Marsia's Diary

Thanks everyone! Sorry I haven't been on the forum consistently lately. I'm in "oh, no, only a week to go!!!" mode. Things are going well. We're working on taxes, the house closed after a huge amount of additional paperwork, we have someone building a ramp to get the 500 pound printing press on the moving van (the wheels on it are too wide for the ramp), K went with her friends to support them in complaining about the chemistry teacher, and I feel a lot better now. I was packing too slowly last week because I was so utterly sleep deprived, but now that I can put the cat in with K when she pesters me in the middle of the night, I am getting caught up on sleep and can function again, and the packing is almost on track again. I can't believe how darned much I crammed into this little place!

I am up a little in weight, but we're eating good food (except for celebratory beignets when the house closed) and going to the beach for walks, not often enough, but it still feels great to go. I may be a complete flake for the next few weeks. I need to coordinate so much this week, then we drive almost 3000 miles across the country with car in tow (and with a cat who hates car rides), and after we unpack, we'll be tourists for the next week of Spring Break, then I'll be back on the forum consistently again. I'll take nice pics when we get there and post some when we get internet there.
 
I'm looking forward to the pics Marsia. You're doing great girl!

Why do you have a printing press, may I ask?
 
Cate said:
I'll come back later to post in your diary, hon. I have run out of time xoxo
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🤣 I’m back.
I have had a whirlwind few days, but nothing like what you’re doing I would imagine. Just popped in to send you my love 🥰
 
Don't worry about us: anyone would understand you have a lot going on right now! Best of luck with all the finishing touches :grouphug:
 
Emilyrose said:
I'm looking forward to the pics Marsia. You're doing great girl!

Why do you have a printing press, may I ask?
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Thanks Em!! I was a printmaking major for my undergrad degree, and I want to get back into it, so I saved my art printing press because I absolutely adore making monoprints. I like to save particularly beautiful flat textures like dried crab grass and run it though the press for certain textures in a piece. I also have done lithographs, etchings, and letterpress, though I don't have letterpress letters to make books with.

Cate said:
🤣 I’m back.
I have had a whirlwind few days, but nothing like what you’re doing I would imagine. Just popped in to send you my love 🥰
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Thanks Cate!! Love back!! I visited your diary, and wow, have you been crazy busy. I am so glad you are getting so much accomplished health-wise!

Llama said:
Don't worry about us: anyone would understand you have a lot going on right now! Best of luck with all the finishing touches :grouphug:
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Thanks LaMa! Hope you're doing great!!

I'm off to the last open mike I'll be able to attend here. K is going to play a beautiful original song she wrote. Hope all goes well performing it!
 
Hi all! So the property here is incredibly peaceful. In the mornings, there are tropical bird sounds and a nice breeze, and Lumi and I go out and survey the yard from the deck and then go walk around the yard together. There are all sorts of weird, cool bugs, some of which are stinging or biting, but they are all very intriguing. The butterflies are bright yellows and some are black with vibrant blue or green. The river is lovely, but we haven't had time to explore it yet. It looks like there is quite a current, so I'll take the paddle board out and paddle upstream until I am tired and coast down. Also there is an inlet nearby with an especially beautiful marsh where every tree is dripping in Spanish moss. It should be amazing exploring.

I dropped J and K off at the airport today and am entering all the places I want to go into my phone now. I have a few weeks until the rest of our stuff gets here, so will go to the nursery in the next few days and pick up some fruit trees, go get painting supplies, and find an affordable grocery store with health food items in it. We have a contractor who will replace old carpet and floor tile and paint the places that are too high for me to get on the scaffolding (there is a very high ceiling in the great room). Then when J and K move in it will be a dust-free house which is totally fixed up completely. No more remodeling except if we want to modernize bathrooms eventually, though they are fine the way they are now.

I must remember to swim in the ocean and try out stand up paddle boarding in the river, too! And while I am out and about, I plan to visit beautiful landmarks, too. The Angel Oak tree which is massive and about 400 years old is on my list in the next few days. The city of Charleston is so lovely. There are gorgeous old churches everywhere, massive southern style homes, parks and flowers everywhere, and the city is really fun to explore. I got a simple, delicious-seeming Southern cooking book (that I am sure I can swap out healthy ingredients for) and a watercolor sketchbook of interesting places to go in a historical bookstore, and K got a fun bowtie made of beautiful bird feathers. We also got fun ceramics from Turkey in a lovely shop. Mine is a blue flowered ceramic owl that K picked out for me.

During the trip over, I suddenly got really bad symptoms of high blood pressure for the first time in my life. My legs and ankles swelled up until my skin felt like it was stretched. It was really stressful driving a huge van with a car in tow (with the cat in the car) on these narrow roads (that are major roads that go across the country) with all sorts of 16 wheeler trucks all around me. I just got too tense. So I got a blood pressure monitor, and am now almost down to most people's normal, but I tend to naturally be 10 points below that, so need to take it easy for a while. My diet is straightened out now that I am out of the 500 square foot little box apartment. I only feel like eating normal amounts, so my pants are fitting well again, though I don't know where the scale is and can't weigh in yet. It may be a while because I plan to put everything in the basement so it doesn't get dusty from refinishing floors and doing tile work.

