Category: moving

Eating (semi)well on the road.

April 9, 2016

We’ve just returned from a two-week road trip through California and southern Arizona, a trip booked long before the idea of buying a new house entered our minds. Nothing was going to happen with the house purchase in those weeks anyway, so there was no reason not to go.

Since the days of our six-and-seven week road trips, where we mostly camped, took a cooler with us, and bought groceries, several things have changed. One, of course, is that we were flying and renting a car. Secondly – and most importantly – are the food allergies/sensitivities BD has developed. It’s really difficult to find food he can eat, and even more difficult to find restaurants he can eat at. His allergy is to a specific fatty acid – lauric acid – which is found in red meats, most fats, coconut and palm products, all dairy, and some spices. It makes him break out in hives, big nasty hives which even extra-strength Benadryl only somewhat controls. So we need to be very careful about what he eats.

We could have bought a cooler in California, shopped for groceries, and eaten at parks and picnic stops. But there were a couple of strikes against this: one is that, for the most part, it was too cold to do this comfortably – we had snow in the foothills in Arizona! – and the second strike was just that we wanted more ease. We’ve done our share – more than our share – of eating in wind, rain, cold, searing heat and annoying insects, or perched on the side of the bed in a hotel room. Frankly, I’ve had enough of that.

Subway is one chain we know is safe for BD, if he sticks to chicken or turkey, but a constant diet of Subway grows old quickly, plus the sodium content is pretty high. We decided to try Denny’s, the classic diner chain: their available nutrition information is good, and they have something extremely difficult to find in US restaurant chains: reasonably sized meals, if you order carefully.

For dinners, we mostly stuck to the 55+ meals, eating a salad (with no cheese or dressing for BD), fish or chicken with broccoli and another vegetable – corn for me, squash for BD – every night. With unsweetened iced tea, the calorie count was around 650, the sodium, fat, and sugar content low for restaurant food, and there was nothing in the spices or preparation that triggered BD’s allergies. Breakfasts were fairly easy too: ordering a la carte, BD ate poached eggs on dry toast, oatmeal, and fresh fruit every morning; I had the same, or sometimes yogurt instead of the oatmeal. Again, the meals ran in the 650 calorie range, and it was easy to avoid the dairy and oil that would have been a problem. And we both appreciated comfortable booths and table service, especially after a long day, and in the morning when I’m not human before that first coffee.

It was also quite a bit of food. Neither of us were terribly hungry at lunch time, even after hikes of several hours most days. We’d found an energy bar by KIND that BD could eat without problems, so lunches tended to be an energy bar and an apple. BD would add a handful or almonds or peanuts; I’d add a latte if there was one to be had. If we walked a lot, sometimes we had a second energy bar, or more nuts.

Not every meal was eaten at Denny’s or Subway. We ate a couple of breakfasts at little cafes at Morro Bay and Cayucas. We drove to Oxnard (twice) specifically for fish and chips at Sea Fresh, which fries in peanut oil (BD had a double order of chips, it was such a treat.) Only something at Olive Garden triggered any reaction in BD, and it was mild, so a trace of oil or spice, most likely.

I celebrated my 58th birthday while on this trip. We debated a special dinner, but I didn’t particularly want that: what I did want was ice cream, as it was an unseasonably hot day (the only one of the trip) at Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco. I usually avoid eating ice cream in front of BD – it seems cruel, when he can’t eat it any more – but I made an exception for my birthday. And in the little general store in Inverness, California, not only did I find my favourite Haagen-Daas chocolate-coffee-almond bar, but a lime gelato bar with no dairy that BD could eat (and he loves lime). We sat at a picnic table overlooking the bay and ate our treats, enjoying every frozen bite.

We were pleased with the trip – not only did we find the two birds we went to see around San Francisco, ones that have been eluding us for thirty years (because they are found by call, and they only call during breeding season, and that was always while we were working) – but we ate fairly nutritious food and didn’t trigger BD’s allergies. We went for long walks, watched dolphins and sea otters and seals along Highway 1, heard coyotes singing in the dusk at Yuma and watched the sun rise over the mountains. A good holiday. Now back to the realities of packing up this house for the move. Stay tuned!

The Moving Diary: the preface.

March 24, 2016

I’ve started to plan the packing. We’ll have both houses for a while, so we’re not pressed for time – yet I know that if I don’t have a plan, chaos will take over.

This is what I’m planning. I want to go through each room in this house to do two things: cull unwanted items, for donation or for landfill, and pack up things not needed immediately: winter clothes, books, rarely-used kitchen equipment, ornaments. That should take about three weeks of intermittent work, the time ranging from a couple of hours at the most for the bathroom to six-to-eight hours for the kitchen. We can get most of that done before the possession date of April 29th. In much of May, when the new house is having its gas fireplace installed, and the interior painted, I’ll need to be there to let the workers in and out and answer questions. I can take a carload of boxed items over every day; they can sit in the garage if nowhere else, while I ensure cupboards are clean and determine what goes where in the kitchen.

