So many things going on, and some of them even have to do with getting ready to move!
Under the “In the Meantime” category,
Chick has a number of new requests for header design, something that she works on collaboratively with the requester so that it takes a fair amount of time of back & forth to ensure that the Vision wanted is the Vision completed (although frequently the Vision completed is many notches higher on the delight scale than the requester had even imagined). She is so glad that these requests have come in as it is truly a creative outlet for her, but she sorta’ wishes they had requested these earlier when she didn’t want to spend the time instead on getting ready to move;
I (Shu) have agreed to undertake the coaching/ mentoring/ ‘teaching’ issues in lease negotiation to an attorney in Massachusetts who wants to learn ‘all’ the issues that come up or could come up in working on leases so that, in addition to working on properties he actually owns, he can add a bit of leasing work to his practice. He wants to pay me, but I am resisting at this point, mostly because I don’t know that what we’ll discuss/ work on will have that much value. He is insisting, but agreed to compromise by waiting until we get ‘through’ and then paying what he found the value to be. Maybe enough for a cup of hot cocoa in the new treehouse??? 
This, too, is coming right at a time when focus needs to be on getting ready to head out;
W is sprouting 2 new teeth! The upper front 2 are pushing through, with the left one already coming through the gum and the other working on appearing soon. Chick got some hilarious pictures this evening once she realized it (after his face was gooed orange from carrot mush), and had me pulling his lips away in order to photograph while W was doing his best to create a blur. It is exciting, these milestones that come with growing a baby, although Chick immediately started feeling some sadness for the ‘babyness’ that is behind us with W as he grows forward and becomes a sturdier little fellow and more of a specific person every day;
I am continuing to work on the things needed to wrap up Snowy’s paperwork and assets, including providing detailed information to the lawyer who did her will and who will have it filed for probate. There are a few wrinkles with small bits she had left, which opens opportunities for some family to be dorky if they so choose, so am trying to be sure everything is handled precisely and with full disclosure, etc., and so the lawyer and her associate can crosscheck my work, if you will. It’s hard enough emotionally anyway, and with the added stress of potential drama, it gets oppressive.
On the moving front,
we have begun gathering up clothes we can no longer wear so that we can donate those and several televisions, bookcases, some other furniture, etc. to Hubbard House, a local charity that helps abused women;
we have begun going through our various libraries (Snowy’s, Chick’s, W’s, mine, Pop’s, family) to pull out any volumes we can bear to let go, and then Chick is going to take them to a used book store to see if she can turn a lot of heavy weight into a few (small) coins. Over the last several years I have downsized my book collection by over a 1,000 books, possibly a good bit over, but I try not to think about it. But I finally resolved that books I was holding onto just because I had once bought them or been given them and had no plans to re-read were a sign of a hoarding selfishness that I didn’t want to encourage. There are definitely books I do not plan to let go, some because I collect and read/reread certain authors, some because they have some actual significance, some because they are resources;
Chick gathered up various medical items (walker, wheelchair, bath chair, etc) and donated them to our wonderful Haven Hospice. Fred was actually at the door to pick them up about an hour after she called to ask if they’d like these. Fred has been to the house a few times bringing things for Snowy that were so helpful to make things work for her a bit longer living in the house;
I’ve been in touch with two wonderful ladies from our (mine and the tribe’s) past. I can’t write much about it as every bit of this makes me break down with heartbroken tears. But will say that 2 of the kitties will be welcomed
back home to their original catteries to be safely cared for, one in Louisiana and one in Montreal. I’m hoping that the other 2 kitties will be ‘allowed’ to stay with me. I’d reached out to a 3rd’s original “mother’, but all the contact info and emails have gone to ‘bounce’ since we last communicated. But trying to find our place to settle (once the job is obtained) had made it clear that a dog, 4 cats, and a baby were going to be a tough sale anywhere we could find to rent. Four just ’sounds’ so much more than 2, although it never sounded like ‘enough’ to me. When we were first living in the house by the lake in Tuscaloosa, we had 2 dogs and 8 cats, so through natural attrition 6-1/2 years later we were reduced by half. But… Gonna cry now, so moving on;
Chick will do some photographing of a few things we are hoping can be sold on Craigslist. We know we won’t get much for them, but ’some’ will help, and it’ll be less that we need to move;
Philosophies are definitely going to be clashing as Chick and I go through”things” to sort into the trash, donate, sell, keep [store, bring in car] piles.
Chick, as has frequently been proven in the past, takes after HER grandmother (Snowy), who liked nothing more than to take a giant push-broom and clear everything out the door in a heap and walk away (except, well, I could tell you tales of the Box Closet).
