Sometimes you just gotta ask for some help

Lance is still hobbling around with a cast and crutches and otherwise doing his best to adhere to doctor's orders and sit very still so his foot can heal properly, and we've reached the point where we need to get serious about selling the Sea Monkey in order to have the cash to buy the RV.  The plan is to have the house on the market in April, we'd like to have the RV purchased and outfitted before then so we have somewhere to go to stay out of the real estate agent's way.  Also it would be nice to do the RV outfitting while we still have a mailing address to receive shipments, and a garage with tools and lighting handy.

The Sea Monkey is our beloved 28' Hunter sailboat, lovely for long weekend trips to Catalina but we'll need something different for the upcoming sailing leg of our journey. Many of these pre-sale projects require two bodies. Some we were able to hire out (the waxing, trim touch-up and some minor fiberglass repairs), some little things will be easier to just do ourselves.

Finally yesterday I did something I rarely do... I asked for help.

And a cousin immediately answered the call.  By mid-morning he was helping me carry all the boat cushions to the car for a deep cleaning, which we may do ourselves or may hire out. Not heavy or hard work but definitely wrangled more easily with two sets of hands.

It leads me to some thoughts on help. I do love to offer it freely, even though folks don't always even ask for, or presumably even really want, help from me. But I almost never ask for any. What is that??! Pride? A fear that someone will see me as "less" somehow because I admitted I need help? Or is it just plain stubbornness going back to childhood when I first uttered the words "I want to do it mySELF"? Yeah, that last one is probably most of it, and it would also go a long ways towards explaining my pathological obsession with good tools and the perfect emergency kit.

Accepting help from someone that cares about me/us was a really cool feeling.  I will try to remember to consider this as a viable option more frequently in the future.

The path not taken

I'm getting a lot more comfortable with sorting and purging my things.

I've learned to quickly disassociate the THING from the WAY I FEEL about the thing.  That helps.

Kitchen gadget duplicates? Gone.

Clothes that don't fit me RIGHT NOW? Gone.

Photos of people that I no longer care to remember? Gone.

Until I discovered my kryptonite.  For lack of a better definition, I'll call it "the path not taken".

My first bout with my own personal kryptonite arrived in the form of a drysuit for scuba diving. I worked my tail off to pay for that drysuit, a year or more as a dive instructor even with the instructor's price discount, custom cut to my exact specifications.  Back when I decided I had to have it, I imagined myself diving in Puget Sound, hanging out on the ocean floor with a really huge octopus.

I haven't made it to Puget Sound yet, and I've yet to really bond with that drysuit, despite multiple dive trips with it.  I'm coming to the conclusion that I need to let it go, because it takes up a whole bunch of real estate, and let's be honest, it hasn't seen water in 5 years or more. But I am still haunted by that mental image of me and the octopus, playing on the ocean floor in the murky waters of North America.

Tiny House Living vs the Japanese Art of DeCluttering

So I've been immersing myself in episodes of Tiny House Nation, and reading Marie Kondo's "the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing". Both of these have been helpful in my quest to sort through the clutter in our home and prepare for our new nomadic lifestyle.

In many cases the two agree. Sometimes, not so much.

Take the pretty shoes, for example.

I'm more or less always a tomboy and usually live in jeans or shorts and a t-shirt, but now and then pretty shoes and a simple black dress set the right tone for a night out.

Tiny House Nation would say - they only do ONE thing, and in a space-conscious home they must do at least two things to be considered. Do you really use them often enough to justify the space?

The Japanese method would be to hold them and really consider them, and if they bring joy, then keep them.

The truth is that I feel invincible and downright SEXY in my pretty shoes.

Wait.  Invincible, sexy, that's two things, AND they bring me joy; we have consensus. The pretty shoes are coming!

25% of an RV

I sold my sports car today; my beautiful, low-maintenance, zippy little convertible Z350.

While it was perfect for a busy professional life of zipping around in L.A., it doesn't fit in our new nomadic life at all.

It pinched a little, watching her pull away down the driveway. But I did not cry.

Because in my pocket resides 25% of the RV budget.

