On the Edge...

The house is gone, the boat is gone, and we are almost gone.... my notice at work has been given, and now I guess you could say I am "waiting it out", but it feels like more than that. As I have said, I have mixed emotions about leaving. I work with a great group of people and I enjoy what I do--ok, except the filing part(it does come in handy when your brain is fried though). Part of me feels guilty for leaving, especially for not giving more notice, but I had my reasons. In the end, of course, they will be fine without me. Hopefully they will get the help they have needed for a long time. ... So I am working really hard to get as much done there as I can before I am gone. The campground we are at is nice, I guess, as far as campgrounds go.... there is a small lake, but we haven't had time to walk around it yet. Hopefully we will this weekend. We are getting close to finishing everything we want to do to the Everest, at least for now. Mostly we are organized, except the bin of paperwork I have to go through, that came from the file cabinet at home. I am still trying to figure out how I want it organized, but I need to do it this weekend for sure. I am too tired at night to tackle something like that. We haven't figured out yet exactly where we go from here, and when we are leaving- sometime the week of the 10th, but we may have to get some work done on the Everest-nothing major, just warranty stuff. Paul is pretty vague when I ask him where he wants to go (PA,OH?) on the way to MA, and when do we want to land in MA, and I figure it doesnt really matter, so I don't push it. So, I feel like we are on the edge of the adventure, finishing the last of the things that keep us here; not quite on the road but past the day to day living that we had before we started this all. later.....

neighbors

For the last few days as we quickly (but not quickly enough!) packed all of our stuff, and tried to clear out the house, mostly what I thought about was our neighbors. Last weekend we had several over for a very casual dinner of hot dogs and chili. We had a fun time with everyone. The past few days many neighbors have stopped by to say goodbye, get an update, or just tease us about all the stuff we are getting rid of, etc. all of that and more make me think about what great neighbors we have/had. As we got further behind in our efforts, (MAYBE partly due to my husbands inability to throw out something thats perfectly good) we got help from sooo many people! Poor Liz and Jim, who got so many things from us that we were sure they needed, whether they agreed or not. I think Jim started hiding so we couldn't give him anything, but thats ok, we started just leaving stuff in their garage that we wanted them to have. The trash and recyclables became a pile too big to handle, and Andy next door pitched right in. He took the recyclables and offered to put them out on recycling day, and then offered his dumpster so we could get rid of the pile of stuff. Mary, from the house behind us, came to say goodbye, and offered to take the canned goods that we were looking to donate and find a food bank to donate them to. Billy and George, from across the street, came over many times to help Paul lift and carry the things that were just too much for me. Beth offered to store Jessie's stuff in her garage for the 3 weeks until she leaves for school... and I will never forget my last hour at the house. I can laugh now, but I was a little frazzled at the time, I admit! With less than 2 hours to closing, it was clear that we had too much to fit in the truck and if we took the time to try to pack it, we seriously weren't going to make it to the closing. Paul's huge, heavy toolbox was supposed to go in the back of the truck but it was tooo heavy to lift. On a positive note, it had wheels....a quick decision was made and I started wheeling it over to Liz's house, calling her on the phone as I went. I told her we were out of time and room in the truck and still had "stuff" . She not only took the toolbox, she came over with her little wagon and took more. she told us to just leave what we couldn't take in the driveway, and she would take it over to her house. We took her up on the offer, and were on our way to closing! That's what I will miss!

exhaustion sets in...

Seriously, we are just getting tired. Its hard to sleep at night when you know there is so much to do the next day. Today is Saturday, and we had day 2 of our second garage sale today. Paul pretty much handled it himself- I packed boxes and made spaghetti sauce and meatballs to freeze, so we could use up some canned goods. On the plus side, he sold a lot of stuff in the last two days, but it also took up his whole day and all his energy. Tonight we took Jess and went out to Ruby Tuesdays for dinner. Tomorrow Jess and I will spend the day sorting and packing her stuff- what she needs to bring to school and what she needs to buy etc. Then we shop, of course. This is our last week in the house, hopefully. We have spent the last two weeks taking trips to the storage area, packing the stuff we won't need anymore. Paul hasn't had time to do much work on the Everest, but if you know Paul at all, you know he has a list of "modifications" he wants to make. This week he has to do the things that will require power tools and anything else that will be going into storage or given away. Everything else will have to wait. We hired a small moving company to come on Friday to move the heavy stuff for us, so whatever we don't get moved ourselves this week, at least we can have them do it on Friday. Last night we had a bunch of neighbors over and had a great time hanging out. That is one of the things i will miss. we have the most awesome neighbors/friends!! I will truly miss the Parks and all the shenanigans that go on next door. So much fun to watch! More later.............