March 31, 2012 – From the Far Side of '70

Yesterday signaled some forward motion.

We contacted our Estate Sale person — meeting on Wednesday and sale probably on Apr 27-29. She’ll be in and out of here for the next 3 weeks or so making all the preparations.

We’ve been talking about what to do during the sale and we’ve decided that we’ll take Journey out for the weekend — which will be interesting from several standpoints.

A lot of Wisconsin camping resources don’t open until May 1
We’ll be taking with us pretty much our final version of our “Stuff”
We wont be going far — just far enough to be out of the Milwaukee area, and hopefully some place that is still interesting enough to want to spend 4 days there.
It will be a chance to look for modifications to be made, different ways of storing things, etc. We realize that during these winter months our sense for what’s IN Journey, how much room we have to move around, what we’ve already stored in her, and how much more storage space we have left have suffered. It’s kind of like “I THINK there will be room for this” instead of knowing.

When we get back home we’ll have to unload a bunch of “stuff” back into the school and from then on we’ll be staying in the school until the closing. Without much furniture — but that’s just fine. A good friend suggested we make an outline of Journey and try living within the outline but that won’t be necessary, I’m sure.

If you aren’t old enough to remember George Carlin’s bit on stuff from 1986…. here it is. (with apologies in advance for the language)

We had discussed taking a short trip or two by car during the remaining days until closing but after a little heart searching we both concluded that we’d feel better making sure the school was well taken care of before the closing, saving a few bucks that we might feel better spending AFTER we find our freedom, and being around town to take care of some investment decisions still facing us. We are eager to get on the road — but it’s not like we’ve never traveled before. And we’ll be traveling for a long time after the closing so what’s the hurry. Just get done what is right in front of us; stay in the moment.

Speaking for myself, I found it a strange sensation to realize that this plan of attack will have us down to our permanent downsized status in about a month.
That was exhilarating.
That was scary.
That was bizarre.
All these months of talking and planning and taking baby-steps and it’s getting close to reality. No more talking about doing, only doing. I feel as if I’m channeling YODA. But then Yoda didn’t have a phonebox!