packing and stacking

i got a call from the bank, but it was good! she wanted to know if i had picked out the insurance company to get my homeowners insurance through. i am getting it through the company i use for auto insurance, because i get a 20% discount for having both through the same company. i told her i would get a quote monday when i went to pay my car insurance and call her. then i timidly asked her if my stamped returns would be acceptable. she was all perky and said "oh yeah, we don't have a problem there!" my heart sang and i felt like a million concrete blocks had been lifted from my shoulders.

so i guess i no longer have an excuse to avoid packing. i mean, while it was unsure if i would move, it didn't make any sense to actually box everything up. if it hadn't gone through, i would just have to unpack everything and keep living in this crappy house. i have trashed a bunch of junk and got some piles of stuff together to donate. but now i have a reason to actually box it all up and label it. my son and chicky are moving this week-end, so i offered to help and called dibs on their boxes, which chicky reinforced with goo-gobs of tape. i have a pt cruiser, so the seats can come out and i will have a ton of space in the back to fill with their stuff.

my house is still full of paper. receipts, returns, all manner of paper crap. i have decided to pull out all the imminently pertinent stuff and keep it in my briefcase. the rest is going in a rubbermaid tote to organize later. i know i should go by the rules of "touch it once" but i will have plenty of time to sort and shred later. there is still a yard sale in my future. chicky is planning on having an inside sale, since their house will be vacant until it sells. i will bring my stuff over to go with their stuff and we will have one big open house inside yard sale. we won't have to worry about rain. they are right on a highway, so we will get lots of traffic.

we're going to advertise in the paper in the HUGE town nearby, as well as the local weekly paper. the local paper has junk like FHA news,editorials about the good ole days when women wore dresses and everybody drank sweet tea out of mason jars on the porches of their un-air-conditioned shotgun shacks, notices for livestock sales and rodeos and PAGES of classified ads. you can buy anything from church pews to home-grown vegetables by going through their ads. they never have any jobs in there except for long-haul truck drivers. but since it comes out every wednesday, people tend to keep them around until the next one comes out. mostly to kill flies with, as they drink sweet tea out of mason glasses and reminisce about the good ole days when cocaine was a penny a pound and they walked to school uphill both ways in the snow barefoot.*

\

so i have my days cut out for me. i want to get rid of anything that doesn't make me happy, improve my life through it's usefulness and i don't already have 4 of the same thing. i have a long way to go!

*this is from some comics act. i can't remember the name of the comic because i was laughing so hard i didn't catch the name.