Ready to Go?

By this time tomorrow, we will be well out of Oregon. The reality that we are leaving Oregon for good is finally hitting home.

I spent much of the morning breaking apart boxes, filling the trashcan past full, taking apart wooden shelves, and disassembling my bicycle to put into a bike box. That last bit was not fun. While attempting to take one of the pedals off, I skewered my right pinky knuckle on a chainring tooth and it bled for quite a while. And I think in that same instance I sliced a bit of one of my other fingers, not quite to the flesh, but close enough to have some pain. And then trying to take off the other pedal, I crushed my thumb between the crankarm and the pedal wrench. This is why I am not a mechanic and not a handyman.

With all that done, I started to walk through the empty house, looking into each room and through the windows for one of the last times. That's when it really hit me that we are going to be leaving all this behind for good. It's not the house that we will miss, but the memories that the things and places trigger.

When we started looking for a new house four years ago, I didn't really want to move (not that I want to move right now either). I was happy where I was. But we looked around, found this house, fell in love with it, and watched it go from frame to completion, adding some of our touches to it. The view of the Sherwood area valleys and hills today is just amazing, as the morning rain dries up, the sun comes out, the clouds and the light combine to make the landscape glow.

Our previous cat had died here. We used to hold a number of church group meetings here. We've had hospitality dinners, friends and families here, children growing up, birthday parties, holidays... When we moved in here, I swore up and down that we would never move again, that this was going to be the place where I would live until the end of my time. Well, I guess never say never...

A few things that I will miss -- the people that we've gotten to know and grow close to, the memories, and the variety of restaurants. That last one is bugging me. We went to an Indian restaurant last night. Petersburg has one Chinese, one Mexican, and a general American type (meat, burgers, pasta) restaurant. Where am I going to get some Thai or Indian food? Or Japanese? I guess I'll just have to cook them myself.

We've managed to find homes for everything. Late last week, I thought we would never find homes for some of our furniture, but enough people wanted what we were giving away so that yesterday, just about everything got taken. I'll be taking the last few items out today, and the house will be completely empty.