We've been walking a lot or swimming or moving boxes, so I did eat some of the highly fattening food here. The really fatty Southern comfort food is not my thing at all, but in general there are amazing restaurants here with all different styles of food from all different cultures, so we've been eating really wonderful things. I don't eat as much because most of it is really filling. I did indulge in the best pecan pie I ever had at a dessert cafe last night. I think I'll be ok as long as I keep getting amazing exercise. We also did a ghost tour of the city at night last night, and K loved it. She had been really tired, but perked right up and after the tour, dragged us all around to cemeteries next to gorgeous old buildings in the dark. It was really fun actually, and her enthusiasm was contagious.

I'll get back around to everyone's diaries in the next few days. It's nice to be back and hope everyone is doing great!
 
Your new property sounds like a fairytale! Especially the mossy trees and the creek 🙀 no dangerous creatures in the water?

Sorry to hear your bp troubled you so but really after all you've been through in the past couple of years it's half a miracle it stayed down so long. Glad you'll be taking it easy for a bit.
 
Thanks LaMa and Cate! No dangerous creatures in the water! We lucked out and alligators are rare here and the poisonous snakes are further inland.

I feel really lucky that the high blood pressure came right back down, and I think it will be good living in a hot humid place because who wants to eat when it's hot and muggy out? I have been meaning to go to the store as I ate the last of the fresh greens, but just don't have a lot of appetite, so I'll go tomorrow. Had fresh fish with bok choi for lunch and chicken with cauliflower and a little cheese sauce for lunch and blueberries for dessert. Breakfast was a piece of bread with seafood spread on it - yum! The seafood here is sooo good!

Ran up and down stairs all day figuring out colors for the walls. There are these new big sheets that feel like vinyl paper somehow that you can order with your paint colors on them, and I walked them from room to room trying things out. I lost one because it blended in with a counter I put it on, and it took me about half hour to track it down. Darn camouflage!! I wanted to get out today, but got obsessed with color in the afternoon. In the morning the washer and dryer were delivered and installed. I met a nice neighbor, too. Tomorrow will be venturing out day!
 
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Try not to do too much at once & exhaust yourself. I chose the same colour throughout my whole house & am so glad I did. We don't have much plasterboard anyway, but the sandy colour I chose is really calming & natural & matches the stone & timber well. I'm glad I didn't have any strong colours as I would have tired of them by now & it's hard for me to have painting done because of my fragrance sensitivities.
I'm looking forward to hearing about you venturing out :)
 
Hi Cate! Our house is now painted all sorts of clashing colors - the kitchen is a salmon color, many rooms are a very vibrant turquoise, and there is a lot of light blue, which isn't a color I generally like on walls. I am glad they painted rather strange colors together because the pictures for the house were not as impressive as the house is in person because the color scheme was a bit off. I think otherwise the house would have been snatched up before we saw it.

Everyone wants their room a different color, but I helped limit the colors to things with green undertones so that everything will go together. I read up on painting interiors and designers generally make sure that if you can see another room from the room you are in, it's best to make the colors go together with similar undertones so they match better. I like when the room is a natural color so it doesn't clash with looking out at the outdoors. Your sandy color sounds lovely! I have a nice ventilator mask for painting which I love. Otherwise the fumes really bug me.

I'd better get to sleep so I can get up early while it's still cool out. Good night!
 
I do like having different colors in different rooms but as you say they have to go together from one room to the next. I hate hot, muggy weather but completely agree that it kills the appetite!
 
It's fun creating a different mood for each room, and a fun challenge to match the rooms. I don't like muggy either, and I am getting up early to sit and enjoy the cool moist morning air and all the birdsong. It's lovely watching the sun start to illuminate different parts of the pine forest. I hope we acclimatize before it starts getting really hot in summer! Ok, I'm off to the market and a walk on the beach!
 
I really don't like blue on walls either. I'm glad that you think it's going to be fun painting. I'll have to check out some low VOC paints as we have lots of areas that could really do with repainting.
I hope you have a lovely walk. I would love to hear about the market.
 
The market is really nice. There are foods from all over the world that are pretty reasonably prices, and it has lovely fresh seafood. It's in a shopping area where there is a big town square where there is live music sometimes. It's funny because one of the towns I considered moving to had a park and shopping/restaurant district that was very similar. We visited it on a school trip to Washington DC. It was in Delaware and was charming and I got to drum in the park with the townspeople, and had a blast. I was so surprised to have a little town like that a 3 minute drive from the house.

So the drive there is lined in big oaks covered in Spanish moss that make a canopy over the road. There are a few low bridges over marshes and lots and lots of old churches and some Gullah (Cajun low-country farmers and fisher people who have their own culture and language) farm stands where they sell fresh shrimp and seafood and pies and such. I really need to check them out soon. There is a bike path all the way to the market and beyond to the beach. I want to research beach cruiser bikes and get one soon. They are the kind that have fat wheels that go on the sand well. The drive there would be relatively flat as this area is only about 45 feet above sea level.

