Transitions

Wednesday night and Thursday morning we finally executed some changes we'd been contemplating for a while. We moved to Louisville with two older cars: the green Taurus Stephanie bought in Ohio and the red Acura Legend Mom helped us buy from our friend Mo in St. Paul (the former now with some 220,000 miles on it). We also moved up here - having thrown away Vincent's old bunk bed in Bradenton a few months before Stephanie, Vincent, and Frisco left there - with the old thin mattresses for the bunk bed. Fourteen months ago - on the way from Washington, D.C. to Guatemala - my Mother helped arrange it and I stopped by Charlottesville - or, rather, their new home in Crozet, VA - and Penny and Serge gave me back the brown Nissan Maxima that my Dad had given me almost 10 years ago (soon before my stepmother June died), a car that I turned over to Stephanie and Penny after driving Greenville and me around in it for four months in Minnesota. But with two working - barely - cars, we had held this car "in reserve" in our carport - only started and rolled back and forth in the driveway once a week - not insured (while we waited for one of our other cars - one which has trouble starting in the winter and with one car door and trunk lid that don't work (Taurus), the other with three of four (including both front windows) power windows not working (deathly in the summer - locked shut - though the sun roof which of course we can only open in the evening in the summer because the sun shining through it too hot - recall I drove this car to Cincinnati and back three weeks ago) (Legend), and both with no air-conditioning) to die). (We have gotten some work done on the Taurus. It has its share of quirks - including some of the power windows, the speedometer, and the clock not working - but it does have a working antenna and air-conditioning.) When we moved into our rental house here, we discovered that the stairway was narrow enough that the double-size mattress from Vincent's bunk bed - and the box spring we'd bought for it - would not go upstairs. So we dragged the twin-size mattress up there and bought Vincent box springs for that (the bunk bed had springs - sort of - built into them). After going to a Dave Ramsey personal finance talk/event, Stephanie actually got busy and sold several items through the classifieds, including the full-size mattress and box springs that wouldn't fit up the stairs. So Vincent had new box springs but a thin, old mattress (both encased - like all of our mattresses and box springs - in allergenic covers that keep dust mites in or out). This stayed the same even after we bought a new mattress and box springs and put a bed in our computer room/extra bedroom (so Vincent's room had the third best mattress in the house - when even no one usually sleeps in the second best mattress).

Wednesday night we had a night off of Children's Fellowship and church meetings. And so we faciliated transitions in both of these areas. Stephanie and I drove the brown car down Westport Road to the only joint sheriff's/county clerk's office in Louisville. Coming in right before closing time, we got a sheriff's deputy to inspect our car and somehow not noticed it had an expired FL tag on it or that some of the power windows don't work, and we got a county clerk not to notice that I had a FL driver's license (and to ignore that our proof of insurance information sheet wasn't on letterhead).

Stephanie drove the brown car home and we took the (bigger) Taurus back to Big Lots, where we looked at on-sale Serta mattresses and ended up getting the more expensive, plusher of the two mattresses (we got one of the last ones of this line left for the sale price there). On the drive home (with the new mattress encased in plastic roped to the top of the Taurus) we called Vincent and he asked if we'd been shopping. We said Yes - he thought we meant groceries - and - although he does want groceries - he was still pleasantly surprised to get a new mattress. Pictured above is the new mattress already on the box springs placed next to the old mattress. Vincent continued to set up the new mattress.

Then Vincent tested out the new mattress, which earned a smile.

Before Stephanie could ask him to do this, Vincent had taken the old mattress downstairs and put it out in the trash, where it sat this morning (next to our two older cars) awaiting the trash collectors.

Thursday morning we belatedly removed the FL license plate from the Nissan and attached the new (anti-breast cancer) KY tag.

And Stephanie drove the Nissan (which badly needs a wash inside and out - though Stephanie has more mixed feelings about the brown color than I do - I like it more maybe in part because I remember when the car was brand new when my Father and June bought it or when I first got the car when it was in better shape) towards the Ohio River and her school across the river in Indiana.

In spite of her mixed feeilngs about the brown color, Stephanie felt OK this afternoon to drive home with the car AIR CONDITIONING running (although it's cooled down a bit in the past 24 hours.)

-- Perry