Summer                                                                   Most Heat Moon

Where to live? It’s not a question most of us ask very often over the course of our life. Kate and I have the luxury of asking it right now. Having settled on a general area, a 40 mile radius of Denver, give or take, we now face the next task, deciding on a particular lot and a particular house.

Knowing that no one site will have everything we want, though it must have everything we need, criteria have come and gone. Broadband, air conditioning, good insulation, room for our creative sides, space for the dogs, enough water privileges for a garden, access to emergency health care, at least a fire wise lot (at best out of the wildfire redzone), a decent house, those are things we need. Whether we purchase them with the house and property or install them soon after doesn’t matter.

The wants have been in more flux. A new want that may transition to need is living around 7,800 feet. This altitude decreases the high temperatures in summer and ensures cool nights. A single story home, which could become a need, too, seems the wisest choice. We would prefer more isolated over less. Mountain or water views add appeal. Having our own well and septic system is desirable, too. An architecturally interesting home with a balcony overlooking forest, mountains or water. Reasonable driving distance to one of the Denver light rail lines.

A pleasant surprise adds something, too. I found one home, for example, that already has a steam bath. Not a need exactly, but I associate a steam bath and the end of a workout. Our one here been a good, immediate reward for staying with my routines.

Yes, we’re open to unusual housing solutions. This one is called a no-shadow home. We saw a geodesic dome we liked. A passive solar home with the capacity to generate our own electricity would be a plus.

How our new home integrates with the land, our lives and the future needs of mother earth, that will determine which place we choose. Oh, and how much it costs.

Summer                                                         Most Heat Moon

Left behind. The Vectra and the leg press will rapture out of here this week or next, sold to 2nd wind for a small fraction of their original price. But, as I said, we amortize that cost over the many years we’ve had them, the gym fees we didn’t pay and the travel time we saved. We come out ahead, plus we’ve had that commitment to fitness they encouraged.

Mark Allard just came by on another move related errand, getting the front of the house pruned and made pretty for marketing in March of next year. He runs a lawn and yard work company out of Stacy. There’s a lot of work to do, but nothing a crew that knows what they’re doing can’t knock out in a day or less.

We’re slowly putting slack in the lines of that circus tent, you might be able to see it sag a bit now. Once the Minnesota several-ring circus gets pulled down, loaded up and moved, though, we still have the task of setting up the circus in the west. That will take time, too.

Living in the move is the only way to handle this process for us. We’re neither fully here nor at all there. And won’t be for awhile.

Summer                                                       New (Most Heat) Moon

The day after Sort Toss Pack. Kate’s back in bed and I would be too except for my meeting in St. Paul, America Votes. A weariness after a big push. Feels good though. Trying to get all this done in weeks ahead of a move instead of months would have stressed us both. The result might have been a tainted move. Instead, we’re both feeling accomplished and capable, working on our relocation with adequate time and planning.

We’ve now paid the first bill related to the move and well worth it. We’ll get some of the money back from sales in the Sort Toss Pack consignment shop and Half Price books. We have two nibbles on the lawn tractor and one on the long arm quilter. Next week I’m going to work the phones for the Vectra and the leg press. Getting rid of these big items will free up even more space.

The bedroom feels bare and the workout area, with all six bookcases removed feels generic, like I’ve moved my treadmill and weights to a could-be-anywhere rectangle of sheetrock. Odd to have that sense in our own house.

This is all part of the stripping away process, the peeling back of our Minnesota identity, removing particularity here. That’s necessary in the house as it goes on the market. We want someone else to project their life onto its much emptier spaces, seeing themselves moving through their life with this house as theirs, not ours.

(well, maybe not quite this much, but the feelings are comparable)

Instead of grief at the stuff moved away there is exhilaration. Less stuff. Less need to move stuff. Less need to feel bound to stuff. This is, however, a paring down, not an elimination. There are still objects we want with us, but that number dwindles as we gain the psychic chops necessary to sever connections with belongings.

Summer                                                          New (Most Heat) Moon

Many, many red tape boxes are gone. Six bookshelves are gone. An old entertainment center is gone. The credenza, the armoire, the bedside pieces and the large table sized chin-hua are gone. The white chest of drawers and a bookshelf and another tall, narrow shelving unit is gone. All the old wood from the renovation and the dog stalls are gone. Many fragile, no longer wanted, pieces of crystal, stemware and place settings are gone. An industrial size plastic trash bin full of old papers and travel brochures. Gone.

I’m just up from an hour and a half nap. Kate’s still asleep. At a guess we’ve probably moved out half of the things we don’t want to move. I’ve still got a lot of bookshelves to go through and there will be bookshelves and discarded books to go after I’m done, probably sometime in August. The old electronics, a couple of desks, some garden tools, some bee-keeping stuff, tools will go then, too. We still have a few items to sell: the hydroponic set-up, the lawn tractor and its attachments, the long-arm quilter.

Once those are sold and the remaining decluttering items are out of the house, we’ll begin considering storage for items that will go with us.  Some of the remaining furniture will need to be out of the house when we put it on the market next March.

We’ve also begun contracting for smaller work around the house, handyman type things to make the whole place neater and yard work, pruning and maybe some planting. In the winter we’ll have some rooms repainted and the house professionally cleaned. Then, the photographer will come and we’ll begin process of selling the big item. This house.

Summer                                                          New (Most Heat) Moon

Excited this morning. The move gets real today. The movers and packers from Sort Toss Pack show up at 10 am. They’ll move the wood from the garage, freeing up space there, then the red tape boxes from the basement and upstairs. After that load, the movers will take all the green tape boxes to the garage. Meanwhile the packers will be at work, getting stuff that is fragile ready for their trip to the consignment shop.

Kate’s gone through the upstairs like a beneficent locust, sweeping everything before her into boxes or onto the kitchen table for packing. In my turn I’ve sorted out six bookshelves full of books and some DVD’s, only six more standing bookshelves and the ikea bookshelves in the study to go. I’ll be done by the end of August if not before.

After they’ve moved all the books and the scrap wood, the movers will come back and take all of our bedroom furniture except the bed, plus the six empty bookshelves, an empty entertainment center, a chest of drawers and some smaller furniture.

Our house will feel much emptier after today and that’s a good thing. We’re not there yet, not by a long ways, but we’ve made a good start. A very good start. Next week we get the third market analysis and then we’ll choose a realtor from the three we have interviewed. The week after that Jon and Ruth come. Jon will build the deck and Kate will ride back with them to Colorado to meet realtors there and get an on the ground feel for the real estate market out there.