#garage sale: some1 just bought one of my UV “happy lites” for her plants. about 16 hours ago via txt

Two weeks is how long it’s been from the moment when Shane and I heard the first rumblings that it just might be a good idea to look for a new place to live. Two weeks and tonight I started unpacking things into my new kitchen. I would say that my head is spinning, but I think I’m still in the stage just before that one, where I’m not even entirely sure what the hell just happened. Is happening.

I have WAY more cupboard space now.

#garagesale – was afraid books wouldn’t sell, but half r already gone. pagan books went 1st. pity, i wanted them 2 freak out my neighbors. about 16 hours ago via txt

The first day of garage sale was a roaring success. It was really hard for me and I ducked in and out the door a lot, but Shane was amazing. Giving deals, loading cars, helping little old ladies cross the street. When the potting stand priced at $20 and then sold at $15 wouldn’t fit in a woman’s car, he took her address and delivered it to her later. In the hubbub she’d forgotten to actually pay for it. He and I both draw a hard line on people actively trying to take advantage of us (cause that’s just yucky and not to be gotten away with) but we agreed beforehand that this garage sale was first about getting rid of stuff and second about making a little money. So neither of us were sad that a potting stand, 8 years untouched in the back of a shed, had been inadvertently donated to a good home.

#garagesale – lots of comments & general enjoyment of the atari 2600. some1 finally bought it for $20. about 16 hours ago via txt

And when there were two kids bikes priced at $30 each, the one with the flames being purchased by a grandma for her grandson when little sister, so adorable and wee, begged for the other boys bike (equally fierce in black and red) Shane gave them 2 for the price of one. This is why I love the man.

#garagesale – lots of people laughing at our CD collection, apparently garage-salers don’t take metalheads very seriously. about 16 hours ago via txt

And at the end of the day we still made enough to buy a new toaster, new coffee maker and new microwave for my new kitchen. (You can find the old ones at our sale tomorrow!) I LOVE the feeling of turning old things into new.

#garagesale – some1 just bought the dress I wore onstage as Agnes in Shadow Box. about 16 hours ago via txt

But no one would be terribly surprised to know that working a garage sale isn’t my favorite thing, ever. My home is my sanctuary and strangers give me hives on the best day, so inviting them to descend en masse and pick through my things doesn’t seem like the most obvious choice for me. And then you have the emotional factors – while I swear I was very good about not putting anything out for sale that I wasn’t able to honestly detach from, it was still oddly emotional at times.

#garagesale – day 1, made a killing, even with husband giving tons of deals. My hatred for garage sales might be upgraded to love/hate.

The worn out dresser that my Grandpa made himself – the one my mother painted blue to match my bedroom when I was 13 – now falling to pieces but bought for $5 by a fellow who looked like he would know how to fix it up nice. The woman who was so thrilled to find such nice yarn at such a good price – every skein chosen by my mother, some used to make afghans that I now own. So many yard tools that had belonged to my father and had already seen a lot of use when they were passed on to me when I was first starting a household of my own.

FEET HURT. But made enough in the garage sale to buy new toaster, new coffee maker and new microwave for the new place. Woot. about 2 hours ago via web

Onward and upward. And honestly, my spirits have been buoyed by the amazing people I’ve been lucky enough to have around me these days. There hasn’t been a day in the last two weeks that I haven’t been touched by someone’s kindness, a thoughtful gesture, an unexpected connection. I think, just lately, I’ve begun to realize what had always before been only the ghost of a suspicion – that I am a very lucky woman.

And OMG, the space I have in my new kitchen. about 2 hours ago via web

Another day of garage sale tomorrow, the kids will be off to Bend with my best friend, and on Sunday we move all the big stuff with the help of a lot of really generous people who weren’t smart enough to pretend to have other plans. And that will, for all intents and purposes, mark the beginning of life in a new home.

Two weeks later.

Khyron Patrick, last month

My beautiful boy, eldest son and heir to the throne, my warrior with a poet’s heart, long and tall and newly fifteen (I want to hyperventilate just typing that); I plan to write a letter documenting the past (crazy, crazy) year of his life, punctuated by goofy pictures of fleeting moments captured on pixel, but the picture discs are all packed up and I am currently crazy with the move. I can’t even get a super current photograph this morning, because the birthday boy himself is still asleep just now and by the time he gets up there will be doings; friends and cake and video games (his wish for this birthday, two big screen TVs in the living room hooked up to two Xbox 360s) and presents and I’ll find myself back out in the garage and out of the way, pricing items for tomorrow’s garage sale.

