AM/FM

            We are living on two frequencies these days, AM and FM. Each one is generating its own information and music. The question is, Which frequencies are we tuning into?

            Most of our time and energy is devoted to what I call AM. Launching a new home is a young person’s game. It requires energy, fueled by hope, visions of our future, and sufficient water and caffeine. We are pretty much moved into our house, and certainly our hearts are here. We are feeding the birds, gradually putting our stuff pretty much where it belongs, though a major shift will occur in a week or so when the garage is finished so we can move our junk precious belongings out for a future garage sale. We are also planning a major wall of bookshelves and kitchen island with lots of drawers. Once we put everything away, we hope to find some missing items: the power cord for the printer and Kim’s backup hard drive, for two examples. I’m missing some shoes that I suspect I threw away, and I hope I never find some old neckties. We pause from time to time to look at Our View – you saw some photos last week. This is home. Another reason I know our house is our home is that I turned off the cable at the condo, making it virtually uninhabitable.

            At the same time, however, there is another frequency in our lives. I’ll call it FM, for no particular reason. We just learned about a family member, the sister of Kim’s ex, who is dying of cancer. Without going into the details, it’s been a long, slow, painful process for her, one that may be over by the time you read this. Nobody should suffer that way. And it’s hard not to imagine, when we think about her suffering, what may lie in Kim’s future. Yes, we are all going to die – I have reluctantly come to acknowledge this – but can’t there be better ways? Especially for us? Yes, we may sympathize with the sick and dying, but sympathy, as I understand it, involves looking at someone who is less well off, understanding how they feel, perhaps dispensing kindness, support, connection. But it's something more than sympathy when you actually see  and feel yourself in the unfortunate sufferer. It’s more like empathy, where you actually experience the emotions of another. (My online Merriam Webster Dictionary, by the way, gets the sympathy/empathy distinction totally wrong, IMNHP.) Empathy comes with a convenient barrier – it ain’t really happening to me. In our case, there is another clause: but it will. Perhaps soon. Whatever the next level above empathy is called, that’s what we sometimes tune into. Maybe the best term is “fear.”

            Sometimes, when we are happily working our butts off (I’m currently down 12 pounds) in AM, Kim experiences some intense pain. Months ago, this was easy to explain – she was lifting rocks and pulling weeds. And now she is unpacking boxes, lifting stuff onto shelves, cleaning sticky and dusty floors left from construction. But still – what if that pain in her hip, gut or back is not muscle strain or dehydration, but instead a sign of cancer’s return? A sudden pain can quickly shift you from tired-but-happy AM into what-if? FM. And if the pain means Kim can’t sleep, the FM may be heard all night - though her last bout of insomnia focused on where to put her collection of nests to decorative advantage.

            My FM thoughts this morning are interrupted by Nate, who has arrived to install our range hood and vent, and if time allows, the sink in the guest bedroom. And our builder may be here, blessedly, to hang some lights and maybe install a bannister down the stairs I’ve been climbing, according to my iPhone, about 40 times a day for the last month. Good news! And when the workers leave in the evening we will sit on the sun porch (in the dark), turn on the Jotul stove, sip a bit of rye whiskey from our local Mammoth Distillery, and contemplate the large hornet's nest we hung on the wall across from the bird nest that Kim built. The AM  world has a lot going for it.

            And here’s more from our AM receiver: what Kim photographed from the back porch:

Goldfinch in winter colors

Tufted Titmouse

Downy Woodpecker and Tufted Titmouse

Gray Squirrel - black version seen here in northern Michigan

Gray Area

            We are living in a gray area. And no, I don’t just mean the area surrounding my skull.

            For the last several weeks we have been between homes. We have been sleeping at the condo, but there has been a gradual shift as we have carted boxes to the new house – clothes, kitchen gear (there’s lots!), books (ditto), crap from the drawer that has served as my desk. At some point, I figured, our center of gravity would shift north in, but it has not yet happened.

            All of this makes me ponder: What is it which, other than Kim, once moved, makes the new place our home? The candidates:

·     Coffee maker? We have one in each place, but we moved the grinder north.

·     Computer? Mine is a laptop. Cable in both places.

