Bar Harbor

We drove to Bar Harbor yesterday. Meh. It is OK but no big whoop! I think for scenic beauty the drive from Ellsworth to Milbridge is as nice and the Scoodic area nicer. Cherryfield is more quaint, more authentic than the tourist trappings of Bar Harbor. I went to the River "Bank" Gallery at 8 Main Street in Cherryfield and bought a beautiful house gift for me at a very nice price. Fred Langsman is a courtly gentleman who is well read and a lover of beauty.
His Gallery is well worth the visit. The whole town is well worth the trip. It is only 6 miles from Milbridge. We may not have the "history" of the robber barons of the gilded age but we are at least real. Jasper & Sons Wyman's wild blueberries are from here and they were voted the best on the market. Less traffic and about 90% less to buy if you want a vacation home makes this area a paradise. Today as was yesterday is sunny and cold-ish. The sea air is a tonic. I put up the house numbers today.
We are also getting ready for Auntie Nellie. She has decided to come and live with us. No one who is 95 should live alone. I think everyone should live with someone no matter the age just for safety and company. I need to figure out what kind of papers she was forced to sign a few years ago. No one need feel bad about living too long! I already plan to feed the deer so we can see them from our baywindow. Getting the small room ready is the first step. We are short on money since the State of Maine wants for a lot to be legal here, the the finishing of the big room and main bathroom needs to wait. But the small room is warm & sunny, with nice views. The 1/4 bath can be made into a 1/2 bath rather reasonably---I hope.
So all in all this move was a good one. We will adapt to the colder climate. We are glad we have room for Auntie Nellie. With all the relatives she has in California you'd think someone would have her in their big homes. But after the way I was treated I can't expect much form them can I?

22 April 2012

On April first just 21 days ago at this time we were packing up the babies in cages and then in our truck and car. I did manage to eat breakfast at the La Quinta in Danbury Connecticut. Then our last frantic leg of the trip. It would have been a good trip if it were not the moving company lies and deceit. It is almost behind me now. We arrived and paid their ransom and they unloaded our crushed boxes into the cold night. We finally got our babies inside at 9:30pm. We managed to get them all here safe and sound. They were fed the house was warmed up for them and I found bedding in the jumble of boxes. Then we had no hot water! So I sponged bathed and we slept.


Now just 21 days later we have hot water(yeah!) two set of new stairs and the back ramp is redone, the front door lock. We paid too much for the lock but we have no one like we did in San Antonio or like we do in Miramichi. We are trying to settle in and so far so good. Now I am getting a cal from my Auntie Nellie( I had called her for her 95th birthday on Easter. She had a tale of woe then and I offered to let her live here.) So yesterday she called me and asked if my offer was good. Yes! So now we are getting the place ready for her.


I can get the little room ready in a few days since we just need to move those boxes and books to the great secret room upstairs. Then when I get her here she can help with her own bedroom....like would she like another window over looking the meadow and brook, what color for the walls. I expect her to live in the whole house and just use her room for sleep or a retreat. This house is nice it is a full 2 bedroom house on one floor and then the second floor has 3 rooms and a full bath, then there is the third floor room still to get flooring of a proper nature but a nice light room.
So there is plenty of room for Auntie Nellie and her cat Boris.


So we are here and now getting ready for my Auntie. There are plenty of nieces to do what I am doing but no one who cares enough. The ones taking care of her now (she lives alone and they just come once a week or two weeks) are angry that she has lived so long and hasn't died and left all her "wealth" to them. She gets around with a walker, still like a good laugh and likes to eat and drink and have a good time......Let the good times roll. I just need to get to California and get her and Boris on a Plane and fly to Maine!