I take after MY grandmother(s), especially the Irish one who saved everything and squirreled things away inside of books and boxes and drawers that you would never imagine. When my father had to take care of her ‘things’ after her death up in Pennsylvania, he came back shaking her head at all she had stashed away. He PAID someone to take things away that when a few years later Snowy started going ‘antiquing’, he saw the same things (or of lesser quality) that were being sold for small fortunes EACH. He was pained by the treasure trove he’d had hauled off, wondering how much the fellows had been laughing at him as he handed over the cash for the drayage. At least he had discovered before it was totally too late that she (and possibly my grandfather, too) had also been prone to tuck $20 and $100 dollar bills in the pages of any of a few hundred books.
But to get back to the point, Chick wants to chunk ‘everything’ (essentially, not actually) so that we don’t have to move it and we can replace later IF we find we really need something; I, on the other hand, want to keep almost but not quite ‘everything’ (essentially) because I can only think that it seems so wasteful to throw away something and then need to buy it again.
I am also having trouble honing my sense of what needs to be kept of Snowy’s and Pop’s — it’s hard not to feel so attached to anything they touched, used, are part of my memories of them, but I am trying not to hyperventilate letting go of things that were just in a room they walked through (that’s progress for me). We worked together first in Snowy’s room so that we could create a ‘template of action’ we could agree on without too much fighting, but we still had a good bit of grabbing things from each other as Chick aimed for the trash/donate piles and I snatched for the keepers.
There was a fairly heated discussion about the longevity of makeup that included SOMEONE marching out to the interwebs to search and print out a list of suggested shelf-lives of such. I finally gave in on things that had a ‘Sears & Roebuck’ label or were colors that Chick swore to the spirit of Estee Lauder were ghastly with my coloring. Hmmph.
There was a lot of negotiating setting that template. But we hope that this will help us as we go forward working on the individual rooms under our respective control as well as the ‘community’ rooms. There’s a LOT to do;
I’ve ‘reserved’ a post office box in the vicinity of our temporary landing spot so that we’ll have somewhere to direct mail to — although I can not get the box number/ address or activate it until I appear in person and produce two sets of approved identification. (Need the new ‘local’ address to start putting on updated resumes, etc.);
We are looking into the best way to change our cell phone numbers to reflect a ‘local’ number up there, too, but haven’t yet done the dialing to pursue that.
This will be hardest on Chick. She is the reason we have continued to use the Alabama numbers on our cell phones 3+ years after we moved to Florida, because she has a wide and eclectic list of phone ‘correspondents’. Some of these are constant callers, some occasional, some random from year to year, so she doesn’t want to dislodge being able to keep contact with people she’s known ‘forever’. It was hard enough on her when she came to Alabama to shift everyone from her California number, and before that from her NY number. So, this is not something she wants to undertake lightly.
I just want to have a ‘local up there’ number to use on resumes and with contacts. It was hard enough explaining to Florida folks why they had to dial Alabama, but I can’t imagine the mindblow it would be to the folks in the cold states to have to dial (205) to reach out to me. So, a little dynamic tension there, but think it will resolve in a bit;
We are still pondering the best way to pack/move/store the possessions & furniture we are keeping, and whether we should also try to attach a small trailer to the white car to haul the necessities of life for the next couple of months that we need to keep with us rather than store. We are most fortunate that the Healing House is furnished, but we should probably have W’s crib (especially now that he is FINALLY!!!!!!! sleeping in it), our computers, and a few other things we can’t live without.
There’s more, just can’t pull up every thing to my tired mind at the moment. I actually made a giant calendar out of two taped-together file folders yesterday so we could plop down our work ‘assignments’ and key dates to keep us focused and on track. Chick likes that as lists and plans and targets give her the certainty of progress. I just forget things that need to be done without a visual reminder — and I frequently lose mindfulness of what day it is :-p
I wasn’t helped today by having developed (again) a really bad and painful back spasm in my lower back that I discovered last night when I tried to stand up from the sofa and could not. It was very weird, especially because W and Chick had retired to their respective rooms hours earlier and I had no one but Charlie Dog to discuss that unexpected and unwanted turn of events. This is not a helpful condition to deal with when I need to be boxing up books, etc.!
But forward motion in the form of moving onward is such a relief and so inspiring that my mood has been extremely chipper the last few days (other than when dealing with a few specific things), and that makes the Small World a more bearable place than it’s been in awhile. The winds of change are a-blowing! May they blow softly and sweetly.
Thank you for leaving me your thoughts!