·     Electric toothbrush? I have manual backups (free from my dentist).

·     Checkbook? Who writes checks anymore?

·     Pills? Unfortunately, a viable candidate . . ..

            On Saturday we decided to sleep over at our new house. Was this an act of commitment, moving us out of the gray area? Not exactly. After a day of unpacking, we were simply too tired for the hour’s drive back to the condo in Traverse City, so after a dinner, an anthology of leftovers and wine, we collapsed into bed. It was a good way to celebrate Kim’s birthday.

            I drove back to the condo on Sunday for a realtor showing, and I hauled the stash of pills back to our new home. I also brought some expensive whiskey from a local source, Mammoth Distillery, in order to toast our new digs. But not so fast – we still don’t have an Occupancy Permit (the house is not done!), so whenever we spend the night, we feel like outlaws.

            Unpacking is proving to be a challenge, and not simply because of the quantity of boxes, which we calculate to be well over 500. The problem is that Kim and I have different theories of unpacking. My approach is the same one I use on the top of my desk: Get everything I might need out in the open where I can see it. (This is the Compost Theory of Desking – stuff on the bottom is absorbed into the biome, where I don’t have to deal with it.) So I unpack a box and then leave the much of the stuff lying around while I collapse the box (a verysatisfying experience!) and go on to the next box. Kim has a peculiar idea that when you unpack a box, you put the stuff away where it belongs. (Recently, she confesses, she has gotten into the thrill of box-collapsing, but her real motivation still has to do with the creation of order and beauty, not destruction.)

            One result of the different approaches, other than some harsh words, is that Kim has to think up things for me to do in order to direct my energies away from unpacking. So far this has included mounting the outdoor thermometer and placing boxes of Christmas ornaments on some shelves in the basement. I have also loaded up my sock drawer (currently over 40 pair, including abundant white socks that Kim says are good for dusting) and organized my colored t-shirts, attempting to pair them up with the outer shirts that they “go with” – a task that will no doubt be re-done in the future. I put all my extension cords into a separate box, apart from all the puzzling cables associated with former televisions. Yes, I do almost all of the box hauling and driving, but that’s usually done by mid-morning. I also have my books to deal with – far too many. I set myself a limit of one bookcase, consigning those that don’t fit to a recently emptied cardboard box destined for a future garage sale or, more likely, a donation to the library.

            Packing and unpacking have revealed some surprises. On my side, other than the quantity of white socks, a dozen of which went straight to trash, I have also counted over 40 colored t-shirts and some 400 band-aids, a symptom of a mental illness I don’t want to contemplate too closely. I also found a box containing six (6) land line phones, a fact that brought great amusement to the grandkids when I told them via Skye.

            Did I mention that Saturday was Kim’s birthday? Here’s the poem I wrote for the occasion:

Every Day

is your birth-

day. You unwrap

each morning’s gift,

thank the party guests,

taste the cake, and

choose not to blow

out any candles

just yet.

               Not just

yet. So every birth-

day is a gift to me.

            

On the Move

            Fall sometimes comes suddenly in Northern Michigan. Two days ago, temperatures were in the low 80s. Tonight there are frost warnings. Gusty winds accompany the transition, adding to the drama. Change is refreshing.

            At the same time, we are beginning the process of moving. (I just deleted a paragraph of bellyaching about delays and mistakes in our construction – who wants to hear about it?) We should be living in our house on Torch Lake by the end of next week. In the coming week (I’m writing this on Saturday the 22^nd) the builder will finish a long list of tasks, the plumbers and electricians will finish their work, masons will finish stoning our fireplace, the house will get cleaned (3 times – by the builder, a cleaning service, and us), movers will haul our stuff out of storage, appliances will be delivered and installed, inspections will take place, and we will be awarded a Certificate of Occupancy.

            We are not sure that Occupancy will actually begin next week.

            Our condo in the Asylum was for sale. A couple said they were looking for a place for their 87-year-old mother and her housekeeper, and they wanted to rent, not buy. We said, No, we are not interested in renting. They said they could make it worth our while. They did so. We have until November 1 to be out of here. Our builder believes the date is October 1, which was originally the case. So we will have a month to make the transition, dividing our time between condo and house as our builder works on a long post-occupancy punch list and another builder constructs our garage.

