Category: Florida Breaks

It’s a good thing we are feeling good about what we’re doing, because it’s sure a lot of highly focused work. We haven’t taken a true day off in over a month, and our “days off” include doing at least two errands each time, sometimes more. Our long days are about fifteen hours; our short days are about six or eight hours.

Even when we promise ourselves that we won’t do anything else, we sit for a few minutes to take a break, talk over what’s remaining and where we are with each project, then off the couch we go, heading towards one more “We’ll just finish this up…”
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Downsizing and house projects continue to take up most of our time. We are dangerously close to feeling like these projects are 12-headed hydras, always growing new heads when one is cut off.

What saves us is that we are finally beginning to see an end.

Downsizing

We’ve been through several very successful Craigslist rounds so far, with another well underway. We’ve sold a surprising amount of our listed items, with zero hassle from the buying side. Our buyers have been truly amazing – incredibly pleasant. Some of them we liked well enough that we gave them our card, and asked them to send us an email so we can stay in touch. In fact, we may go kayaking before we leave with the guy who bought our Yakima lock cores.
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When I look at the calendar and realize how much time has gone by since I last wrote, it seems impossible. Chelsea and I have been up to our eyeballs in getting things done, and time just seems to slip by. We’ve done tree trimming, cleaning, sorting, getting the pool back into swim-able condition, helped Alex’s girlfriend Amanda move apartments, and we’ve been getting things ready to sell. I also quietly celebrated my birthday – a decade birthday, the big 6-0.

Storage

We managed to sell a few of our items from the house, and then got our furniture and boxes out of storage before we had to pay another month. After a week of hard labor doing tree trimming and yard work and cleaning and moving things inside the house, we spent about five hours last Tuesday, just the two of us, moving boxes from storage in the midst of an awesome thunderstorm.
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Being home again is quite an amazing experience. Arriving home, and the process of getting here, were amazing too.

First ride

John D., our first Craigslist rideshare, picked us up about 2:30 on Thursday right at Roger’s trailer. Chelsea and I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, partly from hanging out with Roger and partly because we couldn’t sleep, so we spent the day as quietly as we could. We were packed and ready to go by noon, so when John arrived, it was a matter of a few minutes to get loaded up into his truck.
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Our flight home was uneventful, though it was long, with a layover in Las Vegas. After being in coastal areas for so long, it was definitely different to be sitting in the airport looking through huge glass windows at the arid mountainous landscape with casinos and hotels in the foreground.

Alex has been waiting tables for awhile now, working primarily evening shifts, so Paul picked us up at the airport. It was pure delight having a chance to talk to him; though he and his family live in Ft. Lauderdale we never see each other because of time and work pressures. We’d caught Paul on a break from his flight schedule, so he had time to talk for a few hours – a rare treat for us.

Being home was really strange, as much of our furniture and all our personal belongings were in storage; it was home but it didn’t look or feel like home. Not only that, Alex had a roommate, John, now living in Chelsea’s room, so Chelsea and I were going to have to share my room.
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