Life In PA...so far

This is day three in our new surroundings. I intended to do a day-by-day, but we are barely able to find enough time to sleep right now, so I will summarize everything so far.

- Thursday, August 16

We arrived Thursday evening into the Lehigh Valley (Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton) around 6:45 pm. This was after departing the hotel in Indy at 5am, a quick trip to the old house to pack up the dogs, bikes on top of the VW and personal items needed for the next two and a half weeks in temporary housing. We rented a 14 foot U-Haul to carry all the stuff we needed to have with us at the new house while we are in temporary housing (we aren't moving into the house until August 30 and are doing improvements in the interim). Dottie drove the VW with Madison and the two dogs and I drove the U-Haul with all our stuff.

The first order of business was to drop off the dogs at the Shady Rest Kennel. They close at 7pm and we arrived at just a few minutes before closing. We had planned on arriving around 6pm with plenty of time, but after a late start and having a 3-year-old and two dogs, well, it kinda throws off any sort of timeline.

So we dropped the dogs and headed to our home for the next 17 days - the Hilton Homewood Suites. What a great place this is. It is basically a 2-bedroom apartment with pretty much everything you need - including free housekeeping! It is quite comfortable with big rooms, nice beds, a full kitchen, 3 televisions, cable, wireless Internet, free breakfast (actually good food) plus a pool, tennis, basketball, and probably other things I can't remember. We got cleaned up and headed to dinner in Bethlehem to a place I really like - the Bethlehem Brew Works. They have good food and great beer.

We ended up getting back to the hotel around 10 and were exhausted. We didn't unpack anything, and pretty much dropped our bags and went to bed. We had our closing on the house scheduled for 11:30am and we still had to go to the bank before closing to get our certified check for the down payment, so we had to get an early start.

- Friday, August 17

I awoke around 6 and was rather sluggish, but after some marginally acceptable coffee, I was starting to brighten up. We got the check, met the agent at the new house for a final walk-through and headed to closing.

We met the owners at closing - Mr. and Mrs. Dean - and they were super-nice people. They were well into retirement years - I would guess them in their late sixties to early seventies. Mr. Dean was a former engineer (and it showed). He had all sorts of documentation in a file he gave me of with lists of everything imaginable. They gave us contact information and said if we had any questions we could call them. Mrs. Dean gave us the rundown of all the neighbors, their kids and their grandkids. It was a very pleasurable meeting and you could tell that they took very good care of their home and wanted to pass a lot of information along.

After closing, we grabbed some lunch and then headed over to the new house to unpack the U-Haul so we could get it returned. The movers were delivering my car on Saturday, so we only had one vehicle. On the way to return it, we were driving through the rough part of downtown Allentown when Madison informs mommy that she has to pee. We had two-way radios and Dottie calls me on the radio to tell me this. In this part of Allentown, I wouldn't even stop to pee myself, so it was out of the question. We didn't really know how far we had to go, so we tried to encourage her to hold it, but in the end she couldn't. We were both upset about having to put her in this uncomfortable position and she was apologizing, which made us feel even worse. We got the truck dropped off and luckily weren't very far from the hotel, so we headed straight there to clean up before heading to dinner. When we got to the hotel, I pulled the child seat out to clean it up after the accident, and it was bad. I think she held it for the whole day. Most of it was in the cover of the child seat, but a lot of it went into the back seat of the car. I tore apart the child seat and Dottie took it down to the laundry room at the hotel. At this point, we couldn't go anywhere for dinner, so I went out hunting for carryout pizza.

- Saturday, August 18

We were again on a tight time schedule because we needed to be at the house by 8am to meet the Internet installer and the moving company which was dropping off my car. We were scrambling to get out the door and trying to get a quick breakfast at the hotel when Madison spills milk on herself. Dottie took her upstairs to change her and by the time they got back downstairs, we needed to go so they had breakfast on-the-run.

After dropping me off at the house and unloading a few things from the car, Dottie headed out to buy supplies for our massive wallpaper removal project. Madison stayed at the house with me and she was giving the task of putting her toys away (we brought about 1/4 of the toy inventory). She was unloading boxes in the kitchen and carrying things one-by-one upstairs and for a moment I thought about carrying the boxes upstairs so she could be more efficient, but then it occurred to me that she was busy and it would occupy her for a longer period, which is always a good thing.

The Internet installers showed up around 9 and they were in and out in less than 30 minutes. I dug out the wireless router from the old house, plugged it in and made a couple of configuration changes and viola - we had wireless Internet in the house.

I then went about the task of unpacking some of the boxes in the garage off the U-Haul that contained tools and other things we needed for our rehab work. I also opened up ALL of the windows in the house, which literally took me 20 minutes to do because there are so many. There was that smell of "old, dusty and musty" from the house being closed up for so long (the Deans moved out in May and they were only in the house 5 months out of the year anyway).

My car was delivered by the moving company while Dottie was out, so now we could travel independently. My friend Don Rogers arrived also, to help us out with some of our work (Don took a new job recently with Bristol Myers Squibb and is based out of Princeton, NJ - a mere 45 miles away). Don and I set out for lunch and after feeding the crew, we set out for two destinations - Sherwin Williams for paint supplies and Circuit City to buy a GPS for Dottie so she won't get lost out here. If you have never had a GPS, I can't recommend one highly enough, especially when you are in unfamiliar areas.

We ended up getting back around 4pm and Dottie had already made significant progress on the wallpaper removal. She had nearly completed what will be Madison's playroom and had started on what will be one of the two guest rooms. She put Don on that room to finish it up while I continued to remove massive amounts of poorly installed and poorly chosen window dressings throughout the upstairs. We cleaned up the day's mess and packed it in around 6pm.

The four of us went for dinner at the Bethlehem Brew Works (again). This may end up being our new "Some Guys" because we like it so much. After a nice (albeit slow - the service could be better) meal and a couple of really good beers, we headed back to the hotel for the night and Don headed home. Don's wife, Kathy, will be coming in on Tuesday from Vienna, were she is currently living and working for Amgen on a two-year assignment. We are looking forward to seeing her again.

We were all exhausted, and I fell asleep on the way to the hotel, again on the sofa while watching few minutes of TV with Madison, yet again while we were in our story time, and then on sofa afterward before finally heading off to bed around 11. I awoke this morning at 5am to Madison screaming and crying. I went in to her room to console her (she has been having "bad dreams" the last few days - probably having to do with the disorientation and being out of her normal routine). She went right back to sleep, but I could not. The brain was already churning on "the list" and after about 30 minutes of staring at the ceiling and trying to turn it off, I decided to get up, get some of that marginally acceptable coffee and write this.

- Sunday, August 19

Today, I start painting. I plan to get the Master BR done and Madison's room at minimum. If I can get to her playroom, that is a bonus. Dottie will continue with the massive wallpaper removal project, which could very well take all of this week because 9 rooms plus the hallway, stairway and utility hall. We realized yesterday that basically we need to paint the entire inside of the house, including ceilings, closets, trim, and doors. Right now we are focused on getting the rooms done that will have furniture in them. We can deal with the rest as time goes on.

I go to work tomorrow for the first time as an Allentown resident and will be continuing to work on the house during the evenings this week and next week. We have this weekend and next with the long Labor Day weekend being the "move in" weekend. We hope to have some semblance of order at the end of Labor Day. I suspect we won't be fully unpacked until around Halloween.

More to come...