It’s been awhile. I can’t even blame COVID-19, because, well, I fell silent long before THAT hit. Let’s see, work got crazy busy, husband spent almost a month in ICU, we adopted Bullwinkle the American Bulldog, we lost Pickle suddenly to a bizarre condition…and then COVID-19. (Plus a ton of family drama that I’m sure I’ll rant about later. We all have that, right? Right? It’s not just us? Your family is a bunch of whackadoodles that just take turns acting out, isn’t it?)

Where did we leave off? Not that it matters. What I want to talk about for the next little while is that we sold our Ozarks home and we’re moving back to St. Louis. Eventually. In the meantime, though, we’re kind of nomads. We had to vacate our house last week. Our new house doesn’t close for another 4 weeks, and then there has to be some work done before we actually move in. I guess that makes us technically homeless, but lucky enough to have a comfortable roof over our heads.

The thing is, the husband, the Bullwinkle, and I are living in a hotel room for the next month. Together. Very together. I’m suddenly laughing maniacally at the memory of being stir crazy during the COVID quarantine in a giant house, cause now we’re stuck together in this lovely TownePlace Suites room. If I sound like a spoiled brat who is complaining about being able to live in a hotel with housekeeping and a pool, well, I feel like a spoiled brat even typing those complaints. Yet, here I am, agitated at the lack of counter space and dresser drawers.

I’ll be documenting the journey. From the “did we really just sell our house?” moment, to the heart stopping reality that I’m leaving my kids and my grandkids, to the ugly sobbing as my husband tried to explain that we’re not LEAVING, we’re just increasing our commute time to visit the kids…by about 3 hours…. to the anxiety of finding a new home, to the purging/packing to…hopefully….getting settled in the new place to write the next chapter.

I’d never lived in one house for as long as I’d lived in the house we just sold. 13 years, 3 months and 26 days, to be exact. Do you know how much crap can be accumulated in that amount of time? After the first 10 boxes of Stuff We Never Use was packed, we decided that we should maybe purge first. You know, recycle, donate, give away?

An ice cream maker, new in box. 4 full sets of dishes. A scuba suit that will fit a 5 year old. An original Play Station. 3 incomplete decks of UNO cards. An entire box of my now 30-something children’s school records from 4th – 8th grade, complete with art projects. A state of the art rainwater collection system. 70 unused drawer slide sets, still in the box. Tools….oh, sweet baby Jesus, don’t get me started on the tools. Oh, and a 1985 Alfa Romeo Spider that is in mid-refurbish. Well, not exactly “mid-refurbish”. Maybe more “engine is disassembled and in multiple boxes” stage.

We started organizing into corners. Donate on the right, Recycle on the left, Community Pile (for kids, friends, whomever might want it) in the center. Within 2 hours, we realized the foolishness of corners, and started piling into rooms. 3 more hours, and we realized we needed to rent a rollaway dumpster.

I kid you not. A couple of days later, here comes the dumpster. It took us ONE DAY to fill it up. ONE DAY. An entire dumpster. Of stuff that didn’t even have an option for donation.

So that left us with 2 rooms full of Donate and Give Away. In addition to what was now about 40 boxes of everything from “Tupperware and Lids” to “Craft Supplies – Spring” (not to be confused with “Craft Supplies – Fall”). After 7 pick up truck loads and 4 trailer loads to various drop off points, we only had with us the stuff we were taking. Which is still too much.

To be continued….