Injury Prone

Most readers know that we have been prepping the house to put it on the market, and we finally got it ready last weekend. We've had several showings and one offer that we didn't accept. A couple of other offers are in the pipeline, so we are trying to be zen about it.
But as I worked to ready the house, I found myself becoming accident prone.
Some bruises make sense as I hauled furniture out of the basement, into a truck and then into a storage unit, or someone else's house.
Earl's nephew agreed to take the upright piano that we have had since Grace was 1. Earl's mother had originally purchased the piano and it was covered in black lacquer. She stripped the wood and finished it so that the wood grain shone through.

The piano movers. Tucker is kneeling with his back to the camera. Earl and his nephew are standing behind the piano, and Earl's brother is using a lever to get the piano on a dolly. 

We did love it, but no one played it anymore, probably since we moved to this house, about 10 years ago. I used to play the piano quite frequently, but in the move, I lost all of my favorite piano books and couldn't get motivated to start over again with learning various pieces.
As you can see, we had more help moving the piano, so I didn't hurt myself.
But many times as we are carrying furniture out, it's only me and Earl or me and Spencer. Spencer has admitted that I'm a pretty good mover for a girl -- I didn't take that as an insult, because I know that my physical strength is definitely limited, yet I'm willing to try to move heavy things, like this desk that needed to be out of the house at the last minute before pictures were taken.

Tybs is not very accepting of all the changes

Of course, I first had to clear everything off the desk. And Tybs at that moment decided that the desk was his favorite place in the world and we couldn't possibly move it out.
So many times I hit my shins as I'm walking forward carrying a piece of furniture, or the furniture hits me, leaving bruises, as I walk backward with it. I also have big bruises on my forearms, I suppose from lifting and holding items.
Then two weeks ago, I had that fall on my back porch as I tripped after walking five miles. The bruise from that fall has faded to a pale green that stretches from my knee toward my ankle. I stopped running after that fall, giving my knee time to heal.
But last week, I stepped on a sliver of glass that came from a broken picture frame. I'm awful at getting splinters taken out of my feet. I decided to avoid walking on it that night and I tried to tackle it the next morning. I soaked my foot in hot water to loosen it up. I used a credit card to try to scrape it out. Then I used tweezers but couldn't get a hold on it. Finally, I decided that I would let my body absorb it or spit it out. I only felt occasional twinges when I stepped down on a certain part of my foot.
Obviously, I couldn't run with a splinter of glass in my foot.
On Sunday, before the open house, we decided to clean the side windows again because it had been raining. The windows are old and have a series of storm windows and screens. Earl was outside on a ladder and I was moving the storm windows up and down. One of the windows didn't want to go all the way up, so I was reaching under it to get to the storm window, when the window suddenly released, like a guillotine, streaking toward the closed position, and it landed on the heel of my thumb as I tried to escape it.
The impact formed a purple/red ridge along the heel of my thumb as I sprang away in pain. The swelling has subsided, but it is still sensitive to the touch and the dark bruise is slowly spreading.
I wonder if the stress of preparing the house to move has made me more prone to injuries. Maybe I'm being more careless, focused on the end result rather than taking my time.
Now that the house is on the market, I'll use this lull to heal, letting my bruises fade. Once we have a contract and a determined move out date, I'm sure I'll be back to moving mode and receiving new bruises as I race to get rid of our belongings that won't be coming along on our trip to France.

Minimizing Memories

My hands are covered with dust and my brain is muddled after spending a few hours in the basement clearing off bookshelves.
I have so many photo albums filled, mostly, with pictures of my children throughout their growing up years. Once Grace hit 12 or so, we switched to digital photos, scattered throughout the landscape of my computer, but easy to carry with me to France.
As I'm easily shifting books into giveaway bags, I wonder what to do with the photo albums. Do I take all the pictures out and save them in boxes?
Do I send the photos to a digital site and ask them to put them all on flash drives so I can carry them with me in my computer? I know that it's about $250 for 250 photos from Legacybox. I probably have thousands of pictures. Which do I discard and which do I keep?
And although I can easily get rid of books, knowing I won't move them to France with me, I can't get rid of my husband's books, so the shelves still hold things like Leroy Nieman paintings and the History of Baseball, not to mention some ancient books that don't even have covers any more. I wonder how we'll ever sort through everything.
I came across a Student Survival Guide to Wilmington College. That's where I went the last two years of my college. Why do I still have this? I've moved it from Ohio to Washington D.C. to Florida to Michigan and back to Ohio for more than 30 years.

That's my brother with his back toward the camera. 

My brother is on the cover but you only see him from the back. Is that why I saved it? I asked if he wanted it and he said yes!

Then I found this newspaper clipping.

My best friend got married 32 years ago right after she graduated from college, and I was the maid of honor. I held onto the clipping. Then I was the maid of honor again at her second wedding. She finally didn't invite me to the third wedding and this one has worked out. I don't think I need to hold onto the newspaper clipping any more.
Some things are easy to discard. But what do I do with all those photo albums?
If I was moving from the UK, I could load them all into my car or a moving van, but I can only take things on a plane.
Any advice? What would you do?

