Another monstrous wolf spider is nonchalantly hanging out on the closet door jamb. I squeaked and made an quick right turn into the bathroom while Karen is laughing maniacally. I went to get a broom for more spider annihilation but she didn’t want various spider innards strewn around the bedroom. So she got a Tupperware box and calmly tricks him in there.

Pest control was at the house the next day. I slipped him an extra $20 to encourage excessive use of pesticide.

There is a screen panel on the back porch that needs replacing and still a few items in the garage that need to go over to the new house, but it’s in good enough shape to get on the market.  Our realtor, Bruce Kwitney, is going to add some staging to the house to improve the showing.  Nothing of ours is left in there.  He thinks he can get it sold in 60 days, give or take a month, which would be wonderful.  Only having one lawn to mow during the Florida spring would make my weekends much more enjoyable.

The new house is getting there.  The garage is still full of boxes as is Karen’s room and the formal sitting room.  The kitchen is mostly put together, I have my most commonly used items on hand.  Still a lot of stuff to put away though.  And assemble!  Karen bought a table and chair set for the nook that needs to get finished and the mirror for the upstairs bathroom is still in the box.  The bowflex is in pieces and the entertainment system needs to be wired.  We are using the TV’s built in speakers and they don’t seem to want to give us any center channel sound when we are playing blue-rays from the PS3.  So much to do still, I just want to hang out by the pool for a weekend and chill.

I said something witty back, like, “Garbublagahef!” and smacked the box I was carrying into the other stack with him in between.  I ran back inside and told Karen about the attack.  She was not all that sympathetic.  After I calmed down a bit, I grabbed my phone, went back out and took a few pictures.  As I was looking around for the broom and a dustpan, the spider shook it off and proceeded to charge me.

There may have been some girlish screaming at this point.  After the screaming and some running around in desperate circles, I located the broom and, purely in self-defense mind you, began the beat down.  It was brutal. At the end I was muttering, “die, damn you, die” in between sobs and gasping for breath.  There was nothing recognizable left.

Karen still made me bring in more boxes.

We should be sleeping in the new house Friday night.  I can’t wait.

Most of the punch list has been taken care of at this point.  I think the rain probably stopped the solar heating system for the pool going in today, but I don’t know for sure.  Maybe tomorrow.  We are also waiting on a compressor for the fridge which was delivered to us by Capritta Appliances broken.  They totally refused to take it back so we are basically paying top dollar for a refurbished refrigerator.  Not recommended, find another dealer.  The trip to Orlando would be worth it after all.

We also are waiting on our pocket doors to get installed correctly.  Most of them don’t latch properly and since they are on the bathrooms and bedrooms, we don’t find that acceptable.    Maybe we will get in by the end of the month.  I really hope so, living amongst all these packed boxes is going to get old real fast.

We got the landscaping done a few weeks ago and last night it was predicted that the wind chill would be in the twenties.  We have a fruit cocktail tree (tangelos, grapefruit, lemon, lime) and four foxtail palms that were pretty expensive.  I went to Walmart and got some cheap sheets and about 50 clothespins.  The first foxtail I did a crappy job.  The second one I did a little better.  By the third and fourth one I had the technique down so I went back and redid the first two.

They are also working on doing the stucco on the outside of the house, it’s looking pretty cool with all the wire mesh and edges up.  Will try to get some pics this weekend if I can remember to bring my camera with me.

The first challenge we had to deal with was the tub in the master bath.  It turns out that you can’t fit a six foot tub in a six foot space.  You need some room around the edges of the tub.  We spend some extra money by going through the plumbing supply company that works with the plumber instead of getting everything cheaper through online retailers because we new we needed help putting the order together.  The person that put the order together didn’t check anything with the floor plan, she just ordered it and it was too big.  Wes, our job super, got with the framer and they worked move some walls just enough to make the tub fit but it’s going to be tight.

After the plumbing was in place we walked through the house with the electrician to place each and every outlet and light.  It took us about three hours, way longer than I thought it would.  Damn, that’s a big house.  He had some really good suggestions for improving some things.  The light in the stairwell (it goes up one way to a landing and then back the other way to get upstairs) was just a can light and he suggested we wire it for a hanging light.  I think that will look much better.

We pre-plumbed the house for a central vacuum, it was $550 to that and once we sell my house we can get the rest of the deal for another $500.  Karen was already talking about buying a replacement vacuum for my Dyson that she doesn’t like and getting another one for upstairs so she didn’t have to drag a vacuum up the stairs.  This system will end up costing a little more than two new vacuums in the short run, but since replacement motors for it cost less than $50, it will pay off in the long run.

We are thinking we will close sometime in January and that is freaking me out a little since we are nowhere near being ready to put the current house up for sale.  Tons of work to do in the master bath and the yard.  Not to mention we have way too much crap that needs carting to the curb.

I’ll try to get some new pictures up this weekend.