It’s been one crazy month — and it's been exactly a month, I realize now —  since we’ve updated the blog. In that month, an army of incredibly generous people lugged too much of our heavy crap. We spent too many nights on an air mattress and learned that we’re getting too old for such things. We endured a bizarre week where some of the comforts of home were at one home and some were at the other. We cleaned our old rental house more thoroughly than we ever had before. And we spent our first nights in the house we used to call "the house" and now call "our house."

Herewith, an incredibly long blog post running down some of our own personal March madness.

March 14

The house is sparkling and empty and ready.

Parents arrive from every cardinal direction and friends swoop in for an evening of speedy truck unpacking.

We finish and eat Chinese food at our dining room table (which is covered with a painting dropcloth).

March 15

The parents leap into action.

Dad paints on a ladder wearing a women’s belt I bought at the thrift store.

Mom paints, too...

… and fearlessly cleans some terrifying things in our old house.

Roy designs MacGyver-esque solutions to our perplexing household problems.

Cheryl does some painting, and sets up a complex tool bench, and lines all the drawers with shelf paper, and hauls trash out of the woods, and does hundreds of other things. She moves too quickly for me to capture most of it.

Aaron wears coveralls, a sure sign that he’s working hard.

And amidst it all, the inspector walks around, does his thing, and issues us a certificate of occupancy.

March 16

We pack boxes with very specific labels.

More people come over and move them.

March 25

Everyone's gone and we’re left with two houses full of anarchy.

March 27-29

We’re still sleeping at the old house, but most of our stuff is at the new one. We reflect on our years here and the things we’ll miss. The early morning springtime view from our kitchen.

The flowering tree in the front yard.

Our great landlord. The porch swing. Dropping a marble in the hallway and watching it roll quickly downhill. Our sweet and generous next-door neighbors.

We finish cleaning and say goodbye.

March 30

We wake for the first time in the new house. Our house. Aaron makes breakfast in our kitchen for the first time.

March 31

Easter Sunday. Aaron has the crazy idea to invite friends over to eat an Easter dinner. We wake up, exhausted from cleaning and moving, and somehow transform the kitchen and living room into usable space. Friends come and eat. The house feels warm.

April 9

Gradually the loose ends of the renovation are tied up, including a tile backsplash in the kitchen. (Do the click and zoom thing!)

But we have much unpacking to do. Some of the house looks reasonable.

Most of it looks insane.

Holy crap.

That was a long story. It’s been a long month. During which time I’ve been a terrible friend, terrible sister, terrible sister-in-law, terrible niece, etc. But we’re starting to get our legs underneath us and we feel more like human beings every day. I expect that soon we'll be acting like we live here.

However long that takes, we’re very grateful for the hard work and support of everyone who’s helped install us in our new location, most especially our parents.

— ESJ

Here's where we stand:

In 5 days, 4 parents are driving in from 2 states in 3 vehicles loaded with about 70 pieces of furniture and 800 boxes.

That's some complicated math.

Especially since the renovation still isn't finished, which means it hasn't been inspected, which means we don't have a certificate of occupancy, which means we can't move anything in.

A couple weeks ago the contractors told us they could work with that deadline, which put our minds at ease. But then, of course, came some unexpected developments:

First, the vanity we had ordered for our bathroom didn't materialize at its appointed time at Lowe's. After a hundred or so phone calls, Aaron learned that it hadn't arrived because it's back-ordered, that it's back-ordered because the supplier doesn't have any in stock, and that the supplier doesn't have any in stock because the vanity is made in China where, apparently, all manufacturing came to a screeching halt so everyone could celebrate the New Year holiday. (Welcome, Year of the Snake!)

Then, the kitchen sink we had ordered, a beautiful porcelain farmhouse sink, did arrive at its scheduled time... but it arrived in about 50 sad, broken shards.

As we headed off to Texas last week, we were biting our nails wondering how the timing would work out in light of these new developments. The chances seemed good that our plans, like our sink, had fallen all to pieces.

When we returned to the house Tuesday night after a five-day trip, nothing had changed. The kitchen looked just like it did in mid-February. Which left us to wonder: What are we going to do with all these parents? All this furniture? All these boxes?

