It seems impossible that we arrived here just less than a week ago. Last Sunday, our autotransporter, Autozipper, dropped our cars off at our friends' house around midday. Lil L and I flew in that evening and picked up my car before driving to my cousin's house on the other side of town.

Bright and early Monday morning, we met with a real estate agent who took us around to look at rental properties. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, N oversaw the loading of the ABF trailer. We hired 2 movers and a couple of guys from church also helped empty out the apartment. By late morning, our stuff was loaded and we were ready to put in an application on a rental house.

Tuesday, I drove around running errands and by drove around I mean about 120 miles of driving around. It's so easy to get around here that you drive for 15 minutes and you've gone 12 miles. Part of the errand running was getting things together for the rental application which went in late that morning. N was still back home, doing some last minute stuff before P Soon picked him up to take him to the airport. Driving to pick up N @ 6PM was the only time I've experienced traffic here thus far. It was definitely traffic, but I don't anticipate needing to take the N-S artery by downtown around 6PM very often.

Wednesday and Thursday was a lot of sitting at home and waiting to hear back from the rental office about whether our application was approved. Most rental units don't come with washers and dryers even though there are hookups, so I went to the local big box stores and tried to scope out the situation. As an aside, in buying these major appliances, customer service has meant a great deal. The first store where I encountered great customer service made me want to do my business there. But the other store fit our needs better. Thankfully, when we went back to this other store to check things out again, we got a really good guy working with us and I feel better about getting our stuff from there.

Thursday evening we got a call saying our app was approved, so we immediately started hooking up utilities. Being occasionally morose people, we had joked that we are such internet people that no matter how fast we could get internet service, we would be waiting twice as long as we wanted. So we were pleasantly surprised that the cable internet people were ready to hook us up the next day. But since we were signing the lease on Friday, we bumped the cable internet back to Monday. What a pleasant surprise. This city allows you to order most of your utilities online which is great, except for the gas company that said it needed 5 business days to hook up our gas. With Thanksgiving next week, 5 business days is early December. So the next morning, I called the gas company and used Lil L as my trump card for needing heat and hot water sooner rather than later. Instead of early December, gas will be turned on on Monday. YAY!

After sitting around my cousin's house for 2 days, Friday we went out to breakfast (really brunch) and then to look at appliances together. Of course this would be the day that torrential downpours swamped the area. Well, after record heat this summer, I suppose the area needs it. Lil L got to experience rain. Anyways, by the end of the day, we had signed a lease for a 4 BR house 2 blocks from a park and a few miles from N's new work place to the West and a few miles from my cousin's to the East. We took the keys and drove to the house and started to make a list of things we would need to get and measurements for appliances and such. Friday night my cousin went to see New Moon. Her husband wisely stayed at home and we played Rockbank on their new 52" flatscreen. Sweet.

I'm out of time to tell about Saturday, but as you can already tell, we have been wonderfully taken care of by God, family and friends. 

N got a new job out-of-state and we're moving in a week. Today, we're giving our attempt at saying goodbye instead of sneaking out in the relocation rush. We've invited many of the people who have been friends through thick and thin to have lunch with us. But honestly, this can only be a shadow of an attempt.

Our thoughts and space are dominated by boxes of stuff, all over, everywhere. We're juggling last minute doctor visits, filing paperwork, taking care of mail, coordinating all the people involved in packing and moving cars, household items, and ourselves, coordinating all the people who have generously offered to help us on the other side, and so forth. You get the picture. We are steeped in the immediate, multitude of details.

I think we'll be ready to say goodbye after Thanksgiving.

Arg...I just had a large post disappear on me via a few misplaced keystrokes.

Anyways, the jist of what I was thinking was, given that my work is caring for the mini which cannot be set aside on any day, how do I observe the Sabbath rest? The mini needs feeding, cleaning or soothing every day of the week. In theory, N could do these things once a week, but is that taking away from his Sabbath rest?

Wish I knew some mother actively trying to observe the Sabbath. I guess I could try to find some observant Jews?