Get on with it.

Today is the day.  Today is the day I have almost dreaded, most certainly did not look forward to…today is the day that things get real.  Get real tough. 

Today is the day I start cleaning out the guest bedroom, the room that has become storage closet number one for all the “stuff” of our 40 years, transplanted into this room as we undertook the remodeling project.  Today is the day that I start sending things in to the “box for donation”, and today is the day I actually take that box to the charity.  Today is also garbage day.

 

It’s not something I look forward to. Like many of you, I have duplicates of pictures, magazines, mail, cards, even kids school work to just throw out.  Throw out.  I’ve saved it for all these years and now I am just going to throw it out? I have thirty years of 401K quarterly reports…I’m just going to throw that out? Well, now, you know ever quarter the news is replaced with an update so what difference could the balance in March 1999 possibly make? Just for personal reference? 

Remember when Walgreens used to duplicate all your pictures?  Half of what was printed was not good to begin with and now I have another whole set, AND the negative? What? I have camping pictures that, to quote an old friend, look just like the camping pictures from the year before, just the people around the fire are sometimes different …two sets. And, who are those little faces around the fire anyway?  The picture so yellowed and grainy I couldn’t even begin to say, so into the garbage those many, many pictures will go today.

As we got in to the remodeling last summer and fall,  items were cleared out from the old shed so it could be torn down. Old life vests and floaties for the lake, some things that were moved to the new shed and a ton of stuff that just needed to be tossed ~ broken rakes, a string of lights, an old plastic sled.  There was a resin statue of what appeared to be an Italian guy, for the garden, like maybe Davinci or someone. He fell over at some point a few years ago and his head broke off.  I had every intention, ever since the Italian guy was taken out of the shed six months ago, to glue his head back on and use him in a flower bed.  I saved him out of the trash heap a few times as hubs tried to get rid of stuff.  "Wait, not my Italian guy".  So this morning, on my walk with little dog, I noticed the side yard has been cleaned up and a few garden items moved from one area to another…and no Italian guy.  I am pretty sure, although he has not responded to my ALL CAPS text, that hubs discarded the Italian guy and his head.  Hubs knows that I am not one to dumpster dive, even for Italian guy.  

 

And still, I find myself wondering if he is in the garbage tote at the top of the driveway and if there is any way I can reach him before the truck comes….

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years.

  

Yesterday was a weird, and wonderful in many ways, day.  We gathered ‘round to watch my in-laws house, right next door to ours, get torn down.  It was eerie, exciting, sad and happy all at once.  Our nephew and his wife joined our tears and smiles as their dream took its first stumbling, and tumbling, steps.

 

At one time, we all thought they would be able to save the house, or at least part of it.  That thought became dimmer as more information came to light about the condition of the foundation, the stability of the walls, the overall expense it would take to try to rebuild and renovate a home that had at least 150 years of history, starting with it being a smaller, cottage type home on a small lake, resting on its little hill…with fantastic views.

It was tough to say goodbye to those 150 plus years of history, goodbye to my husband’s 64 years of memories, the house that was once his grandma and grandpa’s house and then his mom and dad’s.  A cousin stopped by yesterday, jaw dropping disbelief on her face as she said “It’s gone!”  This morning the trucks are here to start hauling out the remains of yesterday’s demolition.  One by one the trucks have arrived, one leaves, another comes.  By the end of today there will not be a lot left.

 

Yes, it’s gone, not forgotten, and we are so excited for what is to come.  To have the kids next door, the fun, the noise, the laughter.  There’s more changes coming to the neighborhood, this we know, as change always comes. Plans for parties and get-togethers are already underway…with hopes of the new home starting, in the words of my nephew, “sooner rather than later”.

I watched them yesterday, excited and scared, seeing the burden lift, knowing that their acceptance of what the structural engineer and contractor had to say was the right choice.  Listening to my niece ask for bricks to be saved from the chimney so that she might add to some landscaping later – they understand the responsibility of being here, protecting here, loving here.

Still, it was weird and wonderful…and it remains so today as I took my early morning walk with little dog, who is used to running up the walkway to see what one of her most favorite people was doing only to find no porch, no front door, no window to look in.  It was weird walking around to the far side, to a favorite path, where I have taken many, many pictures - my favorite spot for kids pics, prom pics, family pics -  looking out over openness where once the bedroom and bathroom walls stood.  It was odd to see that backhoe sitting on what use to be the kitchen floor.

 

You are changing, yes you are, big green house on the left, but you will always be 781.