On the move

Three months in each of our lives have elapsed since last I shared  tales from the far side.  Much has happened not only in our household but in each of yours as well.  Ponder your past. Embellish it, expand upon it, cherish it, create great memories of deeds done, victories gained and unparalleled acts of beneficence. Such are the lives we lead!! It’s just a matter of adjusting our memories to a new, even if not substantially accurate, reality.  That being said, all you read here may not stand up to the scrutiny of careful fact checking.

Upon our return from an exciting but relatively exhausting time in NYC we encouraged all of our children to come home for a last get together before we sold our house. When the plans were made it looked like we were going to sell.  By the time they all arrived there was much uncertainty and some suspicion was expressed that the rumor was merely a ploy to get them all home. Either way, a good time was had by all.  I “Tom Sawyered” them into taking turns mowing the fields so got that job done fairly painlessly. As the last of them were leaving it looked like the sale was on again. Then soon off again. There are too many moving parts to this story for me to recount but try to understand that we still didn’t know if it was really a done deal even as our furniture was leaving the house and….. we’d been watching Cameron’s puppy for two weeks.  Now we’re really exhausted. One might even suggest we were a bit stressed. Cameron, astutely recognizing that we were incapable of managing this change of life on our own, returned to the homestead to help us move.  Into a storage container went years of possessions which we could probably live without and into a one bedroom apartment went several seating areas worth of furniture and everything else we own. It’s like living in a furniture store show room except no one would want to buy the furniture.  You may have heard of people selling their homes “as is.”  Well, we sold our’s as “never was.”  Immaculately clean, every nail hole filled, every paint chip touched up, floors and counters polished and even the basement floors clean enough to eat off of……..which we did after the dishes were all packed up!

After the sale we immediately hit the road so have spent only moments in our storage container and have been wandering the east coast, uprooted, homeless and inexpressibly grateful for the generosity and kindness of friends, family and total strangers.  We have tested mattresses and fold-out couches all along our route and  I will soon be adding a chapter to my travel guide that deals exclusively with which households are the best to arrive at unannounced.  I have, as of yet, no publishing date for my travel guide;  so my friends, until then you will know if your mattress is highly rated because……….we’ll be back!

I have many more, recent, life stories to relate but will not burden you with them now. Hopefully you understand that even bad fiction takes time.  We had a great Christmas which I will cover in a later post but just let it be said that we were in a part of the Florida panhandle where I suspect most of the residents are participants in witness protection programs.  No one will find them here! One of our grandchildren was with us and the other was sorely missed. There was a time not so long ago that I would  have never imagined an utterance such as this but, if you don’t have grandchildren, go out and buy a couple. They’re a lot of fun!

Until next time ————Work on those memories!

Back on the stump.          Grumpa