In a few short days, we will be leaving our little house in the suburbs for good and moving to the Chandlery full time to finish up the boat. The girls are understandably nervous what this next step will hold. I am anxious about several things. In the forefront are worries about keeping the kids engaged and starting to homeschool a high schooler while serving as Captain Perfecto's full time assistant all the while ticking off the to dos on my own list.
In addition to helping Mark finish up the deck hardware, redoing the running rigging, installing new electronic gear, redo our anchoring set up, bottom job, replacing our refrigeration and fitting out the nav station I have my own list. I've been sorting through "must dos" and "be nice to dos" and have come up with my own work load.
1. Clean and commission water tanks
2. Get paperwork together- FCC ships station license, register new MMSI numbers for new VHF and Epirb, Coast Guard documentation renewal, Texas Parks Clean Water permit, renew passports figure out which mail forwarding service to use.
3. Finish new berth mattresses and soft furnishings
4. Sew weather and lee cloths
5. Sew ditty bags for gear in the cabins
6. Sew storage/pillows for salon
7. refinish galley counters (getting to the nice to haves !)
8. replace faucets in head and kitchen
9. refinish the salon table
10. get busy in the head to make it less ugly.
11. GO SAILING
That is the easy part. Well, maybe not easy but straight forward. Leaving the suburbs is going to be a bit tougher.
I've never been a huge fan of our house. It served it's purpose and I have lived here longer than I have ever lived anywhere else but it was never my dream home. It's not the house I will miss, its all the things around it.The garden full of roses and crepe myrtles that Mark and I worked to create out of nothing? Hard to leave. The neighborhood tribe of sweet little people that Kitty absolutely adores? Hard to leave. Maura's friends will no longer be easy to hang out with at the Starbucks and YMCA around the corner. My parents will no longer be 10 minutes away. Neighbors I am very fond of will be missed. I will miss our walks through perfectly sculpted landscapes to a safe and well maintained playground. The workers at our local grocery who know my girls by name and whom Kitty runs to hug as soon as she spots them, then chatters at them about her adventures as they patiently listen intently. All hard to leave.
I suppose when you look at it dispassionately, the things we are leaving behind could be found anywhere. I am ready to leave. I have felt for some time that my life has been on hold and I am ready for the next chapter to begin. You can not begin the next chapter without finishing the one before, but it's harder than I imagined it would be. So for the next two weeks its a crazy time for us all and there is really no time for to get settled. It's time to move and get busy but there are lot's of little things that I will indeed miss.
If you had told me 10 years ago I would miss any of this I would have scoffed. This bit of wistful nostalgia has surprised me and caught me off guard. So farewell Suburbia. We have enjoyed our time here but its time to move on. Time to move on to new adventures and fill our memories with new sights, new sounds and new people. Onward and upward....
