Crossover Dinner & Calories

Last night we had our first home cooked dinner in our new tract home on Dove Mountain. Our very first dinner was about a month ago, a week or so after we closed the purchase. That was take-out pizza so it doesn't count as home cooked, but it was with family which made the gathering particularly special.

CS Road. We know which house is ours because its garage door opens when we press the remote.

Two days ago, Delivery Doctors brought over our heavy furniture, including our bed. I like the mover's name. It's a local moving company with the slogan, "We deliver everything except babies." We had brought over some frozen Bolognese sauce leftover from San Simeon, so last night Shari made some salad, we boiled some pasta and heated the sauce. Presto! Spaghetti Bolognese! A crossover dinner at CS (our abbreviation for our new street, Chaparral Sage).

Delivery Doctors carrying Shari's elliptical.
Backing up that truck in our driveway was no small feat.

Moving is complicated, confusing, discombobulating, exhausting, stressful, unpredictable and expensive. If the new house is a new build, triple the foregoing. The intended benefits from the move are there, but in the process, one has severe doubts. Simple pleasures, like a home cooked meal, even a crossover one, are significant milestones.

Among other expenses, moving costs calories. Every day for the last five weeks we have been driving one or both cars packed with boxes and small furniture the twenty-five miles from San Simeon to the End of the Universe on Dove Mountain Blvd. That's about a forty-five minute drive one way, which is about what our drive from Whidbey Island to Seattle used to take, assuming no ferry line or traffic (highly unlikely). Or, for those familiar with Seattle, the time it takes to drive from First Hill to South Lake Union.

Over three days we packed a fifteen foot rental truck twice. My god how Shari and Stephen labored to help! Then it was time for Delivery Doctors to do the heavy lifting.

Tom's new profession.
Phase I, getting the CS house habitable.

All that packing and carrying burns calories. Each day I stepped on our bathroom scale, I found I had lost yet another pound. Turns out, moving can be a good way to lose weight. My suspicion was confirmed by the three young men from Delivery Doctors who efficiently and energetically lifted refrigerator, couch, elliptical, stacked washer-dryer, beds, dining tables, and the rest of our heavy items, stuffed and tied them inside a truck too big to negotiate our driveway, then unpacked and positioned them inside our new home. Each of the three is muscular and trim. One admitted he eats seven meals a day

I expect to regain some weight but it may take a good many weeks. There is lots of stuff to move before we move into Phase III, getting San Simeon ready for sale. Phase I was getting CS habitable, a never ending process that takes either a lifetime or another move. In this case, the initial adaptations were garage floor coating, painting some spaces so they don't look institutional, installing window coverings, and a new fridge. Phase II is the move. Phase III by itself will be daunting. We will need a dumpster or two just to get rid of downed branches on our little acre from monsoon winds, an aspect of why we are motivated to make this move: too much to maintain.

Still, eating a spaghetti dinner at home is a step on the endless journey towards normalcy — and probably, towards gaining some weight.