her name is grace

i remember you registering her for first grade, HOM says to me. 

i remember a skinny teenager navigating middle school.

a limp sedated wisp in hospital. a firebrand tomboy.

a child blessed. a blessing.

goodbye lunchbag!

this has packed its final lunch.

J2 graduates high school in two days.

reeeaaally.

heart break, reloaded

seller's remorse n. when you offload too happily at the garage sale and wake up with a sinking feeling the next day. [eng. seller (of commodity) + remorse (over selling)]

specifically, we are short of a desk for the p.c. now.

heart break 2

bone tired
a li'l bit richer
just as cluttered
not understandin' why

thank God for enthusiastic young people.

heart break

we are culling years of memories, putting them up on exhibition

and attaching a price tag to them that underestimates and 

offends their true value.

we are selling our family history

and hoping that somewhere, another family may have

the same fun and joys and laughters and times that we have had.

clutter attack

do you notice that they tell you how to organize the clutter in your home but not what to do with the organized clutter years down the road?

because it may look neat, but that's only until you start to take it apart to deal with the innards. and then the temptation is to stuff them back into their fossilized order and pretend you don't have to deal with them until the kids grow up or move out or you need to downsize drastically or something. i guess after a dozen or so stuffings that something has come.

our home is slowly unraveling at the edges.

house hunted

yeah!

so we're getting compacter nicer newer cheaper, in what is shaping up to be quite a pleasant seamless move. at times like this i begin to understand why Mary broke into her Magnificat.

even to your old age, i am He

and even to gray hairs i will carry you!

i have made, and i will bear;

even i will carry, and will deliver you.

isaiah 46:4

full throttle ahead

our family is on an aggressive drive to de-clutter. my old textbooks finally get to go to the landfill. the games chest is ruthlessly emptied. even the drums find themselves a new home. we plan our yard sale for this week. HOM monitors his babies on ebay. J2 has a roaring sale preview on facebook. we get spray-painted signs from our neighbor after his sale today who got them from the other neighbor who had his do last week. very busy worker bee mode we are all in.

the only thing is, HOM and i spoil it somewhat by visiting our neighbor's moving sale and buying ourselves a new table, which means we now have to sell our old table in addition to everything else. J2 is slightly put off.

surviving a move

sayings to live by:

one bag a day.

when in doubt, throw.

you want? come and get it.

house hunters 3

the bad: no covered parking. long driveway. too much yard. long way away (from where we are). not so pretty. etc.

the good: other people's houses are just as cluttered as my own. some are more.

we continue the hunt with grim determination.