, they walk the halls and scream: I'm lost! I'm lost! What is this place! I'm lost!

This lead to us making chirping kitty noises and saying, "Kitty! Kitty! We're in here, kitty!" over and over and then, finally, exasperated, "In here, dumb ass! Here!"

As a last resort, I go and pick the cat in question up and fetch her to me. Dr. Skull just shuts his office door and plays his guitar louder.

Whining about the Weather

It's going to be right at 99 or 98 degrees here right through the middle of next week. Argh.

Even after that, the highs won't be below the 88 and 89.

I need fall.

At least this house has good tree cover, and good AC.

Links

In case, like me, you're trying to figure out what's going on over there in Parliament, this might be helpful

The story we hear about Antifa from the Right is (and I know this will shock you) a big fat lie

Amy Wax, a Leading Intellectual of White Nationalism, Tells All (it's exactly as willfully ignorant as you'd expect)

Zero tolerance for dangerous freeloading immigrants

LOL

What are women for

Living in the future

Labor Day -- not about the sales and picnics

In my Working Class Lit class, I taught about the above, and also showed the great John Sayles film, Matewan -- it's well worth watching, and I see it's being released on BluRay soon

The inevitable American solution to everything comes for addiction

This almost killed me -- but remember, pregnancy isn't an illness, and it doesn't need medical treatment (the constant chant from the "pro-life" crowd)

Fifty years ago, her pastor would absolutely have found biblical "proof" that the bible didn't allow interracial marriage, just as solid as the "proof" Evangelicals are quoting against LGBTQ people now:

Update: Mississippi venue owners apologize for refusing to host interracial wedding "saying that they incorrectly believed that interracial marriage went against their Christian beliefs"

And yet, they're still allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ couples https://t.co/HDlor4GDGy https://t.co/ndLVoDd61F

— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) September 4, 2019

More about Moving

We're about 90% unpacked now, I guess. My phone has not revealed itself. I am guessing it is lost for real. 😕

But that seems to be the only casualty of the move, so I will take it. It was a fairly cheap phone, and served its purpose, which was to give me a phone while Dr. Skull was teaching at the Governor's School this past summer. I can have its service terminated and save that money, along with the savings in rent. Hurray!

Meanwhile! About the new house:

• The window units, which I was worried wouldn't keep the house cool enough (as opposed to central air, I mean) keep the house extremely cold
• The storage space, which I was worried would be insufficient, is more than sufficient (donating about 40% of our books and clothing and excess belongs probably helped)
• The wooden floors are even more wonderful than I expected
• The stove is a gas stove. I have missed cooking with gas so much
• The immense back yard is full of bunnies and the trees are full of squirrels. The little dog is in paradise
• The bath tub is an old one, original with the house, I suspect, which means it is huge (our previous house had a modern tub, very good for saving on the water bill, and no good for soaking blissfully
• The cats are starting to adjust, though they spent the first several days hiding and the first several nights prowling the halls wailing in outrage
• We no longer have a library, a lovely grocery, and a post-office within walking distance, which is a loss; but we've traded that for the university, which is half a mile away
• And there's a grocery within a mile, and a post office and a library less than two miles away, so

Meanwhile, non-stop intensive packing and unpacking for the past -- what has it been? Ten days? Twelve days? -- has left us exhausted. We will be a month recovering, I suspect. But it is worth it.

Once again, thank you to everyone who made this move possible! Y'all are the best, and we literally could not have done it without you.

Bunnies!

Or, well, at least one bunny.

Last night Dr. Skull took Heywood out for a walk at dusk in our immense backyard, and sure enough a bunny was browsing in the grass. It spotted Heywood well before Heywood spotted it and took off running.

Heywood gave chase, off into the bushes that encircle the yard. In and out of the bushes they ran, Heywood barking wildly and the bunny dodging expertly, always about twenty yards ahead, and never in any danger. It was very exciting, and Heywood returned at the end, extremely pleased with himself.

He's a Real Dog now!

Who's a Good Boy?

(Picture is from the old house, since I still can't find my phone)

Now with Added Pictures

Dr. Skull took pictures for me:

The Window Where My Chair Currently is Stationed

Living Room with Unpacked Boxes

Dr. Skull has been a living saint through this process, by the way.

Unpacking -- No, LITERALLY

Since we moved in -- well, I lost count, but I think it was less than five days, we did a really terrible job of labeling boxes. So now we are unpacking like it's a treasure hunt. "I'm sure I didn't put the coffee maker in the box to be donated. I mean, I hope I didn't..."

"It's in one of these boxes." (Said bravely.)

The coffee maker has turned up. So has my checkbook. But not my phone. I still have hope! This has been a very lucky move. As I said in the comments to one of these posts, it really feels as though our luck has changed. Our movers were wonderful.

The fact of the movers was wonderful! I was filled with panic over how we were going to get everything moved out of the house in three days, including our refrigerator and our washer-dryer and two immense solid wooden bookcase, I saw a link on U-Haul that let us hire guys to load and unload the truck for you, for a ridiculously tiny sum.

This was a guy named Mike, who had started this business, We Move it Mike's. Other guys work for him. It is not a job I would like to do, let me tell you, but they were great at it. Despite the fact that they work by the hour, they were fast. We could not have done it without them. If you're moving in Fort Smith or anywhere around Fort Smith, I highly recommend.

Yesterday afternoon the internet was connected. Also, I discovered the dryer outlet did not work. So I facebooked my new landlord (yes, we are FB friends) and he sent someone over 20 minutes later and 20 minutes after that it was fixed.

