Hello, friends!

I expect we should have an influx of readers here, given that we've distributed the url at church, so hi, church people! Leave us a comment! I write everything here but Joe reads, too, so if you want to say something to him, feel free. I'm not sure what our internet access will be but I'll try to update this pretty regularly.

At the moment, I am poaching a wireless signal from a neighbor so I have to keep this entry fairly short.

We hired some help to load the truck on Monday and on Tuesday, Dan helped Joe pack most of the rest of it--for which we are eternally grateful!--and Christa watched the girls so I could get some work done inside the house. We finished loading on Wednesday morning. We had planned to leave by noon but didn't make it out until about 2:30. Still, we made it to Tuscaloosa in good time to have a swim, get dinner, and put the girls to bed.

The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful. We saw a lot of dead armadillos. We had to stop too many times for Allison to use the bathroom. The cab of the moving van is covered in a film of Sonja's hair. The girls did....okay. They were good between Tuscaloosa and Shreveport but Shreveport to Austin was a bit rough. It's a good thing they're cute. Really. You think I'm kidding. Especially Frances.

Two things greeted us on arrival. First, a lizard! We named her Emily. I have a picture of her. I'll post it later.

Second, the former tenants didn't bother to pull the trash to the curb when they left which is to say they left a stinking, festering, overflowing trash can full of the former contents of their refrigerator in the car port in over 100 degree heat. It had been there for days and we missed trash pickup by half a day. Which is to say, we were greeted by a rank smell, a swarm of flies, and a neighbor threatening to call the health department and no trash pick up until seven days hence.

Incidentally, the folks who share our duplex seem lovely--a family with a little boy the same age as Frances. On the other side, we have a hippy. Shocking, I know. Hippies? In Austin? Yes, well. Full beard to about mid chest, lots of decorative chimes and other shiny objects dangling from the trees, and I have yet to see the man don either shirt or shoes. He is very friendly and his house is well-kept. I'm not complaining.

The trash, though, was awful and our hippy neighbor told us he was going to call the health department if our landlord didn't do something about it. We called our landlord, who was out of town, and he tried to get someone to come out and take care of it. In the meantime, he suggested we take it to the dumpster at his place of business. We decided to take some of the trash to the dumpster--enough to close the lid.

Joe put down several cardboard boxes in the trunk and then he put bags of trash into individual boxes and put those in the trunk. It leaked. It leaked so that when he took one of the the boxes out, it fell apart and wet trash splattered all over the pavement. Nice. Then, I held open the dumpster and caught the edge of the bag on the lid and it ripped and sprayed trash juice all over Joe's shirt. Also very nice.

Truth be told, the car still smells vaguely of ick.

Thankfully, at 8 this morning, two men arrived in a pickup and took our trash can. They returned in about 20 minutes with the can, empty and emanating a pleasant aroma of bleach. It was lovely. I do think we have rather a good landlord.

Last night, we set up beds and crashed out. Today, we went to costco for some basic provisions and we worked on unloading enough of our crap to allow access to some of the things that need to go into storage. Joe rented a storage unit and we worked together unloading the heavier items. Then I took the kids home to put them to bed while he did a little more unloading. After that, we'll have our standard Saturday evening martinis.

Tomorrow, we'll have professional moving help, so things should get a bit easier, which is a good thing because this move has been really tough so far. It isn't very pleasant to move somewhere new only to find it full of stinking trash. It's been tough on the kids. Allison keeps telling me she doesn't like it here. Not to be depressive or anything. I'm just saying. The sooner we get things moved in, get this place resembling a home, and get the children back into a routine, the better.

Pictures to follow very shortly. Right now I have to help Joe park the truck.