Day 272, Year 8: On the Road ALL Day Long
Date: Friday, August 2, 2013
Weather: Early Morning Rain, Then Mostly Sunny, Temp in the Low 70’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
We left Woods Hole at 8:30 am in the rain headed for Boston and returned as the sun set at 8:30 pm. When we left we expected to be home by early afternoon, but a very last minute decision to go to Concord, New Hampshire, to assess our storage unit situation changed that timing. It was a long day of fighting Friday traffic, but we accomplished a lot. The initial reason for our trek north was to see our friends Tom and Detta Porat as they waited for their son Matthew to come to the Recovery Room after gall bladder surgery at Mass General Hospital. We didn’t have a lot of time to visit as the surgery went smoothly and quickly, but that’s a very good thing. We can visit later. We were just so glad to see Tom and Detta and to be able to give them hugs in person. And if things go as planned we will see them again on Sunday when Matthew is back home in Greenland, New Hampshire. I just got word that Matthew was not released from the hospital this afternoon as he has been nauseous, but hopefully he will feel better by morning and can go home then.
Here’s the long, sad story of our storage unit in Concord. Mostly, it is expensive when there is very little in it of real value. But letting go of all of those ‘things’ is most difficult (that’s the sad part). In 2003, when we made the decision to move from a house on land to the boat, I just was not ready to let go of everything. I am a keeper. I have all of the art projects Heather and Justin have ever done, all of the science projects, their toys and books, and that is just the beginning. There is furniture, kitchen ware, boat parts, Windbird’s old sails, books, books, and more books, clothes and more clothes, family antiques, and even walnut boards we had cut from trees on our land in West Virginia in 1979. The unit is 10 by 20 feet and it is packed. And it is a three-hour drive to get to it. There are days when we think we should just have a dumpster delivered and throw everything into it. The problem is that it would take more than one dumpster and that wouldn’t deal with the furniture. On other days, like today, we think we might be able to pare down and move the essentials to a storage unit here on the Cape. That would be convenient, but it would be even more expensive. So what to do? We should have gotten rid of everything to begin with. We would be $15,000 richer and we would not be dealing with this now. We will return to Concord on Sunday and make another attempt to sort things out. Wish us luck, or better yet, send us suggestions as to what we should do. We need help!