            I’ve written about moving before. Kim and I have moved nine times, and this will be our fourth in the last three years. Think boxes and learning new domestic patterns. (I’ve written about this before. This happens when you get old: you repeat stories.) An added bonus: We have had most of our stuff in storage for more than two years, so it will be like Christmas Morning when we finally open some of those boxes and see what we have. This may be another benefit of getting old – the thrill of finding stuff you forgot you had. And we have a lot of stuff – two housefuls merging into one. We anticipate a massive garage sale (once we get a garage) plus a brisk eBay business if I can remember anything I learned from the class I took on eBay. Change can be refreshing and exhausting at the same time.

            So we are looking forward to another energizing transition. We are also looking forward to the end of the transition. Kim has had this image in her mind from the start: We are sitting on our three-season porch in the winter, wine or coffee in hand, our Jotul stove providing the heat, and it starts to snow. Deer step out of the woods, or perhaps a fox. Kim reaches for her camera . . ..

Reboot

            Kim and I have been married almost 29 years, and during that period we have moved 9 times, with #10 due in May or June when we hope our new cottage will become our home. That sounds like a lot, and it is a lot.

            Why do it?

            If left to my own devices, I probably would never move. But Kim is an artist, and she craves change. One way she expresses her creative energy is in creating our home, an art that involves, in her case anyway, much more than the old-fashioned term “homemaker” suggests. I suspect that if she does not feed that craving by creating homes, she will feed it by dumping me.

            Don’t get me wrong here. Though I probably would never move, I am always glad, and grateful to Kim, when we do. Sometimes I just need a boot or a nudge to get me going, much the way Kim has to get me out the door to go birding or exploring. I love it, but my general stability of character brings with it some inertia. As in, “inert,” which my dictionary defines as “having no inherent power of action, motion or resistance.” My lack of resistance serves me well, though, because I benefit from going along with Kim’s creative energy and direction.

            Why move? I looked out the window at the fresh snowfall this morning. The world was transformed. OK, so it wasn’t transformed all that much since we had nearly a foot of snow two days ago, but still – it looked fresh and new, and that was exciting, and the suddenness of the transformation was part of the thrill. (Gradual transformations, such as getting old, are not so thrilling.) My excitement dimmed a bit when I scraped snow off of my car and got some up my sleeve, but my main point remains: transformations can be energizing, and moving usually means a dramatic transformation.

            The kind of move that we have experienced, and are anticipating, is a bit like rebooting a computer. While I admit that I don’t really understand what happens when a computer reboots, Wikipedia tells me it means: “To cause a computer to execute its boot process, effectively resetting the computer and causing the operating system to reload, especially after a system failure.” I’m not aware of any “system failure,” unless you count cancer, but I do like the idea of reloading the operating system, which I take to mean our deepest values and the activities that go with them. We love living in our condo here in the old asylum – and it has been an asylum – but Who We Are involves stepping out the door into the woods, working in the garden or whatever landscape we come up with, seeing and photographing our birds and butterflies, and watching the light change during the day. On our last visit to the construction site we saw coyote tracks in the snow, and we know we have a resident fox.

            And we will enjoy the energizing – though probably exhausting – process of rebooting: getting our stuff out of storage, arranging our furniture, setting up office and studio spaces, placing all the kitchen gear, creating new patterns routines: reloading our operating systems.

            I think of what Woody Allen said in Annie Hall: “A relationship, I think, is like a shark, you know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.” Kim and I may be a lot of things, but one thing we are notis a dead shark.

The Garage

            I remember reading, or maybe hearing on NPR, about the importance of transitions. (Nice to be writing without footnotes so I don’t have to check the source.) The author, a psychologist as I recall, noted that we need some sort of ritual to mark the transitions in our lives. He was not talking about retirement or even birthday parties or New Year’s Eve champagne. The example I remember is the way a person going home from work will change his shoes, or take off his tie (remember neckties?). My father would fix himself a cocktail. Kim, before I bribed her to quit, would have a cigarette. It’s something to mark that this part of my day is over, and I am realigning myself for the next act.