I didn't get to the market until later. I stopped in a furniture store and met some really nice women and also stopped in a tile shop and found a lovely tile for the kitchen backsplash and a nice plain floor tile for the kitchen. I also ordered more paint swatches because some that K liked weren't available yet. I have most of the colors nailed down and am almost ready to start painting. I wish my painting supplies were in this load of stuff. I'll have to go buy more.

After the market I took the most gorgeous walk by the ocean. I followed it until it met the river we live near. There were probably a hundred migrating birds that a birder I met said were flying from Argentina. They looked like sand pipers but had some red on them. The sand where the river met the ocean was so interesting. It made blue and tan patterns and drifted into beautiful shapes. I had a blast taking pictures and had a lovely 2.5 hour walk. The sunset at the end over an inland part of the river was so beautiful. I'll try to post a few pictures of nice places in the next few days.

Good food day, but some of the things I ate were weird tasting. The sushi from the market was not Asian tasting at all and the rice was not the right kind. Also I got some Asian dressing for salad for dinner and it has an odd oil in it. Probably not the best place to get good Asian food! Also I went to sit and write an email to a friend at a cafe I really loved last time I went there, and this time the drink I got was strange tasting and they were out of the delicious breakfast bagel I had last time, so I had a muffin that was meh. It seems like either the food here is exceptionally good or really not to my liking. But food aside, it was a lovely day.
 
Thank you, M for telling us about your day. I really wanted to hear all about it & I loved everything about it (except for the meh food). You will soon learn the best places to eat & go & will be enjoying sensational seafood & I will live it all through you :)
 
I am SO jealous of the fresh seafood! And the river. And the Spanish moss... It's lovely to see you enjoy it so.
 
Thanks everyone! I had another really nice day yesterday. I went to the huge angel oak tree https://angeloaktree.com. Even the smallest branches that dip down to touch the ground are massive. people standing under it look like ants (well, maybe more like very small kittens). I met a nice artist sketching there and talked with him for a really long time. He gave me a print of one of his paintings of the tree and sent me to a lovely produce stand that is also a restaurant and a gift shop with cool paintings and fun gifts (like these really upscale looking Christmas trees made of seashells) and beautiful pottery.

I had tomato pie which is a savory dish of baked tomatoes with onions on the bottom and some really nice cheese and a tomato-y sauce - like a healthy lazagna with no noodles but Southern. It was really good, and I had a shrimp salad sandwich which I initially was not so into and then it grew on me and I really enjoyed it. They put this sauce called remoulade in some seafood dishes, and it takes getting used to. I think that was what was in the bizarre sushi. I got some fresh strawberries there that I am now having for breakfast (sorry Cate!) and they are very delicious, especially with the really good Greek yogurt I just got for the first time. It's expensive, but a little goes a long way. I also got some baby arugula there, which looks lovely.

One thing I can't get used to here is how the businesses trust you to pay. The parks are on the honor system, the restaurant let you bring your bill for your meal with you around the shop while you pick out things from the farm stand and gift shop, even at the hardware store where I stopped and got citrus trees and blueberry bushes they let you take your cart full of purchases outside where the veggie plants were displayed. In CA this would be really bad policy, but here it's normal.

Driving around yesterday, I was really appreciating how the businesses have clever and funny names, and the larger private properties are named fun things like "ghost tree" or "toad hall". I went to the local thrift store because I have only one pair of pants that are cool enough for this weather and it isn't even hot here yet. I got a lovely rayon pair of pants with stripes of flowers which I'll wear as pjs until they fit perfectly, but I really love them. Then I got 2 3/4 length heavy cotton pants and a pair of long shorts. I gained so much weight at the tiny apartment, but at least it's coming off now. There were so many fun prints I also picked up 2 long sleeved tops that were just too nice to pass up. The people dress very nice here with cotton flower dresses and more sophisticated prints but also fun casual. It's more festive looking than how people dress in Northern CA.

I also went to a really lovely huge nursery, and it was expensive, so I just got some herbs and some coleus for under our palm trees in the front entrance. I also got some highly expensive organic gardening soil in small bags because I can't find it anywhere else. I don't think organic growing is a big thing here. Even in the really nice market I shop at which is in a wealthy neighborhood, there isn't much organic produce. So time to get a massive garden started! I am going to call arborists and get piles of wood chips delivered to make my own soil. The soil here is very sandy so won't hold in nutrients. I brought my big cloth raised beds with me, so that is a good start.

Today first thing I put the new lawn mower together and start on the lawn. It looks like about an acre of grass, so I'll do it a bit each morning while it's cool out. I want to get bulk clover and African daisy seed to seed the lawn with flowers for when K sets up her bee hive. I think I'll get some ground cover thyme seed going to put in the patches where the grass doesn't grow as well either. So many fun projects!
 
What a beautiful tree! That's a monument to visit regularly for sure. I don't mind remoulade but it is very heavy. That tomato pie sounds delicious though!
 
From the walk on the ocean to our river...
 

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