A New Home Is a Moving Experience

I will tell you why I had four jars of cardamon. The shelves of the pantry that I had built in the kitchen are so deep, I can’t see to the back of the shelf. Thus, when I am overcome with the conviction that I am able to bake exotic tea cakes (I can’t) that contain cardamon, I trot to the store and buy another jar.

The recipe calls for one-half a teaspoon, so through the years, you can accumulate quite a bit of cardamon, all of which is stale or at least musty, so it goes out. The same holds true of a dozen or more rarely used spices. Usually, I just thrust it back in the pantry thinking, “I’ll get at that stuff one of these days.”

I am still moving. I feel as if I have been doing this forever. Several good friends have helped me to my delight. Some of them are fast and enthusiastic but occasionally are swept away with the need for empty shelves. Now, I have almost two weeks left of living in this house, so I have to have the basic food and pots and pans. That is why I was at the market at 6 a.m. yesterday buying coffee filters and coffee. One of my fast-moving volunteers had packed the filters and coffee.

There are about a dozen boxes all marked kitchen and all heavily taped. The prospect of opening all of the boxes until I came to the filters and coffee was just too much. I went to the store vowing that henceforth I would keep the coffee stuff in the bedroom. It was only by emitting a long, high-pitched scream that I kept the coffee maker from being wrapped and taped and done away with.

I am moving to a place called Laguna De La Paz in La Quinta, which is beyond Palm Desert. What goes around comes around has again been proven. The original hotel at La Quinta was built in 1926 and was a weekend retreat. My mother and father used to go down for weekends. Not I. It was not a kid place.

And now I will be just down the road from the renovated hotel. I just will not be there as soon as I thought I would be. There are two salesmen selling these houses, Jeff Petrus and John Pedalino. Jeff is a delightful young man who has a Scottish terrier named Reggie. I have a note that says my house will be finished on July 16. That was the date given to me last spring.

Now, it seems it will be closer to Oct. 16. The people who bought my house are moving in Oct. 5, at which time Peaches and I and our lares and penates will have to be out. I heard this news with a sinking sensation because I have just had the couch, love seat and a channel-back chair re-upholstered. Jeff’s suggestion is that the movers put the stuff in a house that is finished.

That means that Peaches and I will stay with my good friend Jean Erck for whatever length of time it takes to finish the house I selected from the pretty pictures. The houses are tan, peach, or sand. Mine is peach. Right now, it’s hard to tell because there is no plaster on the house, just the black paper and the chicken wire. It takes a high heart and great imagination to believe that this will turn into a house.

A woman who works for the developer who is building this instant neighborhood said that if my lot number had been one less, it would have been finished with the preceding 10 houses. Now, it is in the next group of 10.

It seems to be city permits and electric meters that are the main stumbling blocks. It might be possible that Peaches and I could move into the house, but we wouldn’t have any electricity, lights, air conditioning, a plug for the computer that is going to trail after me like a mean dog, an electric typewriter or any of that stuff.

I am sure that when all this awful backing and filling is over, I will like the house. At least, I hope so. It stands at the foot of what I think are the Santa Rosa Mountains. They are great, rugged mountains that catch the dawn sunrise and turn purple, then pink and finally brown. At sunset, the light show reverses its sequence. I have seen it at Jean’s and it’s perfectly beautiful.

The people who are building Laguna De La Paz say that they would be willing to put me in a hotel and there are hotels in the desert that take furry friends. But that 10 days or whatever will be much easier at Jean’s. At least, for me and Peaches.

The kitchen utensils I have left are interesting. A miniature muffin tin and three frying pans. That’s what is left in this kitchen. I have never used the muffin tin. Pat’s daughter bought it for me and made me some muffins when she came out to help her mother move. I have a feeling that is what I’ll be dining on for the next 10 days, muffins and coffee.

Please do not ask me how the moving is going. It isn’t. It’s at a dead standstill. I cannot face one more box and the scream of the tearing of the tape is like a banshee’s wail that pierces my ears.

Right now, the phone has stopped working so I can’t use the modem to send this to The Times. I’m now going to my lawyer’s office where I can find a phone. Maybe they’ll have muffins and coffee. I certainly hope not.