            I have a few such rituals (Kim would say more than a few). We have our morning hug to get the day started on the right note. We have an evening cuddle to end on a similar note. This puts our day into cozy parentheses. Kim usually joins me for mid-morning coffee and a recalibration of our to-do list. I’m weaning myself away from my ritual bourbon to indicate “off duty – nothing constructive getting done from now on.” Doing dishes together is a bonding ritual for us, not marking a transition in time as much as our commitment as a team to the business of our life together. This is especially meaningful when Kim has her hand in soapsuds and can’t defend herself.

            I thought about transition rituals recently when talking with Kim about the house we are trying to design. The question at hand was what to do with the garage. This is Northern Michigan where, as the joke goes, there are two seasons, winter and the 4^th of July, so it makes sense to have an attached garage. We learned this when hustling through the cold rain from our parked car into a distant grocery store.

            One problem with an attached garage is that, given the shape of our lot and the beautiful trees we want to save, an attached garage means that anyone approaching the house, including us, would see little beside garage and driveway. We could probably arrange things so the view of the garage is not the garage doors, but still . . .. And the approach to the house would have some sort of driveway where we would prefer native plants. Not good. What to do?

            Of course: a detached garage! Is this a compromise we will regret when we finally become geezers? No! We have a place for a garage about 50 feet from the house, so let’s put it there (if we can figure out how to get around the old maple tree where the doors should be). That location will mean walking from the car to the house, perhaps carrying groceries, perhaps carrying each other. But let’s see this not as a pain-in-the-ass, but as a ritual of transition. We will be leaving behind the world of cars, highways and cities and transitioning into Up-North Cabin, where things are different – slower, more mindful, less electronic. We will have television and internet, but we will also have birds, fox and sunrises out the windows. We will truly be Up North. The transition, as we trudge through several feet of snow on top of ice, will enhance our experience, sharpening our focus.

            Our builder, experienced in Northern Michigan, says we will want an attached garage. I came to my detached-garage-with-ritual-transition conclusion while sitting comfortably inside our condo, heat radiating from our gas fireplace. The idea exists as words, but ice, snow and cold are more real than words, and they can be a pain in the ass.

            Any suggestions? Please let us know at dstring@ix.netcom.com.

Suggestion from Phil Allen:

Regrets?

            I learned that in a survey when old people (I’m middle-aged, if I live to 150, so they must be really old) were asked about their “regrets,” that most regretted things they did not do rather than things they wished they had not done. Of course, these were people who survived their stupid mistakes, but still . . ..

            Lately Kim and I have been discussing regrets about the Big Thing that we recently did: uprooting ourselves from our rather comfortable life in Florida, surrounded by family and friends, and from our life in Southeast Michigan, ditto, to move to Traverse City. We know why it was the “right” decision, when we think with our brains: The drive is too long to do twice a year, the two homes too expensive, the far-away home too worrisome, and we need to make the change while we are still ambulatory enough for the rigors of the moves, as documented earlier in this blog. Since Florida’s summers are so unbearably hot and humid (only so many clothes you can take off), Michigan got the nod. And a couple of visits to Traverse City – admittedly, in the beautiful summer – gave Northern Michigan the nod over our familiar Ann Arbor area. So here we are.

            That’s our brains talking. But when we think with our hearts, we are not so sure. We miss our family and friends, and texting and the telephone can only go so far. We’ve had a few visitors so far, but we don’t as yet have people who will stop by for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, or who will want to go for a walk or photograph birds or landscapes. Our best friends up here so far are the waiters and shopkeepers downstairs from our condo – but that’s not the same. We will meet people at the local Audubon meeting tonight, and Friday Kim is taking an Art and Socializing class downstairs, featuring wine and snacks, and that will probably lead to new connections. My closest friends are the ones in my computer whom I imagine reading this blog. These are known as “imaginary friends.”