Small Steps Toward France

Earl and I both know that the end of his job could be inching toward us. Last week, one of his co-workers announced 60 days left until the possibility of them losing their jobs.
We have a backup plan, as I announced in my post France Dreams Coming True, but we're still kind of in denial. That plan requires selling our house. And whose house is ready to go on the market?
Definitely not mine.
On Friday, I  made one small step toward preparing it.
I cleaned up the area around my desk. Our house is small with two bedrooms upstairs and another bedroom downstairs. My desk is situated in a nook in the hallway.
I don't often write there because I need a window, so I haul my laptop to the dining room table or the front porch.
But papers I've graded and notes I've taken and bills I've paid, plus all of the paraphernalia gathered from the kids' events and school reports gathered on my desk in the past five years.
Here's how it looked before I started to clean it.

Hours later, with three boxes full of recycling and three neatly labeled crates, one for each child, my desk area looked neat.

Now if I could just convince myself to work on one area each day. Or if I would pull one box out of the basement storage room every day and figure out what is worth keeping or what needs to go, I could be ready in 60 days to throw the house on the market.

But, a bigger challenge awaits if we do sell the house, because how can we get rid of everything. Everything! Wooden trains and American Girl dolls and rocking horses. Carefully made quilts and snow globes of Paris. Framed photos of all those family members. 

Maybe I'll put them all in small boxes and whenever someone comes to visit us in France, they have to bring along one of our momento boxes. 

Today, hopefully, we're riding our bikes down to the Rib and Jazz Fest to listen to some music. We planned to go last night, but the extreme heat and the itch of my poison ivy convinced us to stay home. 

Adapting

My friend Stephanie teared up on Saturday when she talked about her daughter going back to college. She couldn't think about it, much less bear to watch her leave the house and return to the college two hours away.
It's times like this, that I realize I may be lacking in some basic emotions. It's not like I love my kids any less, I'm just not overly emotional about them heading off to college or France or wherever their lives take them.
I've hypothesized before that I'm less emotional about it because I homeschooled them and I feel like I've spent plenty of hours getting them prepared for life beyond home. But I think something else has helped prepare me too.

Three years ago in March, my husband found out that the newspaper was laying off employees. We found out the next day that Earl wasn't laid off, but he was moved to the evening shift. This left him home during the day. Since I am an adjunct college teacher, I'm sometimes home during the day too. We had to learn how to adapt to new schedules and learned how to enjoy time together while the kids were gone to school.
Sometimes we walk downtown to get coffee, other times we venture out for lunch or ride our bicycles. Sometimes, we just watch sitcom reruns. We've remembered what we enjoyed about each other before the kids came along.
I think this alone time together has helped prepare me for the empty nest that is coming. This year Spencer will graduate and head off to college. Two years later, Tucker will follow suit. Then, unless Grace comes home after college, Earl and I will be home alone throughout the school year.
The idea is certainly different. No basketball games or swim meets or musicals or orthodontist appointments. No big shoes strewn across the kitchen floor. No pile of wet towels waiting to be washed. And no one to stretch up to on tiptoes so I can kiss their stubbly cheeks goodbye as they head out the door for school.
I imagine that if Earl is still working evenings, cooking dinner will go by the wayside. I'll probably settle for a bowl of cereal or a salad.
Even as I strain to hear the back door slam with the approach of oncoming teenage boy feet home from school, I don't feel teary at the idea they'll have moved on.
I'm not a martyr taking a stiff upper lip as they move on, and I'm not so selfish that I can't wait until they go. It just feels right that the kids take up new challenges. They live in a college dorm full of other tall boys and girls who dance and watch Disney films. They are busy carving out their own niches now.
And luckily, I'll still have days filled with my husband and dreams of traveling to exotic places.

Emotional Eating

My husband was going to the store for the second time yesterday in preparation for some evening guests when I asked him to bring home some cookies. Those chocolate kind with the marshmallow inside.
He didn't point out that I had been eating healthy for a couple of weeks sticking to fruits, vegetables and proteins. He just bought the cookies.
I guess I'm an emotional eater because a few hours of sorting things in my daughter's room, counting the days -- 3 -- before she leaves for college, made me crave cookies.
I ate two when he returned and got back to the business of helping her pack her clothes.
People keep asking how I am with the move to college. I don't have a choice. My role in this is to be positive and upbeat and to eat an occasional cookie.
Grace has taken the emotional road. She cries. She lays her head in my lap when I am sitting on the couch. She hugs me whenever we are within a foot of each other. She holds my hand as we walk through the store to look for new clothes.
She chose the college 10 hours away when she originally protested going away at all.
Now she says, "I don't think I can go."
The tuition has been paid. The classes scheduled. The roommate is waiting.
My only role is to be supportive. I can show no chink in the armor.
"You can do this" is my mantra.
Now her belongings are stacked in bins.
Earl has repainted and reconstructed the window seat that Grace sat on during the play Little Women last year. She will take that with her as a bridge between her high school years and this new independent section of life. She has filled the window seat with her bedspread and mattress cover still in plastic wrapping. Within it are sets of sheets and matching towels never used.
And I can't think about that moment when we pull away from the college and she isn't in the car, when it's no longer my job to put on a brave face.