Things are finally starting to fall into place around here...
Most everything is unpacked and as close to it's final place as is possible. I have cleaned the floors in the Family Room, Dining Room and Hallway. The washing of the floors is what we have been looking forward to since we have moved in - it means that everything in those rooms is settled and there will be no more moving of boxes in or out of those rooms! Next on the list is the Living Room (a few more boxes of office stuff near the computer), and the Laundry Room and Kitchen are ready to clean.
The major construction projects that we had coming into the house are complete. Just some minor aesthetic things to take care of: a valence to hide the wiring on the kitchen cabinets, toe kicks and fillers for the cabinets, and a little bit of plaster patching where I had to snake wires through the wall.
I think I've figured out that about an hour of every day needs to be devoted to snow removal. Tuesday, I spent several hours moving back snowbanks along the driveway to make room for more snow that was to come in overnight. I moved the barbeque, lawn mowers and wheelbarrow away from the barn door and cleared the last ten feet of driveway (the car can now go all the way to the door!). Yesterday, I used the snowblower to clear both driveways of about one foot of snow. With no broken shear bolts, it wasalmost a pleasure to use the snowblower! Yesterday, I spent the last half of the afternoon clearing the snow off of the shallow-pitched roofs of the house. There was 3½-4 feet on most of those. Then this morning, I spent about an hour cleaning up a "dusting" (about an inch) of snow that fell overnight. If I don't clear that off of the driveway, it acts as an insulative layer that prevents the ice underneath from melting, while at the same time packing and becoming slippery itself - so it had to go while it was still powder!
Business seems to be falling into place as well. Our first shipment was delivered to a friend's shop on the main street of Dexter with no problems. I'm in the process of sorting out the garage and getting it set up with shelves so that bookfairs can go into full swing. Bob will be helping me wire the garage for light (and probably a couple of outlets so I can have a place to plug in the electric heaters!) at some point in the next few days. I'll be strapping shelves up so that we can unload books from the boxes to make pulling go as quickly as possible during the season.
Our first bookfair is a week from today. Bob is going to come with me to set up an event at an insurance company in South Portland. Everyone is pretty excited about starting up. I'm excited to get back to work, the people that are having the bookfairs are excited to have a "real" bookfair again (it's been a few years), and Books Are Fun is excited to have a rep like me in the territory.
Thanks everyone for the prayers and support through our tranistion to Maine. Please keep our New Hampshire house in prayer, as we are still waiting to hear back from our bank regarding the short sale. We are waiting for an agent to be assigned to our case; meanwhile, we have not been paying the mortgage on that house, and we are now almost three months behind, so there's a good chance that the bank will be starting the foreclosure process at the same time that it's dragging it's feet to close the sale - it's all very frustrating!