            Our sense of regret is not the same as thinking or feeling that we made a mistake. And maybe it’s not regret that we are experiencing, but the pain of transition. So much new stuff to learn, so many new attachments to grow, and we are not as young, flexible and attachable as we used to be. We are convinced, perhaps mistakenly, that we are the kind of people that others will want to befriend – last night we had wine and stew with a new friend, Mike. And we are blessed by the companionship we find in each other.

            So rather than chewing over possible regrets about what we have done, let’s reduce our regret by turning our attention to the stuff we have not done yet. Time to get that house designed and built on Torch Lake! Time to finally meet Penny June in Albuquerque. To find and photograph that Snowy Owl. To make reservations for our Valentine’s dinner. To see the bird migration at Whitefish Point. To attend weddings.

As always, comments welcome at dstring@ix.netcom.com. Any regrets you'd like to share?

            

Packing and Unpacking

            One consequence of all the packing that Kim and I had to do for our move to Traverse City is that we are more or less forced to unpack on the other end. As it turns out, this requires a rather specialized set of skills.

            I had previously been disqualified on the packing end. Kim told me, “You pack like a guy” (when she says “like a guy,” it’s usually not in the context of a compliment), and assigned me to other duties such as driving to Walmart to get more tape, or carrying heavy boxes from the lower floor to the upper floor. She did allow me to pack books, although after opening one of my superbly packed boxes of my books, she “suggested” that I leave the packing of her books to her. I also packed the car with items that we did not trust the movers to take – valuables such as her collection of three hornet’s nests, her cocoon collection, and her Baltimore Oriole nest. Kim actually placed these items securely in the car. I had carried some heavy boxes out to the car and arranged them, under Kim’s supervision, as a support structure.

            I mentioned my packing difficulties to each of my sons. Phillip said, “Is there a wrong way to pack?” Jeff said, “You just toss things in a box, right?” Comments like that tend to make me believe in genetics.

            One of my most important unpacking skills is driving a car. I drove several carloads of our stuff to our condo to be unpacked. (This counts as unpacking.) I also drive stuff back and forth to between the storage unit and the condo as we figure out what we do and don’t need in the condo. While I do this, Kim is in the condo actually unpacking boxes and putting kitchen gear away in places I can’t find.

            Another unpacking talent I have is riding the elevator. I carry boxes from the car to the elevator, push the appropriate buttons (for security reasons, there’s a code), and up we go to our third floor condo. Then back down to get more boxes. I’m pretty good with the elevator, though on Sunday it broke and I had to lug our collection of Atlanta sewer balls up the stairs. I don’t think I was the one to break the elevator.

            Yet another skill involves carrying old wrapping paper down the hall to the recycling bin. A related skill: breaking down the cardboard boxes that we won’t need for moving stuff from the storage unit in a year. Tearing up large boxes, if done clumsily, can be a good outlet for frustrations.

            One of my unpacking-related responsibilities is to get all the wiring set up so we can finally stop unpacking to watch a movie on Netflix. So far this has not been successful as I have not located the remote needed to make Netflix happen. I’m sure I tossed it into one of the 800 boxes we have in storage.

            Once I locate the remote (they should come with locating features like the one on my car key that I use to find my car), I will need to deal with all the cables that are accumulating near the corner of the room where cables enjoy gathering. It will probably involve drilling holes in the oak bookcase we will some day slide over to cover the section of the wall where all the cables emerge, like inquisitive and threatening snakes. I’m hoping I can just toss them into a box and make them disappear. This counts as packing.

            My final and perhaps most important talent as an unpacker is taking Kim out to dinner. We were living here for days without a functioning kitchen, waiting for our appliances to arrive. This meant we had to dine out, but not that far out as our condo complex features a number of excellent restaurants. Sometimes my contribution involved riding on the elevator with breakfasts brought back from Cuppa Joe. I found myself more than capable of such multi-tasking (getting food + working elevator). This didn’t have much to do with unpacking, but Kim would occasionally find herself tired from all the work she was doing, so I felt I should do my share.


Comments and advice welcome at dstring@ix.netcom.com.

My Costume

            Now that we are moving from two fully stocked homes into a 1400 square foot condo with limited closet space, it’s time to make some decisions about clothing.

