The one with the weird day

Today is a weird day.  All my stuff is gone.  The latest course that I agreed to teach is ending and students are saying good-bye and farewell.  It’s sunny and nice outside, of course a bit humid but OK.  Something just feels different.  I guess it feels like we’re moving which is the point but it’s still different.

So, as I mentioned our stuff is gone.  Not ALL of our stuff but most of it.  The Universe brought into our life a man named Fred a couple days ago.  Fred’s path in life has lead him to a new start as well.  Fred recently bought a new house and found himself in need of furniture.  Craigslist lead him to us and our belongings and today he drove off with our bed’s headboard and side stands, a mattress and frame, our dresser with mirror, our chest of drawers and our chesser.  Oh yes, how can I forget he took the kitchen table too.  And John’s gigantic desk.  I think that’s it.  All that furniture helped John and I start our life together and now it’s going to help Fred start a new life.  I guess our stuff is just the “start a new life” line of oak furnishings.  :)  Here’s a photo of it all.

Last night I found myself crying at the thought of parting with my stuff.  Frankly, I think it was just a good excuse for my body to vent.  Things are going well but we have A LOT going on right now and sometimes, it is hard to keep pushing through each day.  We never know what day it is because it doesn’t matter anymore.  We just gotta keep moving and get the house on the market.  Each day gets us closer and even though we go to bed absolutely exhausted each night and wake up full of aches and pains we’re still marching on.  All of our remodeling efforts are turning out pretty well I think.  Of course I am biased but I’m darn proud at what we have done.  Here are a few more pictures….

This is the kitchen backsplash that I designed and installed all by myself.  I have to say, I’m rather proud.  :)  I guess I should admit that I had a bit of help.  My good friend down at Floor and Decor brought the green marble strips to my attention and I have to admit, it was a stroke of genius.  The marble strips are very rough and 3Dish.  They’re jagged and rocky and they look fantastic next to the Verde Butterfly granite.  I wish the picture did it more justice.

The master bathroom is on pause.  The shower doors turned out to be a slight issue and the contractors we hired to do that work are so speedy and competent that they have finished everything they can do without the doors.

All the flooring is going in and I have to say, even though grinding a cement floor is the most horrifically awful thing you can do with two days of your time, the actual install of wood flooring is kinda fun.  I’ve really enjoyed it.  Here’s a picture of John with the floor grinder.  Shelby, our contractor, is in the background.  Let me tell you, he is one hard worker and by far the BEST contractor I’ve ever seen or heard of.  And then of course there’s Hermes, tired from a long day of supervising.

So anyway, today has a weird feel.  I’m sitting in the dining room without a dining room table.  The refrigerator is behind me while the wood floors in the kitchen dry.  My desk is also down here in a corner.  It’s the only flat surface we have left in the house as far as furniture is concerned.  I’m also sitting in a portable fishing chair because the LaZBoys are in the living room and we don’t have any other chairs.  We do not own a single TV at this point and our clothes are stacked in piles, tucked away in moving bags and hanging out in suitcases.  I don’t even have an end table to put next to the bed so I can see the clock at night.

Plus, my online class is ending and so many of my favorite students are saying goodbye.  It’s funny, the students that bother to say “Thank you for helping me through class” are all my favorites.  Even without ever having seen their faces we managed to become friends in some way.  Technology is amazing to me sometimes. So between the goodbyes with my students, goodbyes with my belongings and the sun-shining day it feels weird.  Today feels transitional.  I’ve always said, it’s that last part of the journey that is the hardest.  That would explain the last few weeks of pure exhaustion mixed with excitement and anxiety all at the same time.  Could we be close to our departure date?  I hope so.  It feels like it.  Just a few more small projects and we’ll be ready to hit the road. 

I know this is the right move for now.  It is sad to me to think that there are so many people out there “stuck” in the life that I used to have.  It’s sad to think that they probably never even think that it’s possible to break free.  If we’re all going to die one day then it seems to me that our purpose is to find a purpose for our life.  It would have been easy to make my purpose sitting in an office doing whatever I was told.  But what’s the point?  It always felt meaningless.   So here I am, sitting in my dining room that has yet to be floored and contains a fishing chair, a desk and a refrigerator, feeling weird.  I hope that’s progress.

This entry was posted on Tue, Aug 25 2009 at 16:01 and is filed under Vanessa's Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.