We made it through the move fairly unscathed. What and ordeal though! There's something very psychologically damaging about rounding up all your worldly possessions into some boxes and then being forced to sift through them all in a totally new environment. Now we've already gone through all our stuff once as we packed it, throwing out the unnecessary items wherever possible. Now we're in the new house and I'm surrounded by crap. Why the hell did I keep this ugly Halloween-themed mug full of matchbooks? Did I really need these milk crates? Where is all my good stuff? I don't have any good stuff, it's all crap.

Meanwhile, the house seems like a dump. I can't look anywhere without seeing major flaws that must be corrected immediately. Of course I won't fix it all, but I don't even know where to begin. I mean, after I get rid of the asbestos. It's times like these I understand the strange looks I got from my friends when I told them I was buying a house. What the hell was I thinking? In what alternate universe did this seem like a good idea?

I'm pretty sure the feelings of remorse and panic will subside as I start working on the place. But for now, I'm exhausted. What state would I be in if we had moved ourselves, without the help of burly Russians? I hesitate even to imagine.

The cats are in the house somewhere, but I'm only seeing Hubcap on a regular basis. We're trying to keep Mr Bones sequested on his floor until at least we get a handle on all the pets. Decatur has reportedly been up on the top floor for the past day. And then there's the cat formerly known as Freddie.

You may remember Freddie as the stray cat who lived in our previous back yard. She was there ever since I moved into that place, and in the intervening years she has become more and more a fixture on our back porch. I feel sort of responsible for her now, so we kidnapped her to the new house, too. She was pretty freaked out at first, but she may be slowly coming around to the idea. It's pretty clear she once was a house cat, as she's pretty nice to humans, and she's been fixed. Now all she has to do is remember how to use a litter box.

I want to change her name to something more appropriate than Freddie (as in, 'the Freeloader') but nothing has been decided yet. Currently we believe she is in the basement, but who knows. The upside of all this is that the cats are all getting along very well. So far they're not paying any attention to the birds with whom they now share a domicile. I'm sure that will change. The birds took about 5 minutes to get settled.