Heading into the home stretch

I could quote Chaucer about April,* but March was pretty damn rainy, just as April has started out.

I am heading into the home stretch for class.  The fifth, and final paper, will be a sort of a final exam for my students: I'll teach them how to find sources, how to determine a credible source as opposed to one that isn't, and how to use parenthetical references in the text to cite said sources.  Other than that, they'll be on their own for writing this last paper.  Their paper is due the last Tuesday of April, and their first blog will be due the same night.  Thereafter, they're pretty much done with the majority of the semester's work-load.

And mine will just be starting.  I'll have paper 5 to grade, and blogs, and the house closing the last Wednesday of the month.  Then, we'll need to arrange to get a chain-link fence put in, and new flooring put down, repairs made, and all that sort of fun stuff, then moving.

Some time during that, the kids get out of school (mid May).  Which is good, because they're big enough to help a bit.

And I darn sure am not willing to pack their toys for them.

The timing, though, is going to be difficult: we are closing the week before classes are done for me, and since the new house is on a well, without power, there is no water for cleaning (and there will be cleaning, if only because there are a few places where well-sealed windows and no air circulation induced mold growth).  So utilities need to be turned on in our names.

Guess what?  The inspection company we hired to do the home inspection will do that for us. It's part of their services. 

I'm dreading the move, yes, but I'm excited about the new home: we're going to have another room, and will have six acres of play space for the kids.  A pond, with an area that will be suitable to learn to shoot in (with BB guns and air rifles only, since it is technically within city limits), a barn that they can play in once we get a chance to get a good look at the inside, and a storage building on the property bigger than the one we're renting at a storage facility.

Funny thing: we're going to have to move the chest freezer at the same time we move the cats.  Cricket literally CANNOT FIND the food dish unless it's on top of the freezer.  CAN NOT.  She's actually stepped in it when I set it on the floor, and never realized that the food was RIGHT THERE.  Because it wasn't on top of the freezer, it wasn't the food dish, and she was starving.  With Shadow, it's a power play (I won't eat until you put my food back.  Yes, I know it's there, but no.  It's wrong.), but Cricket is about as bright as the rooster from Moana. 

I love my cats. 

*First lines of The Canterbury Tales.