Some Goodbyes are harder than others....

So, yesterday I signed the title to change the title on the truck.  I met John Russel at Compass Auto Tags to finish the transaction.  It has been so strange to not see the truck in the driveway, but it really did bring the reality of everything really hit home when I signed that title.  I am really and truly doing this... It is happening and FAST...

Sheila came over again yesterday afternoon and we picked up where Patches and I had left off on Wednesday evening.  We headed up into the attic.  Since all of the fabric stash was inside 7 totes, I decided to bring down the suitcases that I had held onto, thinking that I might store fabric in them and then get rid of them in Fairbanks.  I also bright down all of the suitcases that I will be using to pack for the 4100 mile journey to my new home.

Then we went into the bathroom and went through the linen closet and the little cabinet next to the sink.  Trashed stuff and culled through towels, wash cloths and the like.  There was a large stack of towels that went out onto the free table.  There were curling prons that I will never use, Nettie Pots and stuff, bandages, etc.

I had two small tables that I had decided needed to skip the trip to Alaska.  So we took a large amount of stuff to the "free" table and headed to the basement.  I still had some things to search through in the sewing room.  And so we continued there.  As we filled up containers with more free stuff, Sheila would take it up to the table.  At one point she started putting things in boxes so people could go through them on the ground as there was no room on the table.

Then she took stuff up and came down to tell me the table was empty.  Nothing left.... it was all gone, every last thing.  I figured it was the gentleman who had stopped the other day in a white SUV that also took everything.  When we stopped finally, I reviewed the saved videos for the "free" table that my little WYZE camera had recorded... and sure enough, the white SUV had made a haul.  But we kept adding to the table and it kept disappearing.  I took the final little load out after Sheila left and added 2 pieces of fabric and a skein of yarn with a couple of other odds and ends.  Before it turned dark, the yarn was gone and the fabric disappeared early this morning.

I have arrived at the point where I am almost ready to be packed and moved.  With the help of family... Brian and Rob, and friends like Sheila and Patches, I have gone through 40 years of accumulation of living in this house.  I took pictures today of some of the results of the work.  I will try to show before pictures, followed by after.  Enjoy!!

The workbench before being purged.

This is after.... only stuff on the top.  I still have to go through some of it to have tools for the trip.

Trundle bed in the sewing room before the purge.  Hard to even see the bed at all.

Trundle Bed ready for packing.

Basement shelves early in the purge

Ready for the movers...

Views of the sewing room from the front and the back... before!

The front and back of the sewing room, ready for the movers....

My stash safely in tubs.  Better to pay to ship than try to replace it at $15.00/yard in Alaska.

Quilt room before...

The most empty room in the basement.  Quilt frame disassembled, sewing machine returned to it's box and everything else ready to be moved.

It is a full service move, so they will be packing up everything we have not... and they may be repacking some items.

I spoke to the driver today.  He ill be arriving on Tuesday a tad later in the morning than he might like.  He is from Anchorage and will be arriving from Maryland.  He sounds excited to be doing this move as he will be heading for home.

As for my goodbyes today... I drove to Elkton, MD to deliver Red Hat stuff, quilting stuff and embroidery stuff to Janice Dillard.  She had gone on a couple of our Red Hat trips back in the day and we had reconnected when she started sewing and quilting and using a machine embroidery machine.

After leaving Janice's house, I headed over to visit my greatest friend in the world, Marji Lantz.  She and I have had some really grand adventures since meeting in 2004.  We traveled to Alaska in 2008.  We have had many wonderful times together and grew quite close quite quickly and she and her husband have been my guardian angels since Rudy died.  I do not know how I could have gotten through some of the dark times and trials without them.

She refuses to even talk about my moving.  She tried to have September deleted from this year's calendar so I would not move and has threatened to attach bungee cords to the bumper of my car to keep it from moving when I pull away.  So when I walked into her house today, she was shacked and surprised, but every time I mentioned the move, she covered her ears.

I finally had to head home and she got out of her chair... not an easy task as she has suffered a shattered right elbow and shoulder last year and this year she fell and broke her left hip... but she got up and walked over and hugged me as tightly as she could and told me that she was going to miss me terribly!!

Me, too, Marji.  But we will talk and catch up on the phone, just like we do now, it will just be harder to visit.  But we both have Amazon Show and we will use them to have face to face visits.  It was a hard drive home today.... lots of tears, even now!  I love you so much, Marji, it hurts!!!