            The first step was easy – donate the junk clothes to Goodwill. This includes:

·      Items so worn or damaged that I was saving them for yardwork, which does not exist in a condo, and my diminished wardrobe will soon be worn enough.

·      Items so badly out of style that they may qualify as “vintage.” Come to think of it, I qualify as vintage.

·      Items that no longer fit. Surprising how clothes can shrink while hanging unused in the closet.

·      Duplicates. How many white dress shirts do I need any more? Though those wide collars are appealing . . ..

·      Items that I swear I never owned because I have not worn or thought about wearing them for years.

·      Highly floral neckties from the ‘70s.

Some of the above, as it turned out, bypassed Goodwill for the dumpster.

            Kim suggested that I make the decision by putting together what she calls “outfits.” When pressed to explain, she says the term refers to pants, shirts and perhaps sweaters that “go” together. They may be the same color, but that’s too simple. No, certain colors “go” together and others don’t. I have learned to tell the difference by using a simple technique: To discover what items don’t “go” together, I walk out of the bedroom wearing an “outfit” that I think looks OK, and Kim sends me back with instructions. To discover what items do “go” together, I put on clothing that Kim has hung all on one hanger in my closet. It “goes together” because when I am wearing it Kim and I can go together out the front door.

             On one of our drives to Traverse City Kim and I got to talking about clothes. Why do people dress the way they do? In my case, the criteria were simple:

·      Don’t look like the preppy people I grew up with in Darien.

·      Be the right temperature.

·      Don’t require me to spend any money, and

·      Don’t make me look stupid.

Lots of negatives there. Invisibility was an unreachable goal, but a goal nonetheless.

            Other people, we concluded, are pretty much always in costume. Lawyers are supposed to dress in lawyer costumes. If you want to look like a biker, dress the part. Hookers are supposed to dress like hookers (a lesson that appears to be lost on a few young people). Kim frequently makes a point about how important it is to “dress for success,” by which she means to wear the costume of the profession toward which you aspire. Want that job in a bank? Then lose the Pink Floyd t-shirt.

            Change, as I’ve learned from psychology, can happen by working from the outside in. If you don’t think so, try putting on a costume – clown suit, tuxedo, military uniform, giant chicken – and, getting a bit into the role, see how it makes you feel. A lot of young people are searching for an identity, and that may mean coming up with a totally unique costume so you can “be yourself.” (We used to talk about “finding yourself,” but now it’s more like “creating yourself.”) Thus the purple hair and tattoos, which are not unique any more, but they allow you to group yourselves with other similarly costumed folks. Clothes, in other words, are the costume of your group, and they give you a feeling of affiliation, even if it’s with other rebels against mainstream culture. Or if you are a young girl who occasionally feels at odds with her family and disconnected from her former high school classmates, join a college sorority, lose the nose ring, adjust your make-up, and dress like them.

            Which gets me back to the clothes I should put in my small condo closet. What kind of costumes do I want? Who do I want to become? I don’t think can pull off the Up North Paul Bunyan look, though I did successfully pronounce the plural of “bear” as “bear” in a conversation. No, I’ll settle for being a person who is not preppy (no problem with my sagging jeans – or is it genes?), warm enough (no problem in northern Michigan), already owns the needed clothes (except I need a warmer winter coat), not stupid (Kim will have to help me with that one, though I don’t entirely trust her sense of humor), and approaching invisibility.

            The way I see it, the smaller my closet, the fewer ways I can screw up my “outfit.”

            So, what costume do you wear, and what identity does it create? Email your answers to dstring@ix.netcom.com.

From Bob Knox:
I’m reminded of an article that appeared, I think, in “Esquire” magazine years ago. The piece was surveying sundry colleges for fashion or best-dressed tidbits, statistics on clothing expenditures, etc.  At Amherst  they quizzed one of our brotherhood (I can’t recall what year, but it was back in our era of all-male Amherst) and asked how many articles of clothing he had purchased in the last year.  He responded “that depends on whether you count socks as one or two.”  Just so; this greatly enhanced my pride in being an alumnus. It fits rather well with my memories, and probably yours, of loafers held together with duct tape and similar sartorial economies as part of the daily campus scene.  

