Out the door

We pulled away from my home of two years at about 7 pm tonight. Veeka and I were so glad to finally be leaving a place that for the most part has so not worked out for us. I was having lunch today with a woman who was one of the few people at church who reached out to us and I told her of how I put a note in the church bulletin asking if we could stay with someone the last night we were in town, as we'd have no furniture. Not one person responded - and there are lots of people in my church with large homes! Well...one woman did come up to me to say her house was too small but could she help us out with a meal? I listed 3 times that we could use some help and each time she said she had a conflict. (Will say that on Tuesday night, we had dinner with Glory and Jason Griffin, a couple who live 10 miles away but who've been so kind to us. Veeka met their daughter, Ava, at a camp last summer and we've stayed friends since. Glory was such a help a few times when I had to go out of town on business or job interviews and I needed someone who could watch Veeka for a night. The two girls have really hit it off and they invited us to their Fourth of July family celebration at a home near the Kentucky state line. We shall miss them. )And so on our last night, Veeka and I slept on the floor in my room with a flashlight for company. I've been up as late as 3 a.m. some nights/mornings trying to get everything done. Today was our last day. Thankfully, Veeka was taking theater classes all week, so for 5 hours each day, she was busy doing that plus swim lessons later in the afternoon. She got a ribbon tonight saying she had passed the American Red Cross Learn-to-Swim Level 3. Her swim stroke is pretty good, now if we can get her to turn her head to breathe side to side. But we are well past the days when she couldn't swim at all. And I think she treaded water for 30 seconds yesterday.After the carpet cleaner did his magic on our rugs, we spent time saying good-bye to our lovely home. The rest of the day was spent taking Veeka to theater class, two visits to the post office, visits to thelocal Goodwill and also to a ministry to ex-prisoners so I could give them things, ie a vacuum and lawn mower that I could not drag to Alaska and that I won't need for a long time in that we will be living in apartments for the foreseeable future. I'm done with home ownership for awhile (assuming I sell this place). I also visited the local utility to shut off certain things, the bank, the county dump and packing my car to make sure I could fit 3 suitcases, tons of bags and one grouchy 22-year-old cat with her food and litter box and kitty container. Hence the extra visit to the post office to ship off what would not fit in the car to Alaska.The Wheaton Worldwide Moving Co. that I used was very good in that they kept in touch with me well before the move to tell me what to expect and I really liked the van driver. He told me my cargo weighed in at 5,100 pounds, which is 800-some pounds less than the 5,900 pounds I had when I arrived in Tennessee. I'm storing everything in the Seattle area and thankfully my parents have stepped up to be there when the shipment comes in, in case I'm not. Am planning to cross the country in 10 days, which should be fun. The only mitigating factor is a term paper I'm supposed to be doing for a class during that time. It's due Aug. 5 and I plan to make it something about ADHD and the media but haven't thought it through much more than that.One nice thing that finished off our day was that Veeka's theater class put on a production early this evening. She had a bit part that required her to say two lines - which she did! - and she was dressed in a kind of pioneer-girl-style costume. She also had some walk-on parts where she was part of a crowd. It was all new to her but she really loved it and wants to act again, so I think we've hit the jackpot here. I was amazed at how good some of the kids were and how many lines they'd memorized but some of them have been at this since they were 6. After that, we jumped into our packed car with a sleeping kitty, drove by the house one more time to say farewell, then rode off into the sunset.