Day 211, Year 11: Packing Day
Date: Friday, May 20, 2016
Weather: Sunny and Warm, High of 77 degrees F
Location: Last Night at Home in Evergreen Preserve, Lowell, MA
Today was packing day and tomorrow is moving day. So this is our last night in this condo in Evergreen Preserve in Lowell. We have really enjoyed watching the pond wildlife here, but in two and half months we never really got to explore the forest paths as we would have liked. Somehow we just stay too busy or the weather just wasn’t cooperative. Tomorrow morning at 10 am family arrives to help us pack the furniture from the condo into a moving truck. My niece Lynn that owns the condo has moved into a studio apartment and she really doesn’t need the furniture or any of the things from the kitchen. This is very lucky for us as we have gotten rid of most furniture that was in our storage unit and we will need to furnish the apartment we will be renting as of June 15. But I know it has been very hard for my niece to let go of so many of her belongings. Since we moved in here in March, she has gotten rid of bags and bags of belongings and boxes and boxes of books. Today she had to make the last purge and at the end of the afternoon, the spare bedroom that had been absolutely packed with boxes of ‘stuff’ for the past three years was empty. I know how hard it is to downsize and get rid of things that were once precious to you. But Lynn has now done that and can hopefully get on with her new life without all of that old baggage. I just hope I am as successful in getting rid of things that we really don’t need out of our storage units.
But tomorrow the furniture will travel to the Cape and be put in the same new storage unit as our things that arrived last weekend from Windbird in South Carolina. We have to wait four weeks before making the final move, but I’m sure the time will fly by. Late May and early June are always busy times at the Goldstone ‘homestead’—bees arrive, the garden needs to be planted, and other spring projects abound.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table writing this log and I am surrounded by things that have still not been packed. But I’ll get up at 7 am when Mark has his first breakfast and complete the final kitchen packing. Mark will go back to bed until 10 am when the moving crew arrives. We were going to start earlier, but I really felt like Mark needs that extra morning sleep. He had an okay day today, but he just has no energy. And he is very frustrated that he can’t help with the packing and moving. He did take the bed apart and I could never have figured that out without him. So he is really feeling more useless than he really is. We’ve gone back to having him take the original anti-nausea med, Zofran, but he just doesn’t like the way it makes him feel. He still fights the nausea, but he was able to eat good-sized meals today. Hallelujah! He has lost another two pounds and just can’t afford to lose any more weight. So we’ll continue on this track for another couple of days and see how things go.
Every night when I write this log, I contemplate when I will write the last log in the Voyage of Windbird. My original thinking was to stop writing the log when we actually make the move into an apartment or when Windbird is sold. But recently I have been thinking that I should put an end to your misery sooner rather than later. I can still write my nightly log for myself, but I don’t need to publish it and bore you with the mundane happenings of our everyday life. Then I got a phone call this morning that made me reconsider. Jean Mason is a friend from our days in southern West Virginia. We stopped to see her on our drive south in December and since then she has been reading my daily log. She, too, is fighting cancer, and more than once since December she has read the log and then called to give us advice based on her experiences. Her advice is always helpful and I would never get it if I weren’t posting the log. So I’m not sure what I will do about continuing or ending the logs from the Voyage of Windbird, but what I do know is that it was so good to hear Jean’s voice today. Jean, thanks for the advice. We’ll keep fighting this fight against cancer together with you.
Heather called and talked to her dad today to tell him that her 19’ Cape Dory Typhoon, Peanut, sold and was being hauled away. She sent him a photo of Peanut being trailed away.
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| 160520 Day 211 Massachusetts–Peanut Leaving 60 Vidal |
She and Jed bought the boat just before Sam was born and have used it very little since the advent of little ones. It was good to see that Peanut has found a new home. Now we just need to have the same luck Windbird. I so want her to be bought by a cruising couple that will love her as much as we have. She doesn’t deserve to just sit in a slip. She needs to be out sailing.