Khyron Patrick, 6th birthday party

So the sentimental outpourings of my heart when I think of this nearly-man who is my son will have to wait a bit. But I do, at least, have a poem to share. It’s going to make me cry, too, because that’s just how I am about these things.

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?
by Robert Hershon

Don’t fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn’t know
is that when we’re walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

I know, it’s crazy, right? A month ago, less than that, moving wasn’t even in my sight line. Now I’m sitting here in a room stripped of pictures and spotted with boxes and the occasional gaps where certain pieces of furniture have already migrated or been doomed to garage sale humiliation. (Toy Story has ruined me, I feel guilty about everything now. “No, but I really did enjoy our acquaintance bread maker. It isn’t you, it’s me. I just… don’t want to make bread anymore. You had to have seen this coming – I only used you twice!”)

It’s funny, too, because whenever I’m away from the new place I find my brain downplaying it (I think it’s still refusing to process this as anything less than crisis. Stupid drama queen brain), so I’m always surprised at how awesome it is the next time I go to see it. To give you some perspective, where we’ve lived for the last 8 years is classic suburbia: three bedroom/2 bath single level. A generous living room and a great room which is, well, pretty great. The downside, though, is that as the kids have gotten older and there have come to be more loud electronics in our lifestyle, we are often on top of each other and in desperate need of a quiet corner.

The new place has 4 bedrooms (all similarly sized), 2 bonus rooms, and 2 living rooms on opposite sides of the space. And the space itself is large – most people look down our incredibly long hallway and want to know if there’s a mirror making it look longer than it is.

This is my (not to scale) rendering of the layout. Click to embiggen.

The Breakdown:

Front Yard

We’ve already sold the lawnmower.

Entryway

There are actually 3 closets altogether. I’m torn right now between making this space pretty (in which case the antique buffet goes here) or purely functional (in which case this is where we’ll keep the bikes.) Shane voted for the buffet and then later wanted to put the dry erase board in the same room. Men.

If you take a right, you’ll find on one side of the hall:

My Writing Room

and

Shane’s Office

Okay, confession. I was all set to take the larger of the two spaces, but since it also happens to be at the end of the hallway turned racetrack, the kids were drawn to it. (Well, it was the finish line.) So Shane gets the big space, while I get the ignored little room off to the side. No, but really he gets the bigger space because I love him. Plus, I’m trying to pawn off all the computer miscellanea storage on him, too, so he’ll need the extra space.

Across the way:

Kitchen

Living Room and Dining Room

This is my favorite little detail here:

As it stands right now, since we’re planning to use the other living room as our main living area, we’re not even sure what we’re going to do with the space on this side of the house. Storm has voted that we put our tent up in here.

Back down the long hallway

Hallway/Racetrack/Exercise Room

and past the entryway you’ve already seen, is the

Men’s Room

(Note: They get to do the laundry, too.) And then there’s the

Women’s Room

And then we have bedrooms:

Khy’s Room

Storm’s Room

Nicky’s Room

Oh, okay. That’s actually the hall cupboard. But he really likes it in there.

Master Bedroom

I’m in love with the closet shelving:

And at this end of the hallway is

The Other Living Room/Family Room

Just off of that is

Nicky’s Room/The Guest Room, Since Nicky Usually Sleeps on the Sofa

And finally,

Back Yard

I’m not in love with the carpet, I’ll be honest. But honestly, every other thing I can think of as a downside, I’m just perverse enough to love about it. Best of all, I think somewhere a quiet corner might be found… And once found, the door will even lock!

Garage Sale this weekend (Fri/Sat 9-4), and on Sunday we move!

All right, all right. A few eagle-eyed commenters that don’t like to play by the rules have revealed the true meaning behind the clues. And while traveling to exotic locales, zombie hunting and selling hippie children to fund world saving endeavors were all very, very close, the truth is that we’re moving across town. (Kind of anticlimactic, huh? Wait ’til I break the news that I don’t actually have the right to give away Paris.)

Well, it might not be world ending or life changing for you, but for me it’s been a pretty big dealio. Our current house and I have had our disagreements from time to time, but this has been my kids’ childhood home. They were 6, 4 and 2 when we moved in here, and now they’re 15, 12 and 10. Sure, they still have some growing to do, but no one is toddling about anymore. This was it, this was the place where all that happened. Lost teeth, bicycles without training wheels, summers swimming in the backyard, scribbles on the walls when Mom wasn’t looking, birthday parties and memorials, too – we did eight years of growing here. Leaving it behind is breaking my heart a little.

I’m going to continue to be a bit sketchy with the details because (for a blogger) I know how to be discreet, but you can’t really know how this all came down inside my head without knowing that less than a month ago moving was the farthest thing from our minds. This was an entirely unexpected turn of events, and also, I need to add, not due to anything we’ve done. We are rockstar renters. You wish you could be as good as we are at renting. But circumstances did what they sometimes do, and we had to make some changes accordingly. And rather quickly.