Two days passed. We went back to the house to show it to Aaron's brother who had come to town. And we found this:

The hood vent has been connected. The dishwasher has been installed. The new, unbroken sink has arrived and been installed. The faucet is in. There's lovely under-cabinet lighting. And, most exciting of all, the countertops are in. Butcher block on the window wall, stainless steel on the adjacent wall, and stone on the island. Fantastic!

Yesterday morning we met with the contractors and made a few final decisions. They assured us again that everything is still moving forward as expected, and that we can expect all the necessary inspections to happen as planned. A relief.

The site manager's list, endearingly rendered on a two-by-four, is getting shorter by the day.

Moms, dads, start your engines.

— ESJ

Speaking of door hardware, we've had a run of great luck in that department. First it was crawling the deepest, mustiest corners of the internet and finding the source for the egg-shaped interior knobs. (Will you think I'm bragging if I tell you that the guy who installed them asked where we'd found them, citing their quality, ease of installation, and value?)

Our next bit of luck was finding these, on sale, on an impulsive shopping trip:

But the most rewarding gift from the fates came on a trip to our local hardware store. (I mean really local; a ten-minute walk from our current home.) We went to the locksmith's counter to get our new outdoor locks keyed.

For various boring reasons, I'd already spoken with him a few times that week, twice in person. So when we greeted him that Saturday, I asked him how he was feeling, knowing that he'd recently been under the weather. Just fine, he said, and Aaron told him that he, too, was getting over a cold. "It's going around," the locksmith said, and then went about his work.

Did you know it only takes a locksmith five minutes to make a key fit into a lock? I had no idea. It seems so complicated, like building a ship in a bottle!

When he handed over the lock and keys, he said, "There you go, that oughtta work just fine. Now. Let me tell you how to get rid of that cold. Get you some rock 'n' rye."

"I like where this is going," I said.

"Well now, I don't really drink, but this really works if you have a cold. Get you some rock 'n' rye, and melt some peppermint sticks in it. You can use any kind of liquor, but I like to use rock 'n' rye because it already has a little bit of lemon in it. So you melt some peppermint sticks in there -- those can be hard to find these days, those old-fashioned peppermint sticks -- and then you squeeze a good amount of honey in it. You just drink that; it really works. That's the way my granddaddy taught me to make cough syrup."

That's a good, genuine home remedy, absolutely free.

-- ESJ

Most of my trips to the house last week were after work, so it was hard to get good photos. For the curious (you know who you are!) here are a couple more shots of the kitchen, with cabinets, in the daylight:

And a few little updates:

More to come!

— ESJ

Ack! Sorry to have left you dangling precipitously at the edge of the cliff. I'm sure you've slept only fitfully — if at all — since our last update. Blame it on the time of year. We thought we were experiencing a Bill-Murray-style Groundhog Day phenomenon, waking up over and over again on the same day. Turns out that wasn't the case. Time actually was passing. And here we are, thirteen days later. Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.

You'll be pleased to know that we harvested a lemon from our long-suffering Meyer lemon tree. It was delicious.

And the tile installer has not made any threats against us, implied or otherwise. He went about his grouting and the results are delightful:

Now! Herewith! A whirlwind update of what else the last two weeks have brought:

Then... cabinets! They're from a green building company in Durham and they smell like actual wood.

This is also the first time in our adult lives that we'll live in a house that doesn't have someone else's ancient weird crumbs wedged down deep in some drawer crevice. (It'll be just like starting over.)

Counter tops still to come. In the meantime, the beautiful floor stretched on through the rest of the re-done rooms:

And the latest: The refrigerator and dishwasher have been delivered (although not yet installed).

And just like that, the kitchen is three-dimensional.

— ESJ

In this very special Tuesday-night episode, Aaron and Emily travel to the house and discover that there's been a mysterious delivery:

In the bathroom, the tile installer appears to have been busy hanging the remaining shower tiles. (And busy also, probably, swearing at us as he cut and laid the fiddly hexagonal floor tile that we — okay, I — fell in love with and just had to special order from the only place on the worldwide web where it was sold.)

And Aaron recites a magical incantation in the backyard, hoping to save the life of our Meyer lemon tree, which has been coated with construction dust and shuddering in a dim room for far too long.

