In which I declare Victory!

 It's been a long war!

No, Beans, I'm not talking about Sarge's serial war novel, fabulous though it is.

I'm talking about what I affectionately refer to as "Operation Everyone move one house clockwise".

The operation began its first phase on March 5, 2020 with site preparation for the new house.

This was followed shortly thereafter by "The Feast of the Sainted Slab Pourers".

This phase of the operation, like most military operations, did not end, but was "Declared" over on 30 Sep 2020 when Mrs J and I signed 2,765,412 documents and wrote an enormous check.  Upon handing said check to the High Priestess of Entitlement, she proclaimed that Phase 2 could now commence.

At 0800 1 Oct 2020, an elite special forces unit, operating under the pseudonym "Affordable Movers" arrived on target.  By lunch, they had departed and most of our material things were "in" the new house.

Phase 3 of the operation began at that point.  Mrs J was in command of this operation.  I was in charge of heavy lifting, hanging artifacts on walls, moving said artifacts to a more suitable position (per Mrs J's order countermanding my poor location judgement), and moving "for the time being" things into the attic.  

Where they will be discovered some time in the distant future by some archaeologist who will, no doubt, gain much notoriety for the find.

While this phase was ongoing (and still is), phase 4 of the operation commenced.

The refurbishing of our old house. Which was "supposed" to be, merely ripping out the carpet and tile and replacing it with snap in vinyl flooring.

The ripping part went smoothly, until one of the workers stepped through the floor.

Oplan Phase 4 was then rewritten to include repairing the floor understructure, cabinets and then the vinyl.  

At that point, Phase 5 of the Operation came into play, the Special Operations Team, operating under the same code name, returned to the OpArea and conducted a quick upload and offload of my sister's material goods.

Given that she'd been living in a 640 sq ft cottage on our property, this was a relatively easy phase.  In a stroke of genius, she set up her bed in one of what had been Little Juvat's room.  She then set up her sewing and quilting equipment in the former master bedroom.  I'm a little jealous of the space she now has to go about her hobbies.

In any case, Phase 6 was delayed for about a month due to "Icemageddon". the Valentine's Day winter storm that shut down Texas (there are still a few outlying dwellings without power.  We were lucky in that our power was restored within 5 days, I've got friends that were out for 2-3 weeks and had to move into a hotel in town.)

The storm caused considerable damage to the water supply to our old house as well as the Guest House and my Sister's old house.  All thing's being fair in Love and Contracting, I resorted to a diabolic scheme to get priority with the plumber.

Which, surprisingly, worked!

Now, Phase 6 had a hard end date of March 26 which was when DIL and dog Tex would be returning from overseas to quarantine before returning to a different overseas location. 

March 19th, after cleaning and throwing away several loads of old broken stuff, the living room and bedroom looked like this.

Monday the 22nd, the bed, but not the mattress had arrived. 

That evening, I'm looking through the Oplan for timing considerations.  I recheck DIL's flight itinerary and discover her arrival date is the 25th not the 26th. Somebody had made a mistake in entering it on the calendar!  I'm not naming names, but it wasn't me.  But the plan' execution now shifts into overdrive.

We had purchased this couch from a young couple who were moving into a smaller apartment. It had been in our garage until this point.  Unfortunately, the special ops folks were not available for this phase. Mrs J and yours truly managed the task, later assisted by Motrin. 

Tuesday, the mattress and the rug arrived.  UPS/FedEx LOVE us!

Wednesday, Mrs J spends organizing the kitchen area.

Thursday, we load up some of MBD and SIL's stuff that we'd discovered during phase 2/3 of the plan, and head to Houston.  A bit of excitement in Austin with two pickup trucks engaging in a little high speed road rage in our vicinity added a large shot of adrenalin to my system to combat the fatigue.

After dropping the stuff off and having an enjoyable lunch with MBD and SIL, we're off to Bush International.  

Very shortly thereafter......

Even Tex is happy to be back in the USA (and was even happier to be let out of his carrier).

The following day, we had a hilariously happy trip to the local grocery store.  Mrs J and I had a relatively short shopping list, so I suggested she stay with DIL and assist her with locating stuff while I did our shopping.

Shortly thereafter, I rendezvous with them after completing my circuit of the store.  They were on Aisle 2.

I had to chuckle, remembering a similar episode when I returned from my remote assignment to Kunsan.  

So, it's been a long 13 Months.  I am declaring Victory in OPlan Everybody move one house clockwise.  There, as Sarge will no doubt include in his saga, still will be some "mopping up" operations to accomplish, but I'm going to take some time off and maybe even take a nap.

Lucky Dogs!

Peace out, y'all!