Day Eight

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...

The last couple of days together might constitute a half-decent single day of purging, so I'm going to say the last two days will be Day Eight. The tradesmen who have been here putting the best face on the house have collected their checks and finally departed. Only one thing (we think) remains to be done: The vessel sink in one of the bathrooms will need to be replaced, as it has developed a crack.

Just getting the house ready to show has cost us thousands of dollars, and it is only seven years old. Add to that the property tax bill soon to be paid, the utilities and other expenses, and we are talking some serious cash doled out to maintain a place that we can't wait to leave, only to worry about it when we do. I'm not sure why it's taken so long to come to grips with this insanity. Wait a minute...when you're insane, you aren't aware of it, are you? If that's so, then perhaps we're just slow. Very slow.

Our progress has been slowed by juggling the workers with doctor appointments and yearly lab work they insist upon. We find ourselves at the doctors' offices far more than when we were younger, but that's largely because of the increased number of medications we need whose prescriptions can only be renewed after a checkup. They've got us over a barrel, don't they? The inexorable dependency on doctors and medications is not lost on us (even though we've established above that we're slow), and we know this is a harbinger of a time when we can no longer be patched up enough to travel as we do now. This realization is not insignificant among the reasons why we're trying to free ourselves of as many responsibilities as possible. 

Another expensive speed bump was caused by both our cars' needing mechanical work. Mae had developed some wear in her front suspension, so I had new suspension kits installed on both front wheels, which improved the ride greatly. Add to this a burned out high-intensity headlight in the Escalade that set us back...well, let's just say, an outrageous amount. No, I didn't try to do it myself; you have to dismantle a good bit of stuff under the hood to get to it.
Now I'm beginning to wonder why we need two cars besides Phannie. (I told you we were a little slow.)

Even with all this going down, we were able pretty much to clear out the study and about half the cabinets in the laundry room. We also made two more trips taking discards to the thrift shop.

Oh yes, and we rented the storage unit at a nearby facility. It should be interesting to see what all ends up in there and how long it remains after we trip over it for a while and discover that paying good money to store it is yet another form of insanity. I guess the next thing you know, I'll be seeing a shrink!

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.