What will become of the wooden planks? Will Aaron's lemon conjuring trick be successful? Will the tile installer leave a horse's head on my pillow?

Stay tuned to find out.

— ESJ

Except for some trim work, the painters are just about done. Some of their time this week was spent "revising" a room that had been painted the wrong color as a result of some miscommunication. That revision is done now, and the color (a green so pale it's nearly white) looks fresh and bright.

The bathroom is also approaching completion; there's tile in progress in the shower:

And the lights are up on the wall.

(I'm having a hard time here, trying to balance my desire to be descriptive with my deep-seated hatred for the word "sconce." But that's what they are, dammit, whether I like it or not.)

The sconces are up on the bathroom wall.

Despite the fact that they're still entangled in blue painter's tape, it's easy to see that they're an improvement over the previous fixtures:

And now, just for fun, and especially for those of you who spent the last week in places like Louisiana and Texas, some photos of ice, courtesy of Winter Storm Khan.

Aaron tries to free a door knob from the deck:

Then we compete to see who can pry the biggest piece of ice from my car:

I win.

We have lights now, operated by switches that turn them on and off, and we feel about as excited as Thomas Edison himself. It makes the place look so inviting.

You can just see the excitement on Aaron's face:

Electric light! It's a real game changer. (If it weren't, there wouldn't be a whole orchestra named after it.)

My fear is that it will increase our impatience tenfold. Now we can go to the house any time, day or night, and think about how far we have yet to go.

— ESJ

Going to the new house is part of our typical Saturday routine. It's nearly dark by the time we get home from work during the week, which means five long days of waiting before we can see the place lit by something other than a keychain flashlight. Our Saturday morning visits are a less dramatic version of the Big Reveal on those house-makeover reality shows.

Today, however, was a rare Saturday on which Aaron had to work, so I went to the house alone. That turned out to be a good thing, because what I saw made me skip around the place, clapping and laughing out loud.

What did I see that caused me to act like a damn fool?

SHELVES!

Beautiful, glorious shelves! Many of them behind doors that close!

This is particularly exciting because we live in a house that looks like this:

It's hard for me to imagine what our lives will be like with so many closets and shelves. We'll be able to put things away.

One other thing made me dance around like a maniac on the floor: The newly painted trim.

It's surprising what a difference the painted trim makes. The room suddenly looks somehow clean and lovely, even though there's still tons of dust and construction detritus lying around.

You can expect Aaron to go over there tomorrow and do his own flashdance.

— ESJ

I'm so glad we're finished with the late-December onslaught of year-end lists. All those can’t-miss movies, novels, and records from the last twelve months? I’ve mostly missed them.

But my personal year-end list for 2012 looks pretty good.

My top five achievements from the year:

1. Started a new job.
2. Got married.
3. Bought a house.

That's only three. But what more do you want from me?

How about another list?

Things I do every year around this time:

1. Return from a holiday in Pittsburgh whining about what the dry winter air has done to my skin (and wondering how my mother’s skin is still so lovely after 60-ish years of such winters).
2. Make a half-serious new year’s resolution so I have an answer when people ask. This is a cover for my real new year’s resolution(s), which I keep secret so I don’t have to worry about people judging me when I break them.
3. Secretly make real new year's resolutions to A) increase my book consumption to two books a month and B) seriously de-clutter and organize our house.
4. Print a sunrise-sunset calendar and obsess over how many minutes of sunlight we'll gain each day in January and February, and whether those minutes are appended to the beginning or the end of the day.

I do all four of those things every year. Is this year any different? I’ll take each number in turn:

1. No different. I used so much lotion this year, but to no avail.
2. Already done. My half-serious resolution: to experiment with Japanese-style breakfasts.
3. I’ve re-resolved both of these resolutions. One big difference this year is that I’ve just admitted to them, so they're not secret. Another difference: I’ll be forced to de-clutter and organize our house when we move. (Man, wouldn’t it be a good idea to get a jump on that now?)
4. Obsessing over the lengthening of days is my favorite January activity. I’ll give it up only when I move to the equator.

Finally, here’s the list you’re really here for.
What’s new at the house: