People

June 20
More good-byes. Yesterday we went to see some friends and former coworkers and said farewell to them. In a little while we will be going across town to see another friend. This is really reminding me of how many wonderful people we have come to know here. It is sometimes easy to take people for granted, but saying so many good-byes in such a concentrated period of time really makes me aware that I am leaving something valuable behind. I never thought I would feel sad at all when I was preparing to leave here. I used to think about how wonderful it would be to know that I was leaving and to be actually getting ready to go. Sadness never entered my mind as a potential part of that process. But here I am and here it is. It is, however, gratifying to know that some good things came out of my time here. All too often I have felt as if I were wasting my time and doing nothing of any value. At other times I felt that I was being wasted because I was doing so little and not even close to what I was capable of doing. But in this last week, I can see that I was building relationships and that is important. And that makes me happy. So it hasn’t been a total loss.
I’m kind of tired, so I am hoping to take tomorrow off. We’ll see how that goes. It would be nice to just hang out for a day after church and to give myself permission to lounge lazily around for a whole afternoon and evening! If I can just ignore the boxes and totes that are all over the place, I might be able to pull it off!
We got rid of more stuff today--we put all the kitchen stuff that we can’t take on Freecycle as a batch and off it went. That is good. We will be passing stuff along at an accelerated clip for the next several days.
We have our first two stops confirmed. We’ll be in The Dalles, Oregon first, and then we will go to the home of an old friend from grad school for a few days. That will be fun. I am looking forward to catching up with her. I last saw her a few years ago when she and her husband drove over the hill from Ashland, where they making their annual visit to see the Oregon Shakespeare Festival offerings. We went to lunch and spent the afternoon together. After leaving all of the people we will miss so much here, it will be nice to see a friend from the past. It’s a good reminder that sometimes people never leave our lives completely!

Surprisingly Productive

Turned out to be a pretty productive day, though I had my doubts when I woke up too early this morning, very congested and freezing! I yawned my way through breakfast and then we headed out to go to the bank and to pick up a Tracfone for the trip along with a few other things ( canned fruit, salad dressing, etc.). We got home and I felt worse. Then the headache started with a bit of discomfort that soon progressed into pounding pain. Eating lunch didn’t help--at least right away. But then I made some coffee and took a migraine pill and things settled. I was still tired, but no longer yawning and freezing and the congestion eased somewhat. So I sat and ripped out a vest I’d made for myself in Tunisian crochet a few years ago which fit at the time, but was too big now. I wanted to salvage what yarn I could to reuse. I’d done the front sides earlier in the week, along with another vest, so getting the back done today meant that I was done with that task. And now I have some more yarn--never a bad thing! While I did that I listened to a couple of spoken word Cds I’d gotten a couple of years ago--one about women in US history and one about US poets. Neither was very long, but it was another thing I was glad to have done. I plan to put them on freecycle now that I’ve listened to them. Then I got some more stuff packed, sorted for giving away, and recycled. Got another tote packed. And since Bill finished scanning our old photos yesterday, we were able to put the scanner on freecycle and it is now in its new home. Some people also came and picked up our houseplants and a ladder. Bill wiped the hard drive of our desktop computer and we will be bring that to its new people tomorrow. Things are moving--even though it sometimes doesn’t feel like it! Someone suggested to Bill that Route 2 in Michigan is a really nice way to go, so we looked at a map and decided that this would fit very nicely into the trip. We are disappointed because we sent out a couple of emails to people to were recommended to us and they have not responded. Since they would be people we’d be seeing at the beginning of the trip, we are getting to the point where we may have to just decide when to leave and plan to not stop in those places. We have to make a firm decision on when we are leaving so we can get the utilities shut off and call the person who has already said we’d be welcome at her house and give her a date! I don’t know if they are on vacation or just not interested, but it’s been a week already. I guess this is a good reminder that stuff happens and we will have to be prepared to adapt as we go. And to end the day on a pleasant note, it is raining outside. It’s been below average in terms of temperatures with grey skies and rain on a fairly regular basis. I love it! It’s not what I have come to expect from June in the Basin, but I will take it and consider it a gift!