In contrast, I would have had to call my old landlord, leave a message, call him again, have him call me back, have him interrogate me about what I did wrong to break the outlet, have him complain about everything I had willfully broken in the last six month, and then have him tell me he would "see" if he could find someone to come fix it. Then he would demand to know when I would be home. "You're never home," he would inform me. "I can't get anyone in there to fix things when you're not home."

"Mark and I both work," I would point out, for like the 600th time. "But I work at home on (whatever days it was that semester). If you can schedule it for --"

"I'll see what I can do."

Only he wouldn't. So a week later I'd have to call back.

Also. Also. Also. This house is so beautiful. It's true it's smaller, but it's just so lovely.

I promised you pictures, and as soon as I find my phone, you will have some! Right now, imagine me in my chair, drinking coffee, surrounded by stacks of books still in boxes, upturned chairs, and golden mid-morningsunlight pouring through tall many-paned windows. The cats love these windows, by the way -- they run floor to ceiling, so the cats can sit by them and stare out at the wide back yard, filled with trees and birds right now, though Darin (our landlord) promises deer and bunnies later on.

More later!




*three days, because once I told our landlord that we would not accept his 'terms,' which were frankly ludicrous, he said we had to 'vacate the property,' and while technically in Arkansas that means we are supposed to have five days, he was going to change us a ridiculous amount of rent for the other two days -- did I mention that I think this landlord is suffering from dementia?

Moving Day

We have survived, mostly.

More later -- MUCH later. (1) I might have lost my phone and (b) we don't get internet at the house until Saturday.

Read This

...and tell me you think this man is sane:

Another totally Fake story in the Amazon Washington Post (lobbyist) which states that if my Aides broke the law to build the Wall (which is going up rapidly), I would give them a Pardon. This was made up by the Washington Post only in order to demean and disparage - FAKE NEWS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019

Moving Advice

Here is a good reason to have all your books on Kindle.

When you move, you don't have to spend six days loading them all into boxes.

And then hauling all those boxes into a truck and out of a truck.

Every bone in my body is one big bruise.

Two Days Until the Big Move

We move on Thursday.

The house is filled with boxes.

We have too many books.

A Young Artist Makes A Comic

We've started packing, and while we were clearing out a closet, we found this comic, drawn when the kid was about seven:

The text:

First panel: Hello, children!

2nd: I'm Mr. Happy Face!

3rd: Do you know what happens when you get old?

4th: You die! (response from children out of panel: WHOAH!)

Baby's first comic!

We Signed The Lease

Oh, my God, you wouldn't believe how great this landlord is, and how wonderful the house is.

Listen to this. He's letting us move in a week early. We don't have to start paying rent until September 1, but we can start moving in right now.

On his part, he's so thrilled to be having academics as his tenants he couldn't stop talking about it. Also! He plans to put in central air!

Also, the house is just beautiful. Built in the late 1940s, on an acre of wooded land, wooden floors, original molding, original kitchen fixtures, original windows... and within walking distance of the university.

There's this little wrought iron, glass-topped table and chairs outside, under the trees. Also original.

And a working fire-place. And built-in bookcases. And so many windows.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who made this possible. Oh my God.

Links

"Pro-life" crusaders claim to want to stop abortion, yet eliminate access to birth control -- which, as we know, increases the number of abortions

More on this

And more

TYWKIWDBI shares a nice 5-minute informational video on what the USA is doing wrong with the minimum wage

I was posting awhile back about how atrocity stories are used to inflame populations -- buried in this story is such an atrocity story, used to justify stealing infants from the Chinese. I remember many such stories from that era.

What's wrong with sharing these stories?

About those rallies

Long, but worth watching (true of most of Philosophy Guy's work)

Written by my colleagues (in one case, now a former colleague)

Here's a pretty good reading list

Despite the lies Trump keeps screeching at us

The kids are okay; old white Americans? Not so much. (Frankly, this video is just really sad.)

Does everything look alright you dumb fucker? I want that Truck off my lawn. Thor's retirement is not going well. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/RDBNJ9drs7

— Eugene W (@NOW1SOLAR) August 19, 2019

are you telling me that the guy who ran a scam university and a scam charity and a scam magazine and a scam airline and sold scam mortgages and scam steaks and scam vodka and scam fucking water for fuck's sake, has been running a scam economy? fuck me, I did not see that coming

— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) August 18, 2019

My father is a die hard Fox News watching Trump voter. Let me tell you: it is not a good use of time to try to flip Trump voters. No amount of logic or humanizing or anything else works. Just move on and mobilize and stop voter suppression.

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) August 18, 2019

Heh:

quillette, the other white nationalism

— ᴀsᴄʜ 'demonic ink' ᴄᴏɴꜰᴏʀᴍɪᴛʏ 🍈🍮🥀⚗️🦠 (@AschConformity_) February 27, 2019

Eventually, you know, you gotta ask yourself if we're the baddies:

Update on the Update

The landlord seemed positively cheery about us having so many animals. Also, he says of course he will deal with the fallen trees. He seemed surprised at the question. He says we'll just need to mow and keep the bushes cut back. (Which is what I have always understood "lawn and yard care" to mean.)

We're meeting to sign the lease and walk through the house tomorrow. Thanks to every one of you who donated, we can (just barely) pay the deposit. By the time we have to actually move, I'll have been paid, so we can pay the first month's rent and deal with renting the U-Haul.

I'm hoping, since we've been living in Fort Smith for 16 years and never missed a utility payment once (or a rent check either, I'll just mention -- never even been late with one) that we won't have to pay deposits again. So that should be okay.

Here's the living room of the house:




Here is the kitchen:



It's a little smaller than our current place, but it's also cheaper. Plus it's so close to the university that I can walk to work or ride my bike. Which is excellent.

Again, thank you to everyone who made this possible. I'm sending you love and hugs and every good wish in the world.