Closer to human

Today was the first time I have felt goodly human. The sun is still out; there is a sea breeze and it is cool. From the window I can see civilization: a grand Victorian house wishing for a new owner, power lines, cars, trucks and strolling people. But with just a lift of my eyes I see the bay, boats, pine trees, cedar trees and those trees and shrubs that have not felt the awakening spring, they remain strangers, soon to become friends. I only miss my birds that I have been feeding and had to leave behind in San Antonio, Texas. There is not much to miss really. It ceased being my home when my colleagues turned on me after 9/11 and then became a place of sorrow when my Mother suddenly died in 2005. I have always left a place behind and never returned when I decided this was no longer my place. I have a place now in New Brunswick, I have people who are more family to me then those who share my DNA. Now they are only an easy days drive away not 6 hard days driving. I now need to establish me here in Maine. I think from a Feng Shui point this is a good location. The house has not been kept well and tells me she wants to be pretty. I was thinking plums and purples but she has said deep red, royal blue, pinks and saffron or cantaloup of all colors! The house in Miramichi wanted yellow and burgundy, pink and chinese red. She got that with a big dose of deep ink blue and is happy now. So deep red and royal blue, saffrons and pinks it is. Warm happy colors for this cold climate full of grey days, drizzle, and snow. As it happens I am short of decorating money and have many ideas. The fist lust/love/ want had to be abandoned... my classic 1934 stove on legs. It is $5600. The new propane is $389 delivered plus an additional $150 to install, as long as the old nasty judas of a stove is removed I will be happy. So I will have function and new since $5600 is so far off budget as to be silly. Only the rich people can have the common things from vintage days! Paint is cheap and ideas are free, and elbow grease is eased with aspirin. I want to spend money on recovering these chairs, ottomans and other chairs. I bought them at a used hotel furniture store and they are built like rocks so worth recovering. I just need to get the right fabric that will wear well with the cats and clean as well as these do. So all in all I am recovering from the trip. I can not say enough about the moving company. They made the trip a horror on wheels, that left us shellshocked, exhausted, and disgusted with the entire industry. [Verizon/Orion Lines for those who wish to know their name.] If I can not move it myself next time it stays! No company is worth that kind of grief again.

Middle Chapter-Mover From Hell

We always dreamed of a cooler climate. The heat and humidity was wearing us out and summers were lasting 8 months of the year with little respite from the unpleasant weather. The state had no more charm in its drought and heat patterns of the last decade and an half. We found a 100+ years old house in Maine. From Deep south Texas to Maine was 2330 miles, a long trip in itself but longer with pets since few places allow animals for travelers. Where and how are people suppose to move, to stay the night and no become the sub-humans that abandon animals when they move? So the trip would be longer since caging them for 12 hours a day was not easy and loading and unloading was hard when we were exhausted by the drive in unfamiliar territory. We knew we would drive less to save our strength so did the moving company and we were told not to worry, it was the slow season and they knew we would need 6 full days. It was deep into spring in Texas when we left. The days had already gotten hot and humid. The mover came a week early from our load date and began harassing us to move faster. It was not the packing but the preparation for the trip that was needed, banking, cutting off home services. We had put the down payment on the move and we were pressured to leave 5 days early. That was their first salvo at us and the stress began we need to get 22 cats ready for the trip in less time. We got a late start and arrived in Texarkana Arkansas, late around 9 p.m.. After our goods were loaded we were then told that final payment would have to be cash or cashiers check, not having the final weight total we did not know how much the final bill would be. Of course the load was weighed an hour after loading and the final cost was know to the company and the company knew we only had that Monday afternoon to secure funds for the total. However they chose not to cal us and let us know so we would be prepared. What the manager did do was call Tuesday( the day we left in our convoy) to leave a message on the home phone of where we just moved out of and would be disconnected at 5 p.m.. He did have our cell phone numbers but was not bothered enough call on of those numbers...knowing full well that was an empty house! It was not until Wednesday afternoon that the driver called and said he would deliver us on Friday morning! A few days early from the Monday date. He continued to harass us by phone. We both were panicking not wanting our belongings to be dumped in a ravine” then finding out the cost would be thousands of dollars more! It was hard enough with elder cats and cats that really did not want to be caged in a car and pickup truck then to be pressed to drive beyond our strength every day as well as find motels that would let our animals in for the night, and be suitable rooms for stowing them, they needed food and water, potty box; we need rest to drive again. It took 3 hours every morning and evening to load and unload then every day. The manager was completely callous to our situation. He told me the driver could drive 500 miles a day by law blah blah….but there were 2 drivers and they could do 1000 a day! The pressure mounted and the hard tone and words of the company manager were oppressive and felt like verbal water boarding. We drove under duress, panic, and fear. Our anxiety was caught by the cats, we could not sleep well and it took all our strength to drive safely. We had to beg for an extension and felt so humiliated to beg for a day before we had scheduled our unloading, We were able to drive in the driveway at 4:40 p.m. Sunday. Then the movers were not prepared for the area with flashing lights and told us we would have to use our car with flashes on behind the truck since there was a hill! They had no proper safety equipment! We were finally unladed at 9 p.m. Dark, cold, cats out in the car in 38 degree temperatures. Crushed boxes, but no real damage. The dresser mirror was not put on and they did not leave the staves to put it on. All the boxes are jumbled in huge piles like they had no sense on how to stack a box. After they left I wanted to cry. But another hours in the cold dark we unladed 22 cats who had been locked since 6 a.m. Many things added to our April Fools and that will be the next chapter.