Lughnasa                                                                                 College Moon

At 11:30 am today I had to leave Caesar’s description of Orgetorix’s agreement to a plot against his own people, the Helvetians, and pay the seal-coater. It was a sudden and complete disjunction.

Most of the exterior work is done, with the exception of the landscape crew yet to come. There’s also the Seven Oaks metal sign to have made and hung on the mail-box post. Some things remain on the inside, but they’ll come nearer to the time we put the house on the market, or move, whichever comes first.

It’s been a busy and productive week. The biggest accomplishment was Kate’s securing our preapproval for a second mortgage in Colorado.

We’ve made steady, regular progress since late April and will need to continue right up to the move. Once we’re in Colorado we’ll have a different set of tasks, settling in, adjusting. I’m ready for them, too.

Lughnasa                                                                     College Moon

Out to Keys on University for our business meeting. Walking bleary eyed and under awake into a place with fresh coffee and breakfast is one of life’s small, but significant pleasures for me. We discussed the move, the idea of a second mortgage, the state of our finances, checked our calendars, scanned for birthdays.

Back home we got into shed clean out mode, discarding several years worth of detritus, often saved for a time that never came. While Kate concentrated on the first shed, I worked on repairing the damage to our fire pit area by the dogs. They smelled a rodent of some kind, I imagine. This involved hauling sand sufficient to fill up the hole, replacing torn landscape fabric and will later involve hauling sand to cover the landscape fabric, then spreading mulch over it all.

Once I finish that, I’ll move onto the shed where we keep the bee woodenware, clean it up and consolidate everything we’re going to move. Then, removing the electric fence and all its accessories. Finally, a soil test for the garden. May not make all of this over the weekend, but plenty of it.

Over the last week certain aspects of the move have become clearer to me, moving from the background to the foreground. Taking a year, living in the move, is a pace I can live with and not become anxious. Still, there is the fact that it takes a year or so which is a long time. So far it feels like matters are happening at the time they need to. When the question arises, an answer appears.

Lughnasa                                                          College Moon

The boxes are in the house for the final round of book packing for right now. Over the long weekend we plan to clean out our sheds, repair the fire pit, remove the wires from the fences put there to foil dogs and get a soil test done for the next steward of these lands.

There will be a three-ring binder with planting maps, options for caring for the fruit trees and shrubs, the perennials and utilization of the raised beds and other vegetable growing areas. A small library of Minnesota specific gardening books will be on a shelf. A well-functioning lawn tractor, bee-keeping start-up kit, a hydroponic kit for seed starting and a crystal chandelier in the kid’s playhouse will all stay behind, no longer relevant to our mountain home.

If certain decisions we’re making now prove fruitful, we could buy a new home in January, moving one, or even both of us out there that month or the next. I know, moving to Colorado in the winter, from Minnesota. Sounds like madness, but there may be some very good reasons to do it.

Lughnasa                                                                  College Moon

In to our financial consultant today. Issue: getting to Colorado and into a house we want inside our means. To my surprise she recommends qualifying for two mortgages and purchasing a home in Colorado before or during the sale of this house. This takes a little getting used to as an idea for me. Intuitively paying two mortgages when you can only live in one house doesn’t make sense to me. But that’s the intuition of the middle-class guy who grew up in Indiana in circumstances where financial flexibility was not even an idea.

In our case we have cash flow, assets and available cash that can make this idea work. Deep breath. Let it out. It has a lot to commend it. It makes moving, especially moving the dogs, much easier. It makes doing work on a new place easier since Jon is out there already and competent. It solves one end of the equation allowing us to focus here solely on selling the house.

There are risks. What if it takes a very long time to sell this house? What if the price we get for it falls below our preferred minimum? But, life has risk associated with it and this is manageable. So I’m inclined to go for it. This is an all-in move.

Lughnasa                                                                             College Moon

Heretical thought in my universe. Whew, all those books boxed up. Maybe I can just do without. Make them all red tape boxes. There’s a sense of liberation as the shelves empty and the areas around begin to breathe again, more space now, less like a scholar’s burrow. All my friends who’ve gone through this process, this decluttering have expressed similar feelings. Lifted off my back. Freer. Less weight. Less drag. Less. And in this case less is less, not more. Moving toward enough, away from trying to capture everything you like and hold it hostage at home.

Response to heresy. No, the time is not yet for jettisoning everything. This is not a sinking ship, nor is it a ship in trouble that needs to be lighter. This is a ship that will move more gracefully with less sail. That’s happening, has already happened.

There is another round to come, too. The third removal, after the move. The realization that this is not needed here, in the new place. Which will call out its own needs. Unknown now.

Lughnasa                                                                                     College Moon

The last bookcases. That’s where the packing has gone. Now China and Cambodia and the West and Emerson goes in boxes. Green tape boxes. More China, then onto the Celts and the Greeks, philosophy, American history, fairy tales.

Just moved the last gathering of liquor store boxes needed for books. Kate gets them, I unload them, then fill’em up, tape’m and stack’em. Objet d’art are on the now empty bookshelves in the larger basement area. Before Sort/Toss/Pack comes near the end of September, they’ll get sorted on a love it or leave it basis. Gotta cut them down, too.

We’re looking at the overall budget for the move now, preparing for a meeting with a financial consultant. Gonna take a dent out all round, but we’ll have plenty.

We’ve been fortunate, with Kate’s good earning capacity, and smart. We have enough and I couldn’t be more grateful for that. Still, you’d have to climb further up the wealth ladder to get to can-do-whatever-we-want.