Lughnasa                                                                          College Moon

Business meeting at Key’s, breakfast of champions. Money doing fine. Work proceeding according to a flexible time-table, but staying up to our expectations. We’ll get everything packed and all the clean-up and fix-up work done in time. A good feeling.

(Janus is the official God of our move.)

More packing today. A busy week until SortTossPack comes on Friday. Putting most of the garden to bed, a bonfire, more of our own packing and pulling stuff out for SortTossPack to pack. Of course, Latin. Feeling some pressure to get back to writing, too.

After the 26th, SortTossPack day, the whole process should slow down some. We’ll have done the bulk of the pre-moving time period packing, if not all of it. Odds and ends, fiddling around with some outdoor work, scheduling the last of the fixers and cleaners, talking to the stagers.

Lughnasa                                                                    College Moon

We’ve decided what the second (and probably last) SortTossPack day will entail. They will move out all the red boxes and sell them at Halfprice Books. They will pack fragile and clumsy items. They will remove at least two desks, one file cabinet, three bookcases, and a small chest of drawers.

We have about a week and a half before they come. Most of our pack ahead work will be done by then, leaving only items we’ll pack just before the move. That means October will be the month to call moving companies and get bids.

Momentum has shifted. Now we’re thinking about leaving. Kate will probably start to look in earnest, as I think I said here before, sometime around Hanukkah. Whatever we do we want to move before we put the house on the market. That will make matters much easier and eliminate storage and kennel costs.

Having this large project underway since late April has had an interesting effect on me. It has given me a clear way to prioritize time and energy which has reduced my anxiety overall. Makes me wonder what I can find to take its place. Of course, there will be a year or so of settling in to the new place, so the question won’t arise until late 2015, early 2o16. Plenty of time to decide on something.

Lughnasa                                                                 College Moon

A certain softness, a wistfulness has begun to creep into the Woolly meetings for me. If we buy a house and move in January, only three more third Mondays remain.

The depth of feeling I have for these guys will last, I know that, but the relationships will grow more tenuous. That’s inevitable. They will not disappear, of that I’m sure, but without the regular gatherings things will change.

The circus tent ropes have gone slack and some of the canvas sides have begun to fold in on themselves, the tent poles are still in place: the home in Andover, the Woolly’s, the personal Twin Cities created by 40 years of memories, but each of these tent poles will eventually come down, too.

Feeling it tonight.

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.