Albemarle Reno

Our moving day arrived bearing a housewarming gift of 103 degree temperatures — technically 2 days of moving in triple digit heat.

It felt like there should have been some city-wide summer equivalent of a “snow day” called. It seemed so unreasonable that anyone should venture outside at all — never mind be expected to move the contents of a triplex apartment across town and into a triplex house. Andrew and his guys at A-1 First Class – Viking Moving & Storage surely broke a sweat, but never uttered a word of complaint. They were thorough, efficient and kind to the children.

Our first night was celebrated with a scrumptious cold supper and prosecco brought by longtime friends and neighborhood residents, M&J and their sweet son, which we ate on the back patio as the heat finally broke. A neighbor of a different species introduced himself shortly after dinner when he crawled languidly from the dormer window of the garage next door and loped up to the roof.

The decision to put in central air conditioning on the top two floors now seems like a flash of genius as this heat wave marches on. The units are whisper quiet and make our life in boxes more manageable.

Things are slowly being unpacked from those boxes, but it takes many steps to complete a seemingly simple task. The screwdriver I need is inevitably in the box in the garage instead of the box on the third floor, and the shelf I need to assemble is on the second floor. On my way to the garage to get the screwdriver I’m waylaid by two other tasks — one of which requires the other screwdriver that’s on the second floor. Then someone needs lunch or a nap or an internet connection. So ’round and ’round I go. Once the putting together of the things that hold the things happens and we have some infrastructure, the unpacking will be more efficient and everything should have its place — fingers crossed.

Our life without a kitchen is off to a promising start — our first Sunday breakfast was prepped on the grill

The eggs are super-locavore, brought by a hospitable neighbor who keeps chickens one block away. The welcome wagon continued with a gift of bread and honey from another neighbor — we grilled the bread and slathered on the honey to round out our meal.

In the coming weeks I’ll trot out the room by room transformations that have brought us to this point and give more day to day progress on the kitchen work that continues on.