i've stayed two nights at our new place now. our place is a humble pie place. it is so homemade slap job. in edith's words "like, WHY is there one coat of peach paint on dark wood?" (that's in reference to our built in book case thingy. the floor is cheap vinyl that looks like wood, slapped over top of carpet. there's still the carpet base boards around the wall in every room, EVEN the bathroom. :) one burner of our stove top doesn't heat up very quickly. our inside walls are made of outside wall materials. our rooms are small, have no closets, there's little storage in the kitchen or the tiny bathroom. everything is dusty and spidery webby. there's not nearly as much light and airiness of our old place. yes it's a humble pie place. but i feel really glad to be there. it feels right. edith and i just sit and be at ease in our living room. edith's room is warm which sends her over the top in delight. i'm sleeping in a real bed for the first time since the middle of july. and i can wear anything i want to bed! i can go buck if i really want to. i'm reunited with my fluffy cozy duvet. i can go bare foot again and now that my feet are so pink and tender it's a shock to them. so i can pull out one of my pairs of slippers! living in the absence of pestilence shows me just how continually edgy and stressed out i was at the old place. it's a real blessing to have peace of mind and feel safe at home.

the cats felt differently. first chance they got, the queezed into every tiny space imaginable to hide. archie first went straight for the side of my bed that was against the wall. i found him there looking up at me with wide scared eyes. izzy wandered like a lost vagabond in and out and around and back and forth over and over and over looking, looking, looking but never finding her safe haven. at one point i coulnd't find archie but could hear his mews. finally he squished his head out from under the low space in hte back of the lazy boy. it really surprised me that my fatboy could fit under there. izzy woke us up in the early hours on sunday mewing insistantly and going back and forth, back and forth between mine and edith's rooms. when i got up and opened my sock drawer, which just so happens to be built into the base of the bed (yes one of those beds i helped sand many years ago), izzy crawled in. oook, i thought being lenient with her since she was in freak out mode. then i hear this scraping, i look, and she's gone into the bowels of my bed. great, i think. i work on my primary farewell letters and after a while i hear some more scraping and then nothing. neither of the cats had used the litter box yet. what if she goes under my bed? i wondered with some anxiety. but how am i going to get her out?? then i remembered when she was a kitten how she jumped out of the window onto the ledge below our bedrooms and how she kept trying to jump back into the closed window instead of the one she jumped out of. so i opened my underwear drawer and there she was all curled up on ma' whites. she then went into the fire place. arg. i had to cover it up with a grungy shelf. i solved archies hiding space needs by draping the blue fuzzy blanket over the arm of the couch down over his bed. he got in his bed and stayed there the whole day. didn't really come home until sunday evening. izzy spent a lot of time behind the couch and in the chair. neither cat ate or drank much but they did finally use the litter box, for which i was grateful. never thought i'd be grateful for that! later sunday evening they were acting more like themselves. we'll see how they fared during the day.

i got a toaster/convection oven today with my save-on points! oh goodie goodie!!