onward

It's getting close now.  In less than four weeks I'll be leaving the work I've loved for more than ten years and in a week after that we'll be saying goodbye to our little rented house, the one where we learned how to be parents and grew as a family.  Two weeks after that J will head out on the road, he and two others armed with a map, our earthly belongings and hopefully enough cash to bribe his way through.  Two weeks after that M and I will follow, she'll arrive wide-eyed and excited and I'll be a bit scared and we'll get there and we'll unpack and I'll freak out once or twice and then we'll wonder what comes next.

More often than not I am struck by the inability to really comprehend what all of this means, such massive changes piling themselves up on top of each other one by one.  

We've got a ways to go before then, we've still got way more possessions than will make the journey, our schemes to downsize are in motion but occasionally we stumble, I think we'll end up donating more than selling and fitting less that we think in the car.  But beyond the practical I find myself dwelling on the emotional, the last holiday, the last time we'll see so and so, the last time I'll walk through those doors.  I am excited and fearful, the unknowns outweigh the rest and all we've got is a rickety little template of hope powered by a gerbil and some string.

So we'll keep that gerbil happy, she's spinning and spinning and spinning, we need her to keep the juice flowing into the new year and if we are nice and never naughty perhaps her legs won't give.