STEP 842

"You guys are really doing this, aren't you?"

It's something we hear over and over. Sometimes I'm the one saying it.

With the business on the market, the house about to be, for sale signs on Isabella, two empty rooms, 13 items on Ebay and 15 already sold, including the chair I was sitting in, it feels like we're really doing this.

We no longer talk about things we have to do some day, we talk about what needs to be done in the next hour. We no longer talk about selling the house, but where we'll live when it's sold. We no longer dwell on selling the business, but what our first destination will be afterwards. We no longer procrastinate, we prioritize. We run from one project to the next, managing house and boat and business projects like a carnival clown juggling loaded paintbrushes. It's messy.

We look like a herd of carpenter ants carrying things from one place to the next to the next. To an outsider it might look like we're only shifting things from one room to the next, but from our vantage point, we're moving mountains. Sure, we might move each object from upstairs to the kitchen to be photographed, then to the "holding" bedroom to wait seven days, but eventually each object ends up in a brown, cardboard box, taped and addressed and headed to San Diego or Pecos, Texas, or Johnstown, Ohio, into the hands of someone who is hopefully as glad to have it as we are to be rid of it.

We had a staff party last week, and it was a struggle to find chairs for all six people.

Yes, we're really doing this.

TODAY:
--coat #6 of varnish on the garage
--coat #3 of varnish on the hatch panels
--sanded down the bulkhead
--attached the starboard dorade box
--stripped, sanded and sealed the cockpit grate, and it looks FABULOUS
--sold more stuff on Ebay.
--put the boat on Craigslist
--ordered mulch for the beds
--decided on a price for the house
--started having hot flashes. GREAT. menopause added to the long list of other life changes!