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Moving: The Sage Continues



Have I mentioned how much I hate packing? I can’t imagine that I haven’t. I have been packing and purging and then re-purging and repacking for….ever now and there is still stuff in the house. How can this be? Early American pioneers traveled thousands of miles with a couple of covered wagons and they took nearly everything they owned and I am not taking any furniture other than my daughter’s bed, her dad’s recliner and a television, and there is still too much stuff! 

I am going on an acquisition diet. I have packed only about twenty hangers. That is all the clothing I am allowed for the closet anymore. Any new clothing purchases will come at the donation expense of existing items. Pruned the shoes down to about 8 pair (and just as an aside, I hate shoe shopping and owned probably only about 6 pair more than I am keeping). I have decided that keeping “fat” clothes is more effort than simply exercising and eating properly. And it takes up more space. It is cheaper to buy extra storage at .Mac than to keep paper and photos. And, the crown jewel of my newly organized leaf is that I am not going to allow papers to pile up. How? I have a few ideas, but suffice to say that the next move (in a year…..good god) will not be this painful (for me anyway as it will be Rob’s house we will be sorting and packing).

Six more days and then we will finally be home. To unpacking. Sorting. Rearranging. Large flesh-eating mosquitoes. On-going renovations and a few new ones. But home. It’s where the heart is,  you know.

Newlyweds


Back in my early days on the YWBB, I corresponded and posted  back and forth a bit with a man from New Hampshire. His wife had died after a a long bout with cancer about 5 months after Will died. He was one of the first posters I ran across who subscribed to the theory that it was possible to have loved your spouse, grieve for your spouse and still want to forge ahead and build a new life…..maybe even with someone else. 

Bob caused quite the stir on the board at the end of the year when he revealed that he had met and was dating a widow he met at a bago in Boston. Though dating through the board and hooking up at bago’s is officially verboten at the YWBB, the truth is that it happens a lot more than most people would care to admit. People meet like Rob and I did through PM’s and email and progress from there. They meet at bago’s. They meet in chat. It happens. It’s just a man/woman thing that nothing gets in the way of when it is meant to be.

Bob and his lady friend, Shel, disappeared from the board not long after the first of the year. I suspected that they were too busy living and being together and building a new life to have time for the board. Today Bob reappeared to announce that he and Shel were married on the first of this month. Although I could be wrong, it is an announcement that will be met with a tepid response at best. Most of the people on the board are too mired to offer congratulations to someone else’s happiness. 

I wish Bob and Shel the best. 

Widow Protection Program


“Half of life is fucking up the other half is dealing with it.”

 Henry Rollins(American rock singer, author, actor and poet, b.1961)


You see those stories on the news about people who disappear without a trace only to be found months or years later living a completely new life somewhere else. They can’t tell you how they got there or who they were before. I believe many of these people were in the midst of packing to move when they snapped and walked away, reasoning that it would be easier to simply start again with a new identity than try to pack up their old lives to transport to new locations.

Well, tempted as I still am, I will be taking many of our current possessions with us to Canada. Nearly everything is packed. Much of it is loaded up on the U-Haul and ready to go. 

I am still horrified by the amount of crap I own. More horrified by the piles of paper that have yet to be sorted from even before Will died. I have been a sloth, and I am no longer inclined to give myself a pass. Can’t plead widow to this one. I haven’t been taking care of business. And there is much to attend to and more waiting. Sometimes you just have to be an adult and man-up, and this in spite of those who would have you believe that it is okay to shift blame to your circumstances.