Moving Along

Another milestone down, and now less than two months to go until we move our youngest daughter into college and purge/pack/sell this house. Looking around the house today, you would never know that we had plans to be out of it in two months. Partially because our realtor, Kevin, believes a furnished house sells better than an unfurnished one, and partially because we’ve been focused on knocking out other milestones. As a result, my sparse decorations are still up on the walls. Closets are still full. And the Christmas decorations sitting quietly in the attic, the big box of family photos and movies, and all the personal papers in my office rattle their chains like Jacob Marley from time to time, reminding me of the work yet to be done. I was proud about the two bags of clothes I purged from the closet three months ago, but that’s like being proud of digging out of a sandpit with a cereal spoon. Impressive, yet so pitifully not enough. There’s much more work to be done. But with some recent milestones out of the way, it’s time to get real! I am so excited.

Here’s a recap of major milestones since April 2021:

• Camper order placed, and we’ve received an estimated delivery date of August 31^st in Tampa. We have zero confidence that is a real date, given everything we’ve read about the delays and parts shortages in the camper world, so we’re expecting September or October (six months) to be more realistic dates. We do expect our VIN number in the next week or so, which will be a tremendous step forward.
• We announced to Chris’s family with an oddly underwhelming response, which we found out later was due to the fact that they had found our blog, already read everything, and were patiently controlling their excitement until Chris and I felt ready to share our news with them. Tip of the day:  never play poker with the Porters.
• Gen graduated high school as an honor graduate with a diploma of distinction and many, many other academic honor society cords around her neck; a very effective mic-drop to all my anxious questions about her grades over the last year or two.
• We completed our annual beach trip, the original Porter Pilgrimage, with Chris’s family in June. The trip was a bit sad with the absence of some of our family who are no longer with us, a bit slow in that one day was comprised purely of naps and homework (sometimes at the same time), a bit disrupted with Gen spending a few days with her friends up the beach and one day dedicated to bringing my niece and her second-degree sunburn home, and finally, a bit entertaining with delegates from West Virginia’s detention and correction system taking up the campsites across the street. For me and Chris, it was a mark, the point in time when we switched from the camper as vacation, to the camper as home. Our conversation on the way home on Saturday was all about purging the current camper and getting it ready for two months of full time while we wait on the new camper.
• Finally, we announced to my family yesterday, met with excitement, some questions about the practicalities of such a transition, and then quiet relief over the idea of me taking a hiatus from a career/job that has been the source of tremendous experience and growth but also a substantial contributor to gray hair, expanding waistline, and an inability to live much beyond work and school.

What comes next is a matter of delicately timed milestones.

• We get Gen ready to move into college in less than two months, packing and purging her room, dropping a small house payment on dorm room décor and determining where (i.e., whose house) to store her long-term items. That will be the focus for July.
• Prepping this house for sale. Purging/packing, storing, and staging. Kevin comes next week to take outside photos, which Chris and Gen prepared for this week. With that visit, we will also determine the right timeline to list the house in a way that doesn’t sell it out from under Gen before she’s safely deposited at college. Then, we sell. That’s July, with closing in August.
• As soon as the house is well under contract, Chris can turn in his notice.
• Although I have until the end of October with the company, the scope of my job is bigger and demands a bit longer notice than the standard two-weeks. BUT, the real trick is timing my notice such that I give the company enough time, but I don’t inadvertently create this expanded pocket of time where my team and coworkers don’t start saying, good grief, aren’t you gone yet? I’m thinking sometime in August to give two to two-and-a-half months’ notice.

After that, then it is a matter of biding our time in a much smaller camper, not designed for full time living, with two dogs – one of which has spastic travel anxiety and the other one who, based on the multiple vomit episodes coming back from the beach last week, is very prone to car sickness. Oh, this is gonna be fun!