Done, for now

I'm back in Chicago for a while, thank goodness. We got enough of the house done to get it on the market. I still have some stuff I'll have to move out eventually, and I didn't get carpets cleaned or a pot of flowers on the porch. I don't even care right now. The sign goes up tomorrow, and I don't care that I won't be there to see it. I'm just flat out tired and half hoping it doesn't sell for a month or two.

I learned some things this month, besides the fact that my family rocks and works like dogs. The first is that I need to be more aggressive in giving away things. When I walked into the garage last week for a can of paint and put my hand on it right away without having to climb over anything to get to it, I realized I don't want to live like that anymore. The other thing is when we buy our next house, we're going to find a neutral-ish paint color we both like, and every room will be that color. I might allow one feature wall per floor, but no more separate colors for each room. I literally had a dozen paint cans, and I was missing some of the colors. Mom went nuts taking down pictures and filling holes, so I had to touch up almost every wall in the house. I did learn one thing that made it easier. When you shake the can to mix the paint, you get a nice layer on the inside of the lid that you can dab off with a paper towel to touch up paint, rather than getting out the roller and pan and pouring too much and having to clean them after. I wish I'd figured it out earlier. I touched up three rooms (two different colors) in about 20 minutes. Oh, and I did my first scrap yard run to get rid of some stuff Vicky's ex abandoned. It was cathartic to fling his stuff into heaps of twisted, rusted metal, at least until a heavy metal desktop slipped and landed on my shin. The swelling has gone down, and the bruise is lovely.

I realized this morning my spiritual focus has shifted. For a few years, God's been saying, "It's not about you." I got that nudge on a pretty regular basis, and in the last several months it shifted a bit to "it's not my business" or "I don't know their story." This morning, what I got was, "There's no perfect time." I've always known that, but for some reason I internalized it this morning, maybe because I interviewed for a part time job yesterday. (New frozen yogurt shop across the street--the commute will be about 200 yards.) Historically, work, writing, and housekeeping have not played well together. I tend to be focused on one thing, and I dump all my resources into it. I think I need to learn to compartmentalize better, to actually see other things that need to be done and put what I'm working on aside for a bit. Ironically, that's harder now that I don't have kids around. I don't know how I'm going to do that yet, but it will involve stumbling around in the dark and light cursing, probably. That's how I roll. Since there's no perfect time, the only course of action is to jump in. Here's the list of things to get done:

- Unload the van
- Find homes for everything unloaded
- Read KOD and make notes for the rewrite (I've already inserted the new opening scene, Stephen, even though I decided against the contest)
- Dishes
- Laundry
- See if the local book store wants to do a BSF signing
- Maybe start the new job (need to go shoe shopping if it pans out)
- Figure out when to start publicizing the storytelling gigs at the Peoria Library in early May and the Springfield Games two weeks later
- Start pricing local storage so I'm ready when the house sells