Twenty-five, then Thirty to Go

Twenty-five days until escrow closes. Thirty days until my move-out period ends. Then it's just me and the cat and the car. I'm feeling good about this, but my heart hesitates over the ease with which we will survive this cross-country trip.

I can't seem to get to the packing in earnest. Every time I turn around there is another person showing up to inspect the house. This morning it was the appraisal inspection (the buyers are taking out a small mortgage on the house), and tomorrow morning is the termite inspection (which should have happened on Tuesday morning, but they never showed up: Terminix. Gotta love 'em. We're using Jan's guy this time). I think tomorrow will be the last of them, and we can slide quietly to the end of escrow.

This weekend I'm heading up the coast for my farewell visit to San Luis Obispo County. In a completely selfish way, I'm feeling like this is a waste of three days and several hundred dollars, but I think that's dad talking in my head. He never liked going anywhere, and taking vacations was like pulling teeth with him. And the part of me that dragged its feet on getting the house onto the market and sold is still in force (also vestigial dad), wanting to simply sit in the house and sort and pack until the new owners kick me out.

I think this weekend will be cathartic, as it is really saying goodbye to many of these people. I will not see them again unless they visit or I visit, and some of them are old enough that those scenarios are unlikely to occur before one of us dies. I have promised to fly Kittie and David out to Wisconsin for a visit as thanks for all the help and support they've supplied over the last year and a half. And I'm sure I'll take at least one trip back out to the Coast, if only to take a break from winter.

A year and a half: it's hard to imagine it was that long ago that Steve died. Or that it was a year ago I traveled around the country, visiting places that might be my new home, staying with all those folks Steve and I said we would visit. In that sense, it was also a kind of a pilgrimage, although I didn't realize it at the time.

We had rain yesterday here in Pasadena, with one or two downpours and one or two thunderclaps. But it will do nothing to mitigate the drought. Possibly 0.3" total; just enough to mess up the patio. Then came the humidity, as it was also 80º in the afternoon. The climate is certainly not trying to lull me into staying. I'm leaving the state just in time to avoid showering while standing in two five-gallon buckets, saving the effluence of my ablutions to flush the toilets and water the plants.

The cross-country drive ahead seems a great insurmountable wall before me. Then I think about those who rode the dirt trails from the Midwest to the Pacific, and I don't feel so bad about my four-day, climate-controlled drive with a V6 and automatic everything. And with the Google Maps mobile app, it's near impossible to get lost.

I have two routes sketched out: the shorter one to the north—going through Utah and Colorado—and the longer one (by 500 miles) through New Mexico and Texas, in case there's a last-minute freeze on the northern route. Going north means four days of driving about 8 hours a day. The southern route means driving 11 to 12 hours a day. I'm thinking of the cat here, trying to keep the travel days down to a minimum. I'm thinking go north and to hell with it.

It's nice to know that the movers will be here to catch any loose ends I don't get. It will be a great luxury to have a crew of four guys here for an entire day, moving out everything and heading it to storage. I'm still at a loss of what to do with the cat on move-out day; just stow her in the car in the tube for the day, or let her hide in her hidey hole until everyone leaves. I can deal with sleeping on the air mattress for one night before heading out on our sojourn to the Midwest.

All the household bills (including mortgage and line of credit) are paid up through April, so my financial obligations to the house are paid through escrow. How very odd to be closing up the home I shared with Steve for so many years. The whole place will be pared down to what can fit into the trunk of the car and the passenger's seat (the back seat being filled with the cat tube). I could write a "travels with" book, except it would be very boring.

I've got this big ol' scab on my psyche and I've been really good about not picking at it. In the last month or so, it's really been itching, but I'm letting it slough off of its own accord. That will happen at some point when I'm unpacking all these boxes in the new structure I'll call home. There'll be a scar, for sure, to commemorate the trauma, but I will be whole and functional and slightly wiser after the fact.