On Moving, Cats, and Finally Being Healed.

Okay, so we moved into the new house last week. Here are some pictures, from the web site. I haven't taken my own pictures yet. The furniture in the pictures isn't ours, and the Darth Vader fridge has been replaced with a white one.

The guy that sold us the house left us a bottle of champagne and a note that said, "Welcome home, we hope you'll be as happy here as we have been." They also left us a map of the back yard, and where all the stuff is planted. How nice is that?

So. We're living here temporarily while Mini Baboo is in Texas. When he returns, we have to return to the other house and stay there until he 1) graduates, or 2) I find someone in his school district who doesn't mind having a surly teenager staying with them. Uh-huh. Good luck with all that.

In any case, we moved starting last Saturday, and the second trip included me, my Honda Fit, assorted small boxes and bags and such, and THREE COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT CATS. Oh, yes.

Have you had the joy of traveling with three cats in a tiny little car? Then, my friend, you haven't lived. We had one cat carrier, and Hissy went in there. The smallest cat, Whitney, hid in the litter box in the back and mewed quietly, continuously, and desperately. And then Lily. Lily the Hysteric, the largest and heaviest cat screamed at the top of her lungs: a loud, desperately hysterical scream that was like a car alarm going off while she climbed on my head and tried to figure out WHY she was stuck inside this tiny, moving box with me.

When we got to the house I let them out into the master bedroom and closed the door for a while so that they could calm down. They ran under the bed and didn't come out for nearly 12 hours. Yikes.

Our new house abuts open space and the Cibola forest and every once in a while, the cats suddenly all look up and out toward the back yard, ears perked, listening intently, and then I think to myself, what's out there? never mind. maybe I don't want to know what's out there.

<-- Now, this is an aerial view of the house. This map is maybe 3/4 mile long. See the red A? That's our house. See the area to the right? That's open space, for about 1/4 mile, and then there's the Cibola National Forest boundary. See all those paths? Those are running and mountain biking paths, which is how we found the house: they put a "For Sale" sign out facing the path.

It's at about 6000 feet above sea level, and climbs up within a mile of the house to about 7000 feet, unless you count Sandia Peak, which is a couple miles off, and goes up to 10,000 feet. I'm not converting any of that to meters today. I'm feeling lazy.

We've been living here all week with the cats. I bought a bag of cereal. Frosted Mini Wheats. This is a tremendous thing - I rarely buy cold cereal because Mini-Baboo will pour it all at once into a large mixing bowl and eat it in front of the TV and then it's gone, so what's the point? But I bought some, and it was with no small amount of glee that I got home and--it was still there.

Wow. And the peace, my God, the peace. I won't go on and on. But my God. The. Peace.

I did an 8-mile pavement run, the longest run on pavement that I've done since August when I was injured. There is a wide, paved running path about 1/4 from the new house that goes upgrade for several miles, and I ran it for 4 and then turned around and ran back. I felt fine, no pain, no worries. Finally! We have a 4-day weekend coming up, and I'm planning a long combination trail/pavement run as I ramp up for the Ghost Town in - ulp - three weeks! The only question left is, did I heal in time? Will I be able to do this 38.5-mile run??

Famouser: I will say Happy New Year on Bigun and Tacboy's Podcast. I'll post a link when I get one. I have no Internet at the new house so I'm out of a lot of loops.