August 30, 2006

• Something unusual happened yesterday… water started coming out of the sky. Here in the parched southland where brown lawns are currently de rigeur, it was a welcome change. And this morning, the temperature was below 70 degrees for the first time since sometime back in May. No, that’s not a typo. I said May. And yes, that includes readings at 5 a.m.

  
  

  An assortment of “stuff” sits out by the street, with a large “FREE” sign next to it. It’s amazing what people will haul away when the price is FREE.

  
  

  Packing? Well, it goes. Even somewhat “on schedule.” Five rooms, the garage (Ugh!), the attic (Double ugh!)and the outdoor shed/workshop (more fubarish ugh-ness) are sorted, packed, boxed and otherwise cleaned up. I am really glad so much was slowly done in advance, over the past 18 months… meaning that the many “layers” of crap that normally go with a major move aren’t really all that many layers.

  
  

  Still, I hauled six more very large boxes to the Goodwill, on Sunday. I like the idea that old junque gets recycled, and becomes someone else’s treasure.

  
  

  I used to move a lot. In fact, I was raised as a sort of “global nomad;” my parents going from country to country… regardless of whether they were married, or not. At one point, my mom and stepdad kept separate places in Phoenix, AZ, the south of Spain and England. At a different time, it was Phoenix, Spain and South Africa.

  
  

  I like something more “stable” than that– I can totally see something like having a place in-town, and maybe a vacation cabin somewhere. But keeping three fully autonomous households, with all the attendant “stuff,” responsibility, maintenance and expenses? I don’t want it. In thinking about that, what I mostly don’t want is the phychic energy drain of having three “bouncing balls” I need to track, at all times. I don’t want to be at “Point A” and get a phone call that the roof at my “Point B” place has a plumbing leak, or my place at “Point C” has become incorporated by the city, so taxes have tripled.

  
  

  Of course, there’s something deeper here: The realization that pretty much my entire adult (and some youth) life has revolved around “disaster management,” “contingency planning” and “putting out fires.” Being at ANY place, in ANY situation, at ANY time from a position of “strength” is a completely alien concept for me. The only feeling I know is the headlong free-fall over the edge of the Cliffs of Complete Chaos.

  
  

  There’s definitely some learning I still need to do, there.

  
  

  P.S.: Sorry I haven’t been visiting your sites very much recently– my bandwidth is stretched a little….uhmmm…. “thin,” these days…

  
  

   

  • 9:26 am
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