Luckily we did, however, almost immediately stumble across something that feels like a perfect fit. In fact, the new place has even more living space than our current house does, and in an arrangement that feels like it will suit our needs much better. Like anything, there are trade-offs, but luckily it seems like everything we’re having to give up are things that I didn’t really like having all that much anyway.

Once we have the keys and I can take some real pictures I’m sure I’ll be talking new apartment here very soon. Right now, though, all is chaos and boxes. I’m actually crazy proud of us and what we’ve accomplished around here in such a short period of time. Even in a rush we’ve sorted through everything – and that is 2 car garage worth of everything, tucked away by a husband whose super power is getting a ton of things to fit in places where, by all that is natural and holy, they should never be able to fit.

This is the corner where everything that we’re taking with us goes.

This is the corner for all the things that will go into the garage sale.

It’s been difficult, though, the worst by far being the several nights I spent sorting through boxes of things that belonged to my father. Things we tucked away 8 years ago in anticipation of a day when I would feel strong enough to deal with them. The irony is that a year ago I could’ve sorted through all of it pretty easily, but now that Mom is gone, too, it’s all become poignant and painful and terribly heavy again. The love letters and greeting cards were hard to take, of course (Dad, hoarder at heart, kept every single greeting card he ever received. I, child of a hoarder, was compelled to sort through every last one.) But probably the most painful of all was a completely random post-it note pad. Half-used, the top-most sheet had a note in my mother’s handwriting promising a quick return from a jaunt to Safeway. Something about just how ordinary everyday it is seems to be what makes it so sad.

This is another thing that marks this house, our time here has been book-ended by deaths. Dad died two months after we moved in, Mom died 10 months before we left. Our new apartment will be the first place I’ll live that neither will see.

I’m 38 years old today, and continuing to do the best that I can. I think this fresh start will be a beautiful thing, and I’m excited to begin the next stage of my life. But, like any change that’s worthwhile, it hurts like hell, too. I would probably curl up in a little ball if I thought about it too much, but right now? I have too much packing to do.

Krista thinks I’m selling children – maybe this one got away?

For those of you just joining us, we’re playing a game (for imaginary prizes) of trying (really hard, for serious) to guess the great big fat change that’s happening in my life (not altogether of my choosing). There have been a wide variety of guesses, ranging from child trafficking to Norway. And someone already became the Queen of France, but the entire state of Texas is still up for grabs, so don’t be shy. Step up and make a guess! Or just sit back and watch for clues. Maybe owls or zombies will turn up again, you never know.

Or is it something else? Here’s your next clue:

I’m having a really difficult time being cheerful today (brave face, brave face) but I do have your next clue. So sit down in your thinking chair with this one:

The third commenter wins the Eiffel Tower. If you tell me a bad joke, I’ll throw in the rest of Paris. (What the heck.)

Presently, we’re playing a game (with imaginary prizes!) to reveal the big change that is occurring in my life. On the last clue we had two guesses. The first, “not moving to Washington” (roughly) was absolutely true, but not the whole truth. I am also not moving to Utah or Missouri. The second guess was “you are moving to a Photoshopped apartment hidden somewhere in Oregon bear hunting land?” which was very, very close in the sense that I have used Photoshop at times.

And just for participating in this totally serious contest, our contestants won the Taj Mahal and the Tower of Pisa! But don’t worry, folks, there’s plenty more imaginary loot where that came from, so don’t be shy. Step up and guess something silly!

So here’s the second clue. And okay, this is a clue only in the loosest sense. Mostly I just wanted an excuse to reprint this, found via haha.nu, because it makes me laugh and laugh. (But we’re counting it as a clue, too.)

Because there is no honor among zombies.

Because, you know, with two major deaths in my life in less than a year, life was beginning to feel sort of stagnant around here. Okay, snark out of the way. Things are happening. Fast, even. And not entirely by choice, either, which is always one of those things I’ve found most irritating about life – it’s resistance to my control or, sometimes, consent. But the point is that something is brewing, maybe not something that seems like a big change to a lot of people (look at me getting all defensive already, what is that about?), but is still sudden enough to feel pretty freaking huge to us. Blind-sided, we were.

If you’re sick of me talking so cryptically, though, and want me to get to the point, I hope that isn’t your breath that you’re holding. I don’t feel like I can come right out with it yet. So I’ve decided, in the interest of always looking on the bright side of life, (because that, my friends, is so very me) that I will try to make it fun by posting clues.

So here is today’s: