Moved

 It was a gargantuan effort with the help of all my local children and grandchildren. At one point, it felt like I couldn't possibly meet the deadline. I had agreed to close a day sooner as the buyers were so excited to be in their new house. I left it as clean as I possibly could in the time allowed. There were things I had planned to do that never got done. But it's all over now. 

The movers came on Monday and put everything into the storage unit. That went very smoothly and pretty fast as well because of the preparations we had made. The storage unit was just the right size with a little room to spare. I don't know how I lucked out choosing the movers and storage, as I'm completely a novice at that and had no time to learn, and very few options to choose from. It was luck.

 

Tuesday, I signed a million or so papers to complete the closing. It is quite a process. The money reached my bank yesterday, Wednesday. Also yesterday, I finished getting all the utilities switched over and address changes made at the bank and other places I do regular business with. I had submitted the address forwarding to the post office a week earlier.

One very remarkable thing about this move: I did it without really writing any list. Me, the maker of lists. Hard to believe.

I did have my original list of 80 things to do that I had created a year or so ago. But that was just the things to get the house ready. With the move itself, I just did everything on the fly and didn't have time to think much about anything. Every day, I had a motto of  "do something, anything." It was chaotic and stressful. Not my cup of tea. But, somehow, it all happened on time.

And now, a day later, I'm living in my son's house temporarily hoping for one last bit of luck. My son's family is really wonderful to me. My daughter in law is more of a daughter. The grand kids are my longtime summer buddies, and it is just a good place for me to be. Their big, gregarious yellow lab, Sophie, gets along with Frankie, but she's only 2 and Frankie's an old guy, prefers to sleep over playing. And we do have a small problem of Sophie eating Frankie's dinner if he hesitates. But we're working that out.

I don't want to overstay my welcome. The number of those one level houses has dropped to zero over the summer. One finally appeared in the listings. But it's not really to my liking. It's the smallest, cheapest of the houses they built in the neighborhood, with a tiny galley kitchen and a minimal number of cabinets. But I'm starting to think I should at least look at it and see if it might do with some modifications.

I'm impatient. I want to finish this move. I'm only halfway there.