What HAVE we been up to? Oh, you know...casually emptying a house, selling our belongings, and preparing to get out of here. As it turns out, we had a lot more stuff than we even knew, and getting rid of it in a fairly short time span is not exactly a walk in the park. However, with the help of my lovely Mother, who has been here for the past week. In just one week, she has blown through our house, making neat, labelled piles, and pointing us in the right direction. It's kind of like "Moving for Dummies", and it's soooo appropriate for us. Now, when I find something, I just walk around the house until I find the right sign on the wall, and add it to that particular pile. Is this a "Promised/Return to Friends" item? No. Is it "Move Overseas" item? No. Is it "Trash"? Probably. Brilliant. I love my Mom.

Last Saturday, we threw the garage sale to end all garage sales. The weather was looking iffy, but we took a chance and dragged a household worth of stuff (literally) out onto our driveway for the world to see and, hopefully, buy. And holy crap, did they ever buy. I have never seen so many people in a driveway - at one point, I couldn't even see through the sea of people. We had already replaced most of our crap with really nice stuff, so this was a generally crap-free garage sale, which helped enormously. Most things went for one or two dollars, and at the end of the day, we only had a few boxes of stuff to unload and a big box full of money...which mostly just made me marvel at what we must have spent on the stuff to begin with. However, looking back, I can't think of one item in that garage sale that I felt sad to sell, so that just goes to show how much excess you can accumulate in a house that you really, seriously don't need.

But now we're on our own, and down to the final few days in the house. The tenants move in mid-week next week, and we have to be out of there by Sunday. Out AND have scoured the entire house by Sunday. Awesome. What's left to do? Oh...you know...pack.

According to the piles and what I have done so far, this is what we are moving with:

-rice cooker
-Rebar cookbook
-extension cord (?)
-two mugs
-three pairs of heels
-a knife

If that doesn't make for a comfortable household, I don't know what does. Obviously, there is work to be done. Luckily for Kurt, he finished his job last Friday, and so has this week to be home and get his stuff done. I'm trying to cram it into evenings and our last precious weekend, which is less than ideal, but thanks to my intense procrastination and denial over the past few weeks, entirely necessary and something I definitely had coming to me.

That's not to say that we're not fitting in the fun stuff as well, where we can. The goodbyes have already started...some of our friends are having a goodbye party for us tonight, I have a dinner date on Thursday and we have another one on Friday. The goodbyes make it even more real than the empty house does. And as excited as I am to do something completely new and be completely on our own, it is very, very difficult to think that these people won't be just a car ride away, or in the case of my co-workers, just down the hall.

I hope my new co-workers aren't duds, by the way. This thought scares me more than the idea of hurricane season.

Anyways...it's happy but sad, fun but not, exciting but nerve-wracking, mind-blowing but still kind of surreal. Friends are congregating with their support, which is overwhelming and means a lot. We have a lot to do yet, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel now...and empty floor space in our house, so the worst is now over. Minus the final goodbyes, of course.

I can not WAIT to get on that plane....