From Miguel Palaviccini:

:

From John Perkins:

I think we have the same wardrobe genes.  If (a) pants colored khaki, (b) shirt colored blue, and (c) they're both from LL Bean (my personal haberdasher), then they go together.  Otherwise, beware.

From Chuck Phillips:

My wife is always changing my shirts for reasons that bewilder me.  Women have the advantage in smelling, hearing, and seeing shades of colors. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/men-women-vision-gender-study_n_1854660.htm.  Luckily for me my Filipino wife likes white flowers all year long - red at Valentine's day (easy).

We men have the advantage in seeing movement better.  May go back to male hunter and female gatherer theory.  Now there are corresponding genes for extra red being found on the X chromosome.  So almost every day I let her gather the right tee shirt replacing whatever I first choose.  [I await the gene for the tracking of visual movement being found on the smaller Y chromosome critter plus anything else they can call good.]

For those few of you that ever watched pole dancing in exotic countries, you might remember that movement was more important than color.  At least that is what I am told - as I am otherwise naive within this objectivization hobby.  When in exotic cities like Chiang Mai (they don't care how you spell it) Thailand, I was - instead - checking (just North of the city) occult Buddhist temple sayings.  The only movement nearby being peaceful men in long, orange, saffron robes.

            

Little Pieces of Paper

            As my loyal readers know, Kim and I have been very busy. Aside from the bothersome medical stuff, we have been buying and selling houses – and moving. Since April 1 we have:

·      Sold a home in Saline, Michigan

·      Moved stuff from that house to an apartment in Novi

·      Thought we sold our home in Gainesville, Florida. Wrong!

·      Moved all the stuff from that house to three storage lockers in Michigan

·      Bought land on Torch Lake in northern Michigan, with plans to build

·      Bought a condo in Traverse city, 35 miles from Torch Lake

·      Move stuff from the storage lockers to the condo (this happens today)

·      Again sold our Gainesville house – closing today

·      Pack to move stuff from apartment to a storage facility near Torch Lake

·      Will move stuff from storage facility to our to be built house (in a year or so).

            You are probably wondering how we keep all of this organized.

            We keep everything organized by writing things down on little pieces of paper – the kind you get on those little pads we steal from motel rooms: the lists of what will be moved to where, the measurements of condo walls so we can place our furniture, several to-do lists with a few items crossed out, some dates to put on the calendar when we find it, names and numbers of new doctors and dentists, contact info for the tree guy, the well digger, the environmentalist lady in charge of permits, handypersons, decorators, mortgage bankers, title companies, condo management companies, magazines and utilities companies where I need to change our address, etc. These little pieces of paper are blended with floor plans from former houses, magazine photos, and all the financial and legal stuff related to closings.

            Here are a few actual notes from my desktop:

·      67x78   5’ x 6 ½ ‘   Queen   wall – pine cupboard   4’ wide

·      Laundry Rm   Counter 26’   Cabinet 24”   Dining room 13x13

·      Empire Blue  Woodmere   Annies on 72 

·      Desk    47x 24D   30 H   Maine Cottage

This is a bit misleading as I actually know what these mean. Not sure, however, which dining room is that size . . ..

            We have a large dining room table on which we have cleared some space to eat, and I have a pile of little pieces of paper quietly composting on my desk, along with a few bills.

            Kim is an organized person. She does not enjoy the clutter on the dining room table any more than she enjoys the boxes scattered around the apartment labeled “STORAGE” or “CONDO.” She has a massive notebook with all the information on the house we are going to build, and many of the papers have made their way into the proper folder in that notebook.

            In an effort to be more like Kim, I have a file labeled “Movers,” (related to a claim we filed for damaged goods moved from Gainesville) another labeled “Condo,” and one for the apartment we will soon be leaving. I jam the appropriate papers into these folders from time to time, and I can hardly wait to throw two of them away. And I have typed onto my computer a five-part to-do list (apartment, condo, Gainesville, Torch Lake, movers) plus an incomplete list of contacts in Traverse City. I have found that typing things onto lists gives me a sense of accomplishment – and it’s something to do while Kim is packing.

            Occasionally I get to delete something from the to-do list.

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