We've been moving boxes from room to room (and sometimes back) for more than a week now. While progress is being made, the boxes are also feeling familiar and almost sculptural. More of an artist's statement, really, about transition. Or that is becoming my approach.
So George and I decided on Saturday evening that we should venture out to the local antique stores to postpone further unpacking and search for bathroom cabinetry and an armoire. I've been admiring a beautifully purposed store adjacent to my bank with odd enough hours that I hadn't yet caught it open. We started there. Three huge showrooms later, we aimed for the door, loaded with ideas. We were caught by Donna, the self-proclaimed resident know-it-all. After thirty minutes of interview-style questioning, she handed me her card and told me to call if I have questions about the town or where to find anything. She wrote her personal cell phone number on the back.
Next, we walked across the square to the Sister's Antiques on the corner, a one-room store with only fully restored pieces. The store is owned by three sisters. (I questioned the punctuation in their name, but I am nerdy like that.) The sister we met, whose name I regrettably forgot, trekked in three times a week from Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City, to mind the store on her days. Turns out she and her siblings grew up in Garnett, but now she has grandchildren in KC and can't move away from them back to her hometown. While the sister shared her own stories, she also wrangled out of us where we grew up and came from and did for a living, how we liked Garnett so far and our house and the shopping, and then invited me to come drink coffee at the shop in the mornings with, apparently, half the town's business people.
I gave up on the antiques, and we rented a movie (Charlie Bartlett) from a surprisingly well-stocked company on the square. Then we ordered Pizza Hut and spent the night in hiding.
Late Sunday afternoon, I took Ziti for a walk to return our DVD while George started on the lawn work. We walked all over town, peeking in store windows and empty buildings. Everything is closed on Sundays, so it's safe. When I returned, only 45 minutes later, George had already met two neighbors and a sweet senior who asked to pet the dog and told him who owned each house on the block. As I was catching up on his stories, the neighbor across the street hailed us with "I'm not sure anyone who's lived in that house ever knew how to use a weed whacker" and invited himself over. He had photos of the house being moved, which confirmed that it was only moved 1.5 blocks, not the five everyone kept saying. He said he helped and that the house weighed more than 4 tons and it took two guys ten days to clean out the junk of the old lady who owned it previously. Apparently, she packed floor to ceiling and just backed out of the rooms. Yikes.
Today the cable guy came, with his too-short ladder, to install our dish atop the house. He looks super familiar but I don't know why. He didn't ask where we moved from. He specifically referred to the fact that this house would probably cost three times as much in Denver.
I need to get a few groceries today and feel like driving to Kansas City to buy them anonymously.
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