Feels like the final movement of a symphony, with all the hurried action, lots of 16th and 32nd notes, winding up and up and up, then a pause, a slowing that lasts for awhile, a slowing that precedes the last dynamic moment. After that. Colorado.
Ah.
We’re in the slowing time right now. Almost all of the packing and preparation has been done. A few odd bits here and there. Those files which I may choose to resolve simply by moving them and sorting them out later. A few items, like cassette tapes, that have archival value, but less utility. The stuff in the bathrooms and the final items to leave before the van loaders arrive: computer, two printers, my latin books, the stuff still on the desk. There are as well some magazine stacks that will need to get sorted, but that’s quick.
There will not be much left for A1 to pack beyond the kitchen and the garage, which we’ve already asked them to do. Maybe some clothes. Some stash in Kate’s sewing room. But not much at all.
I found a seventh novel! The Wild Pair. Geez. Put that in with the partly done Jennie’s Dead and Superior Wolf. That’s nine novel ideas, seven taken at least through first draft, one, Missing, through many more than that. Two, really three with the second book in the Unmaking trilogy, with substantial work done on them. I have another one, The Protectors, that I’ve been pushing around for a year or so, probably more.
In other moving news we went through the clothes yet one more time. We took a major pass through them about a year ago. Yes sir, Yes sir, four bags full. Kate’s planning her trips to Goodwill as combination trips with her doctor’s appointments. Tomorrow’s rheumatology, so the Maple Grove goodwill gets our unwanted garments.
Kept the Sorel’s even though they’re a Minnesota footwear. Just doesn’t get as cold in Colorado. Kept the Wellies, too, even though wetlands are scarce. Maybe for a vacation? Found a pair of not too worn hiking boots. Didn’t even remember I had them. (Hmm. Do you see a theme here?) Good deal.
The study here is in minimalist mode with all the shelves bare and folded up, the books gone except for the Ovid and Caesar texts. File cabinet emptied. Stripped down. I’m not a minimalist sort of guy, but there is a certain energy in emptiness, a stream-lined grace.
The study will be finished this morning. Wow. Then I’ll sort files until Kate’s ready to take yet another pass through all of our clothes. After that, who knows? Dancing in the streets?
A month from now we should have been reunited with our stuff. That will mark the beginning of the next phase, moving in. To be followed by settling in. The UU ministry has an interesting term for a minister who has been hired by a church. They are considered settled. Settled will be the culmination of the move itself. Maybe a year from now? Hard to say.
Moving in, settling in and being settled operate on our time frame and have financial expectations that we can control. They will, in that sense, be less fraught. Of course, the sale of this house will be an issue, but it will happen.
So far the days around the purchase of Black Mountain Drive and the mortgage approval have been the most stressful. May it continue to be so.
46 degrees. I’m going outside to take down the silt fence we used to keep the dogs out of the fire pit and the area near the house where they dug in the garden. Amazing warmth. But if I understand it right this will be the sort of winter that will be normal in Colorado only without the extreme cold for contrast. (though they did have some a week and a half ago)
Having work to do outside, though it became something of a burden in the last few years, does get me out of the house. I’m hoping in Colorado I use the lack of house related outdoor work to focus on hiking, foraging for wild food, getting familiar with mountains. That’s what I want to do.
Next weekend I will deploy a bagster, a large heavy duty tarplike container that can be filled with construction waste, throwaway junk from the house. In it will go the silt fence, the extra siding that Rigel tore up getting at the bunnies, old bird feeders, a certain amount of excess bee woodenware and anything else we don’t want to move to Colorado, but can’t give away or sell.
When people ask if this is a downsizing move, my first response is no. And it isn’t in terms of total square feet when you add in the spacious loft study above the garage. There are two ways though in which that response is misleading.
We’re making a huge change in the amount of outdoor work. There is no yard on Black Mountain Drive. Hallelujah. Just rocky soil, moss, lodgepole pine, a few aspen, and a small patch of green over the leach field for the septic system. The two small garden beds are both close to the house. Yes, we will put in a couple of raised beds, but that will be it. The bees will be no more than two colonies. Much simpler.
The second way in which that no misleads is in the distribution of space in the house itself.
Kate’s Realm
Black Mountain Drive is an odd hybrid, a tri-level. It has a walk-out basement with a master bedroom, a full-bath, living room, laundry room and utility space. Up five steps is the main living level with a fireplace, what we’ll use as a reading room, a small dining area, a small kitchen and a closed in garage perfect for Kate’s sewing and quilting. Up seven steps from this level are three bedrooms and a full bath. One bedroom we’ll use as an office. The second, with its wonderful murals of the forest, will be for grandkids and the third, with its balcony overlooking the back and the pines, a guestroom.
Our current house has a very large basement area, 1,900 square feet, of which we use about half. The rest gathers stuff. It also has a too large for us living room and a long kitchen. The Andover house is not only bigger than Black Mountain Drive, its space divisions make it less useful to us. Black Mountain Drive has less square footage and the various spaces will each have a clear use. Too, the grandchildren’s room and guest room will get little use most of the time.
So, in terms of outside work and in terms of the economical use of space Black Mountain Drive does represent less responsibility for us. And we’re glad about that.
