Pressure!

I received my travel papers and breathed a sigh of relief. I clearly spent too long breathing! Suddenly I needed to be all packed and I kept finding things that I needed to find space for or take to storage.

My son arrived on Thursday night and spent the better part of Friday with me. It was great to have so much time with him before I left. Once his sister arrived, he headed back to school.

Saturday was the big haul away day for the furniture, and in the middle of it all there was a house showing! Here’s hoping that an offer will still come in from that! Saturday was a rainy day and we spent the morning in drizzle moving several things in the Spaulding’s wonderful pickup truck while the house was showing. Then at about 3:00, Habitat for Humanity Restore showed up and it started raining in earnest. They took all of the furniture left in the house (except a box spring – beds are surprisingly difficult to get rid of here).  Went out for a last dinner and then returned to the house to “camp out” overnight!

Sunday dawned as a beautiful day and we made another run to storage, then had lunch and the kids headed back home. It was a tearful goodbye, but less than either of us thought it would be. 🙂 Then the friend-without-whom-any-of-this-would-have-been-done came and we loaded up for one last run to storage and the dump. She returned me home and loaded up the thrift shop stuff to head home for the day. I went next door to my wonderful neighbor’s house to have dinner and meet her kids. There was an adorable little baby to play with, plus an almost 7 year old and a 4 year old.  We watched part of “Fish Tales” together. Fun! Back home for one more overnight “camp” on my own. I didn’t sleep very well, but was able to get a cup of coffee and some breakfast from next door. (Thank you so much!!)

A last lunch with dear friend mentioned above and a tearful, but quick goodbye to her and her kids. Tucked the last few things into suitcases, closed them up and waited for my “taxi,” who happened to be the owner of the pickup truck borrowed earlier.  We loaded all the baggage in her car and headed to the airport.  She stocked me with all sorts of unexpected goodies, I collected a porter and after another teary farewell was off to check-in.

I have ported my cell phone number to Google Voice, so that number is still the best one to contact me with at this point. It has been highly amusing to try to figure out what the message has been that people have left by voice, which Google Voice has turned into text! Good fun! Email and Facebook are still good ways to contact me as well. I’ll try to have photos for my next post!