Sorry the promised "before and after" pictures are taking so long. If it's not one thing, it really is another. We're coming down to the wire before Bev has to leave in a few weeks, and we haven't quite managed to reach that moved-in equilibrium that makes the house picture-worthy.
First it was just the crazy cold that put everybody out for several weeks. We heard later that there's a whooping cough epidemic in California at the moment. I don't know if that's what we had, but it was pretty bad. Everybody seemed to catch the bug in waves; first Dave caught it, then I caught it, then Bev caught it, so altogether we were probably unable to go anywhere or plan anything for almost a month. We certainly couldn't use Bev's awesome gift certificates to the
Whaling Station while we all sounded like we had the plague and were too sniffly to taste anything.
When the cough was gone, we were able to unpack, but we were distracted by the saga of the car repairs. Our cute little car had a minor bang-up the first day Bev was here, and we've been all this time trying to schedule a rental car and a body shop appointment around a move and being sick. We finally accomplished that objective last week, and of course it's a story all it's own.
Despite the many times I explained to Allstate that we were located in California at the moment, they made our rental reservation in Virginia, so our reservation number came up invalid. The Enterprise guy spent much time on the phone working that out and making a new reservation. Unfortunately they had no cars on site at the time. They found a little VW beetle at the airport, but unfortunately the previous renters had trashed it, and it was in need of much detail work. All they could drum up for us was an outsized pickup truck, probably the last thing I really wanted to drive. Bev had a good laugh; the irony was unmistakable. See pictures at
Banana Bum. But wait -- there's more. This brand new, dark grey Chevy Silverado had no license plates, no tags, no stickers or markings of any kind. The best they could do was put the VIN number on the paperwork. The only thing that would make it look more suspicious would be extra tint on the windows, or maybe an Iraqi flag. We imagined being pulled over several times a day by police, denied access to the Presidio, and all manner of other headaches. Fortunately nobody gave us any trouble, but it was still quite the anomaly.
On a sudden impulse, I bought a couch. The living room looks much better with something between the bookshelves besides a rug. We had to wait four days for it to be delivered, but it was well worth it. We were just putting what passed for finishing touches on our space, and almost ready to call it done.
Now that all the backed up chores are taken care of, Bev made our Whaling Station reservations for Saturday evening. But as our luck would have it, Dave crawls into the car Wednesday afternoon and says, "Ugh, my throat feels like crap." He's sick again with the same thing that started this whole mess. The bedroom is a quarantined disaster area, and I'm using our new couch for temporary sleeping quarters since I have no desire to share the love this time around. Our dinner reservations are in question, but I'd rather two of us go than none of us, and the worst case scenario is that we're all at home next week in our pajamas playing "99 Bottles of DayQuil on the Wall." Basically, Dave has until Saturday evening to get healthy, or he gets his food in a doggie bag.
Apparently the squirrels at Lover's Point are even tamer than I remembered. All you have to do is call to them and twenty will come out of the rocks to partake of the proffered goodies. The way they sat in our laps, rifled through our bags and crowded around in gangs was almost intimidating. We thought we might have a theme for a new Hitchcock movie. Still, it was all good until one - the felonious rodent pictured - got quite overexcited and decided to drag away my little finger.