Some of my problems with moving into a new house were listed in an earlier post. Here's an update.

1. Did the cable company show up Tuesday? Yes, but not because they wanted to. The story was pretty long, so I posted it to YesButNoButYes. It's not pretty.

2. I contacted the city about how to dispose of an old refrigerator. It's doable. But now the appliance guy is out of town. He says he'll move mine over here Friday. Until then, we have milk and butter in a cooler. What? You thought that picture of a friend helping me move my refrigerator was real? Ha! Yeah, things like that happen where I live, but my refrigerator is bigger.

3. The gas company man came ten minutes after I called Tuesday. He turned on the gas, lit the water heater, and found that the gas vent, which is fed through the old chimney, was not working. So he had to turn my gas back off. I called every plumber and heating guy in town (and some out-of-town) since there are absolutely no chimney sweeps in the yellow pages. The first one to respond (Wednesday) was out of town, but he sent his dad over. I was surprised to see a cousin show up! He's my mother-in-law's second cousin, close enough. He climbed the roof and tried to see what was blocking the chimney. You can't tell, because there are so many built-in baffles. But the top bricks were crumbling and he thought a couple may have fallen in. Bad news. So we tried to figure out how to go up from the bottom. I looked for something stiffer than a hose and more flexible than a pipe. My new basement holds many mysterious treasures. I spotted a box with a dozen CB antennas in it, found the longest, and started poking it up the chimney. When the plumber/cousin saw me, he had a "eureka moment." No bird's nests, no squirrels, no fallen bricks. There was a ton of soot falling now! He figured that the chimney was used at one time for a coal stove, then fell into disuse. Then when the water heater was vented, no one thought to clean the chimney out first. He and his assistant pulled a good three buckets of ash and soot from the chimney (with the help of my antenna and some garden tools). When he claimed it clean, the gas man came back immediately and lit the water heater. The vent tested good, so I can take a shower in the morning!

4. We will have adequate furniture and storage here. I'll sell the rest of the antiques.

5. I laugh at the small fees I was complaining about Monday, when I now know how much it costs to get a chimney cleaned. It would have been much more if he had to build a new vent pipe to code.

6. I returned to the old house to find the rain had caused an entire row of tomato trellis to collapse. My attitude? Oh, that's "too bad" (as Hoss would say). Big troubles make the little ones easier to take. I'm getting pretty good at carrying furniture in the rain. Yes, I put a raincoat over the big TV. So far, nobody has helped me carry anything, except my two daughters, who helped me move my full-size mattress. I expect when I get to the pieces I can't move, I will have to hire someone.

The kids and the cats don't remember ever living anywhere but the old house. But they love the new one already!