Day 324, Year 9: Happy 99th Birthday to Aunt Ethel
Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Daytime Temp Low 70’s F, Nighttime Temp Low 60’s F
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, Massachusetts
My Aunt Ethel turned 99 today. She still lives in her own house, gardens, and even cuts the grass on her very large lawn in Roanoke, Virginia. She is my aunt by marriage, so unfortunately I don’t have any of her genes for longevity. But over the years she brought joy into my life and she is an inspiration to all who know her. Happy birthday, Aunt Ethel.
Mark and I had a super productive day today. We got up early so I could go walking with my friends Jane and Terry. During the summer we have been trying to walk for an hour every Wednesday morning. It’s good exercise and it gives us a chance to catch up on what is happening in all of our busy lives. While I did that, Mark went to our storage unit and dug out a bunch of plastic boxes of books. We took the boxes to Heather and Jed’s so that we could sort through them and pack most of them up to donate to the library. Mark then took the empty plastic boxes and boxed up the things in the filing cabinets in Heather and Jed’s den. That room needs to be cleared out, painted, and readied for the installation of new storage cabinets and book shelves. While we worked on these jobs, I canned marinara sauce. At the end of the day I had 30 pint and a half jars plus seven pints of sauce ready to put on the shelf to be used this winter, about ten boxes of books to donate to the library, and Mark had about six plastic boxes full of things from Heather and Jed’s den. Slowly, ever so slowly, we will get these jobs done and we will pare down the amount of boxes in the storage unit. Our goal is to get down to a 10 x 10 unit. If we had it to do all over again, we would have sold everything before we took off on our voyage around the world. But I was just too attached to ‘stuff’ and couldn’t let go. We should have bought a piece of land and built a storage shed on it rather than pay the price of storage. But when we left we thought we would be back in three years . . . and that just didn’t happen. We have lived aboard now for 11 years and we have been paying for storage all that time. Not a wise financial choice.