Getting Healed

Hurdle number one, my fucking feet. AT&T paid for three months of medical insurance after my lay off.  In that time I have had a partial amputation of my big toe (left foot) and a surgery to reduce the bony prominence in my right foot. The amputation went well, the right foot a bit more problematic. As in, it developed a ulcer on the bottom at the surgery site that shows little sign of healing. At this time the Dr. has me in a non-weightbearing cast, hopefully this will do the trick. I have started a different approach to managing my diabetes after watching a TED talk by Dr. Sarah Hallberg. If you are a type 2 diabetic you know that as your insulin resistance increases you require more and more medication to keep your blood glucose levels under control. Dr. Hallberg, who studies obesity at Purdue, has found in her patients with diabetes severely restricting carbs has lead to many becoming asymptomatic, requiring no diabetes medication at all. In three days of low-carbing it I have reduced my insulin requirement by 75%! As a pleasant side effect I've lost 5 lbs. Mo' fat mo' protein! Any of my type 2 friends out there, I highly recommend watching her TED talk.

My immobility has created some problems with the rest of our goals, mainly house repairs, and frankly attitude.  It's hard to remain positive when you are stuck in the house all day.  On a positive note the sun is shining and maybe I can find a house painter who will show up.

Stuff, stuff and more stuff (or why do I own a telescope in Los Angeles)

Where did all this crap come from?  We've been watching a lot of a show called Tiny House Nation, part of the show is waking people up to the reality that they can't have a player piano in a 240 square foot tiny house.  What I initially thought would be getting rid of our furniture and the large items around the house has morphed into getting ride of basically everything but the clothes on our backs, sports equipment, and some kitchen stuff.  BTW we participate in some really gear-intensive sports. For instance SCUBA, no way will there be room for 2 sets of SCUBA gear on a 30ft RV, but it will be essential on the cruising sailboat.

We have come up with a multi-pronged approach to getting rid of our stuff:

• the garbage can never goes out partially full
• Craigslist for anything that has value*
• garage sale for anything that doesn't sell on Craigslist and knick-knacks.
• keep a Goodwill bag by the front door
• turf it off on friends and family to hold for us

*value is a slippery concept, as we define it it means what is the lowest no-sentiment-attached price we will take. Be prepared for some surprises, we had some Disney stuff we were told was highly desirable, long story short... we gave it away.

Garbage. Pick a shelf, drawer, closet, or toolbox. Bring a garbage bag, if you can't think of a use for it long-term and it would be impossible to sell, chuck it.  It's hard at first but it gets easier.

Craigslist, look for similar items, not just Craigslist but eBay etc. Price accordingly. If it doesn't sell right away slowly reduce the price to the minimum you will take. If still no luck save for the last chance garage sale. We have used the free category on Craigslist with great results, but I would rather get a buck or two at a garage sale.

If it doesn't sell it's going to Goodwill anyway.

Garage sale: furniture, appliances, knick-knacks, basically everything left in the house. Last stop before Goodwill.

Goodwill, as you go through your closets keep a bag near, you know what to do.

Friends and family, invite local friends and family to come by and pick through your stuff.  Don't be afraid to be generous these are the people you will count on while you are on the road. Distant friends and family, take pictures send out an email blast. This is problematic with big items, but small things and family memorabilia can work.

Some Joy Along the Way

There have been a lot of random tearful outbursts this last few weeks.

It took a moment, but I finally just realized why I'm struggling with this plan of letting go of a house that is finally beginning to take the shape I want, in order to go in the search of the perfect boat, with a brief stop in an RV on the way.

Aside from dreading the future good-byes, when I look down the horizon, all I see is projects.  Get the house-ready-to-sell-project, a rushed RV project, a potentially long and very unpleasant boat project.

So... new plan. There will be some joy in the RV somewhere along the way.  We will NOT be rushing from the house to the boat (read: boatyard and projects). We will pause and enjoy our beautiful nation from the RV along the way.  And we will be very picky about the boat in order to minimize the pre-launch project time there.

Deep sigh. That's what was missing. Mo' betta.

Now I can see a life that fits, I can imagine some joy riding our motorcycles through the slot canyons of Utah, paddling on a high lake on the SUP and kayak, capturing photos of the early morning light on the water at Mono Lake, hot cocoa around the campfire.

This is a life I can live with.

We have consensus.  We are heading in the same direction.  We have goals and a timeline.
...We have a lot of stuff to purge around here to get this house ready for sale.

So. Much. Stuff.