Furniture and Tears

The summer is just flying by; I cannot believe that it is already mid-August and September (i.e. the start of work for us!) is near...

This week has been BUSY!!! Since being back from Asia, we have felt like we've had many tasks at hand....

First, furniture shopping. I would just like to say that I am immensely blessed to have a husband that tolerates shopping... of all kinds; in fact, he seems to enjoy shopping more than I do. I tend to lose patience and steam, as well as get frustrated by prices. We have been busy browsing furniture for our house in Arcata, which (at a three-bedroom) is much larger than either of our former living spaces (or anywhere we have lived in recent years). We definitely don't have the furniture currently to fill a house, and, in the throes of a recent wedding and honeymoon and two months without income, we now have the added future dread of dropping thousands of dollars on furniture. Both of us are very frugal people (Kelvin likes a deal almost more than I do, believe it or not!), and so the thought of spending a few thousand dollars on a "great" sofa sectional, when we could maybe get a "decent" one for half the price, is rather shocking; however we do know that we should get "quality" stuff that lasts and look at this as an "investment." But it is still so difficult. Our order of business is something like this: 1. sofa/sectional, 2. office desk (my Ikea desk which I've had since HS is now headed to its grave), 3. coffee table, 4. TV (time for larger than a 21-inch!), 5. dining table + chairs (for all the guests we hope we'll have! '). We're going to need miscellaneous shelves, bedside tables, and lamps, but those definitely are lower-priority.

Shopping is more work than buying, for sure. In the past 4 days or so, we have spent many, many hours browsing in stores including Ikea, Costco, Office Max, Target, Crate and Barrel, and Pottery Barn, as well as the local Antique Faire today (my first time!) [other suggestions/options are welcome!)]; however, the only thing we have bought is a bookshelf on super sale from Office Max. We would theoretically like to buy furniture now, as the movers are coming (finally! They had a hard time committing to a move date!) tomorrow, and it would be great for them to haul the big stuff now (rather than us trying to figure if we could squeeze furniture, disassembled, into either of our Toyotas). However, we don't really have anywhere currently to store furniture. Secondly, when we were in Arcata in July, we had to sign on the rental house so quickly that we didn't have time to go back and measure the rooms' dimensions and our memory is, at this point, a little fuzzy about some intricacies of the layout, so we are hesitant to make any major furniture purchases until we return there.

While there is a Costco in Eureka, there are not any chain furniture stores for at least 100 miles from where we are living. There seem to be some small local furniture places, but we haven't had any time in Humboldt County yet to check them out yet; therefore, while we felt the need to "shop down here now," we have held out on buying anything. While we are thrilled to have (through Kelvin's scholarship) a company packing and moving for us (a luxury that I have not had as an adult!), their coming so late is really cutting down our time for unpacking, settling in, and making purchase decisions. Despite how much I hate actually boxing up stuff and the whole "moving" process (I wonder if I will ever be in one place longer than four years!), there is still some part of me that doesn't actually believe that people are going to pack up my stuff for me, so I spent the better part of today organizing and boxing up the majority of things in my place.

Moving does not get easier. But it feels the same every time. As the pictures came off the walls and my belongings went into cardboard, with sappy country music on Pandora in the background, I started feeling nostalgic and missing Sacramento already. While we are sort of "moving" tomorrow/Tuesday, we are bouncing back to central Cal (Sac is not northern Cal compared to Arcata!) next weekend (with a short Vegas jaunt) and won't be up in Arcata "for good" until the last week in August, so I don't have to say goodbyes just yet. But it is still sad.

And, speaking of sad (while really unrelated to any topic above), I shed my share of quite a few tears this week at a couple of very powerful films which you definitely should see (I am a sucker for civil-rights-type stories):

1. The Help, based on the Kathryn Stockett novel of the same name, about the relationships between black maids and their Southern employers in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi
2. The Great Debaters, a drama based on the true story of a 1935 black college's debate team and their challenges and triumphs against schools across the country

With that, it is back to packing... and eating /(rescuing) freezer leftovers...