An odd part of the process. I’ve been taking my novel manuscripts off their shelves and putting them, plus their research, into banker’s boxes. I get to find the occasional rejection letter, see proof of past effort, wonder about writing. After hearing Ursula Le Guin’s speech at the National Book Awards (posted below), I found myself getting excited about writing again.
The whole commercial aspect of writing just does not appeal to me. Writing, on the other hand, does. So, when I get the study in order in Colorado, that leather chair and Chinese character green rug positioned in front of the window overlooking Black Mountain, a new novel will get going. Probably not a continuation of the Unmaking trilogy, but you never know. We’ll see what happens once I’m in the new environment.
Travel stimulates my imagination and I’m sure Colorado will do the same, probably over a sustained period of time since it will be all new places, with other new ones not far away. Also, being alone. Kate’s found a perfect place for me, a sort of aerie, a loft space on the second floor with a mountain view. The combination of new places and spaces. Wow.
At last all the pragmatic, git ‘r done energy can shift toward new possibilities. We’re not moved, no. And, we’re not 100% ready, but it’s clear we will be and we know where we’re going. Everything else feels marginal.
The book shelving has been dismantled. The teaware, ceramics, project organizers and various small objects like candles, bowls, book-ends are in boxes, sealed with packing tape and marked green for my study. What remains in here are my novel manuscripts (banker’s boxes), various office supplies, my computer and printer, a few desk items.
It has taken longer to finish the study than I imagined it would. The smaller and less uniform objects require more care. Even so, there was enough time, enough to keep my anxiety to a manageable level.
The short-timer feeling has vanished, too. We are no longer living in the move, as I said a few posts back, but are living the move. The focus now is on getting ready to leave.
Various matters that have to wait until the end, like closing out the Comcast account, will begin to appear. Comcast, infuriatingly, does not allow advance notice of stopping service. “You have to wait until two weeks before time,” the “customer service” denier said.
We can’t obtain new insurance in Colorado until we are resident there, even though the enrollment time will have passed for 2015. Our estate plan and trust documents will have to be updated there, too. It will be months before the immediate impacts of the move have all gotten sorted out.
Nearing the end here in the study. Office supplies and a few odds and ends (plus the computer and printer which will get packed at the very last), my close files are all that’s left. This represents not only a lot of work, but a marker announcing the near end of packing. Hurrah!
A call from Mike this morning. All the corner posts and braces are set and they have begun stringing a guide wire to mark off and set the other fence posts. Strange to have a major project underway at our house, yet it’s happening 900 miles away.
The resistance I felt last week has vanished. It’s a matter now of slogging through the last items, making sure everything has a place and the appropriate amount of shielding from damage. On track to finish well before Thanksgiving.
Mike the Fence Guy (as he identifies himself on his card) has had his travails this week. While enroute to our property, his truck’s fuel pump failed. This meant he not only had to get the truck fixed; he had to shift all of our fencing supplies to another truck.
When he got to Black Mountain drive, his assistant did not show up and had left his phone turned off.
Too, he had asked me yesterday for the code to the garage door opener key pad. Hmmm, I thought. Didn’t get one. So, I called the realtor who called the second realtor who discovered that the key pad had never been activated.
Kate suggested I figure out how to set it up and perhaps Mike could set it himself. Would work except you have to be inside the garage, with the lift motor, to engage the switch that allows you to enter a new code. A good safety feature and one I was glad to discover, but not helpful to Mike.
He did solve the storage problem. There is a shed on the property which had combination locks but also exposed screws. He simply backed them out with a drill, opened the door and stored the concrete. Good deal for him. And for me. But it does mean that lock hasp will either have to be reinstalled or not used for locking the shed. There’s nothing in there except window screens anyhow.
(This is roughly the sort of fence Mike’s installing.)
When I talked to him this afternoon though, he said six holes were dug and posts set. The ground is only a little frozen in some places, mostly not. And, the temperatures will not plunge as they did last week.
Went to the Nicollet Mall today to see Dr. Corrie Massie, my third internist in the last seven years or so. Charlie Petersen moved to Steamboat Springs with his wife. Tom Davis retired to collect native American pots and otherwise enjoy life. Corrie is a good doc, one I would have been happy to see longer.
Instead, this morning she printed my annual prescription refills so I could carry them a new pharmacy in Colorado. She also explained my stage 3 kidney disease diagnosis. “I get the most questions about that diagnosis of any I put on patient’s charts,” she said. Turns out that with the most normal kidney functions you qualify for stage 1 kidney disease. Stage 2 kidney disease is the domain most folks inhabit most of their life and Stage 3 represents a situation not unusual as we age. “It’s a filter. As the filter gets used, various insults degrade its function. Disease. High blood pressure. NSAID’s.”
As we get older, our kidney function deteriorates. The third phase sell-by date. At some point the universe follows the dictates of my long time ago grocery store boss who always reminded us to “rotate the stock.”
As became my practice when I transferred back to the Nicollet Clinic to start seeing Tom Davis, I went straight to hell from my doctor’s office. Hell’s Kitchen that is. A good breakfast, no matter what time of day.