After that, we’ll spend a day packing the last of the fragile items, move the cats to the new house – they can have the run of the basement – and let the professionals take over. We have detailed floor plans of the new house and have spent the last couple of weeks playing with furniture placements. We may move things a few inches here and there, but basically we know what is going where, which will be easier for the movers. We’ll have those plans with us, printed and on our ipads, the day of the move.

I’m making lists: we need boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape, scotch tape. I’ll need to contact the charity that will come to pick up the boxes of donated items, saving me endless trips to their drop-off location. I have to book a mover, arrange another viewing of the house to measure windows for blinds, look at kitchen cupboard size and arrangements, and think about paint colours. Then arrange to meet with the gas-fireplace installers and the painters. And all the hundred other little things – the utilities, the change-of-addresses, the insurance – at least we’ll be keeping our cell phone numbers.

You’ll note I haven’t even begun to think about prepping this current house for sale. We decided we wouldn’t do that yet. We can afford, thank goodness, to carry both for a while. It will cost us a bit in the bridge financing, but it will be worth it in reduced stress. When this one is empty, it too can be cleaned and patched-painted-and-polished. I’m not going to try to do both at the same time. Because, among other things, this is all happening in May. Migration month. The best birding of the entire year. We bought a house expressly because it adjoins excellent birding habitat: we can walk out the front door into an area with an impressive migration bird list. We don’t plan to miss May birding, moving or no – it’s just a compromise: birding in the early mornings, moving chores later in the day.

We figure we can just about handle birding, new-house-prep, and old-house-cull-and-pack (although we’re going to try to do most of that in April)  in that time but we can’t add any more. Meals may be a bit ad hoc, laundry will get done at odd hours, and I certainly won’t get much writing done. Organized chaos is the best I can hope for.

Tell me about your moving experiences…what lessons can you pass on? Am I completely crazy?

Butter Curlers and Junk Drawers.

March 16, 2016

Our new house passed its inspection with flying colours, so now we’re just waiting for the results of the appraisal on our current house. The actual appraisal occurred yesterday; when the credit union will get back to us with the approval for the bridge-financing I’m not sure, but somewhere in the next few days. We’re 99.9% sure the house is worth more than the amount we need, so we’re pretty safe to go ahead with the planning.

This is, of course, a wonderful opportunity to cull yet again. We’re not significantly (ok, not at all) downsizing, so we could take everything. But I don’t want to: I may not have yet disposed of a dozen flower vases and the same number of cookie tins from simple inertia, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pack them up and move them, because then I’d have to unpack them and put them away again. I have four major areas to cull: kitchen stuff, clothes, books, and knick-knacks.

Clothes, I think, will be the simplest. I did dispose of quite a lot when I stopped working almost a year ago, but now I have a much better idea of what I actually wear: jeans or khakis, cotton shirts, and sweatshirts, depending on the time of year. I’m going to choose from the rest a few mix-and-match pieces that will take me to a wedding, a funeral, or a nice dinner, and donate the rest. I can always buy it back (or something similar) from the thrift store if I make a mistake.

Kitchen stuff should also be fairly easy: if I haven’t used it in the past year, why do I have it? I bake frequently, and cook for dinner parties often, so I should have a good idea of what I do and don’t use. In fact, I know I own things like a butter curler (to slice off little curls of butter for a fancy butter arrangement for a fancy dinner party, in case you’re wondering). I have never, ever, used it. BD is allergic to butter. We dip bread in olive oil. It’s not moving with us. I’m guessing I’ll need to label it for the thrift store, though.

Books. Hmmm. Actually not as bad as it might be: we’ve become pretty good in the last years about culling the books, because otherwise they would take over the house. We’re likely down to fewer than two hundred, and we rarely buy new ones. So not too bad. Except every so often I do give a book away, and then want to read it again a year later. But we both have library cards.

Knick-knacks. I have to say I am NOT a collector of things that gather dust, but inevitably we have a lot we were given. I have trouble giving away something someone gave me, unless they live on the other side of the world and will never know. They chose it for me and gave it to me thinking I’d like it. This will be my biggest problem. Although we did get away with ‘oh, it’s still unpacked in the attic, we’re waiting to put up more shelves’ for a very long time in the current house, so perhaps I can try that? It worked very well, now I think of it.

And then there are things like the filing cabinet with twenty-four years worth of records of everything from oil bills to credit card purchases to the warranties on the well pump and the inspection records for the septic system that have to be sorted through. And a cupboard full of gift bags, and a garage full of wood scraps BD thought might be useful some day. And the junk drawer. The junk drawer is scary.

I’ll report on how this all goes over the next few weeks. If I maintain my sanity, that is. Any hints on how to do that will be gladly received. Anyone want a butter curler, by the way?