Smiley's Synopses

Hi Folks!
I haven't been doing nearly as much communicating as I need to of late. The days have been very crazy for the last month. Most of you know that the 19th of December was our last day in Forest Grove as we loaded a 16' U-Haul diesel truck with the balance of our worldly goods and set out for Carlton through the couple of inches of still falling snow.

What you might not have known was the significance of that Sunday. Maggie and I are on the same team at work doing 4 ten hour shifts each week. Sunday is one of our three days off each week, and Wednesday Thursday is our weekend as it were. Therefore, when we got up that Sunday morning, we knew we had this particular day to completely vacate the premises because we had to be at work the following morning in Hillsboro at 7:15.

Doc, Jones, Dean and Jenisa were invaluable in helping us get all our stuff shoehorned into the truck and then unloaded into our house at the other end. We made copious use of Doc's and my handtrucks while Dean and Jones were having their way with all the shelves and furniture and wires in my office. Maggie and Jenisa were packing boxes and dismantling the kitchen and when 3p rolled around Maggie and Janisa saddled up Mom's truck and trailer and raced the snow to Carlton to unload all the lumber and bricks.

The sun was fully set by the time we unloaded the truck into the leveled and stitched together double-wide that still had unpatched plaster and carpets rolled up into the center of the house. So we chose the rooms that would need the least work to pile our stuff into and finally retired to my mother's house to sleep out the snow storm that was preventing any of us from getting home (except--of course--Maggie and I whom didn't have a home yet:).

Another couple of months of homelessness while living with my Mom saw the electric feed installed and PVC pipe buried to replace the garden hose water main, mostly thanks to brothers Cliff and Andy. Andy's creation of a front porch attached to buried concrete piers per code in February bought us a 90day temporary occupancy permit which is going to expire a little bit before my birthday (23May) which is when I have been fantasizing having the grand open house celebration.

I'm going to work hard on keeping the "whine factor" as low as possible on this report, but it is going to be hard. I started this in January and picked it up again today because everything has been so overwhelming. With a few weeks left before I have to get approval on a final occupancy permit, I've got my storeroom/workbench at about 75% complete, the office space is at about 50%, kitchen, dining, master bed and living rooms are actually pretty close to fine now, but the mud room, laundry room and spare bedroom need a whole bunch of work and the yard still looks like a war zone. We're planning on not installing the carport until after we get final inspection so as not to confuse the issue, but the skirting has to be installed and we really should have the gutter drains and 70' of APC tile buried to 18" and surrounded by gravel before we let the inspectors look at it. Oh yeah, the phone line and ethernet cable to Mom's house is buried 4" deep in Mom's yard, but is laying on the ground across our yard to the house and it needs to get buried to about 18" or so as well.

All this has to happen before I can use Mark's tractor and harrower to level the yard and plant rye grass and clover. Of course, I'd like to get all this done before inviting my friends over for the open house, but with the time I've got left, it is going to take a small army. Progress has been made, actually a lot, but it is really glacial at one or two days a week while taking time out for chores like mowing the 2 acres of lawn.

I'll try to get another one of these reports out before another 6 months goes by.

Love, Doug
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