Carts and Horses

Our horses keep falling behind the cart; not through any fault on our part but due to schedules set by others. As we continue to remove the deck - soon to become a destruction project rather than a dismantling one - I occasionally glance up to the roof line and grimace at the condition of the fascia where the deck roof was attached. There are bits of tar stuck there, holes from the bolts, and the wrong paint color.

The logical thing to do would have been to work on it once the roof was off but the deck was still in place, when a short ladder would easily reach it. However, the deadline for removal means we don't have the time to do that. So, we're looking at having to use a long extension ladder to clean this up later.

Likewise, it would make the most sense to begin the serious culling of possessions after we've made a decision on what we want to do and where we want to go next. If we rent a small house, we need to downsize 25-40%. If we go to the extreme of attempting life in a 5th wheel trailer, then we need to downsize more like 75%. We have not made this decision yet, partly because our brains and emotions have been so occupied with other things.

When we began moving up here, we rented a storage unit in the area to help get the process started. It was great because as boxes were packed, we could get them out of our way each trip up to see how things were progressing with the house purchase. Once we were moving in, we emptied all of the household things out of storage and used it for yard and garage stuff that we didn't want to put inside the house. When we bought a shed, we were able to start moving those items over to the property.

It's been a slow process because the shed isn't big enough for everything we have and we were slowly going through items in storage to decide whether to keep them. Among the zoning issues that came up was the notification that the shed could not remain where we had it placed. After making the decision not to stay here, we hoped we'd have a little time to slowly empty it out. The plan - the logical approach - would be to go through the things left in storage and pull out everything we weren't going to keep, have a big yard sale, and then move the shed contents we wanted to keep back into storage. Then we'd try to sell the shed and recoup at least part of what we spent on it.

It's not going to work out that way. The cart has been pushed ahead of the horses once again and we need to dispose of the shed now. We don't have time to sort through the storage unit, especially since my sweetie's mom is back in the hospital with a serious bout of pneumonia; with her lousy lungs, this is worrisome. I've rented another storage unit so that we can simply empty out the shed and get it listed for sale by the end of the weekend. Hopefully it will get snatched up quickly and moving it can be arranged soon.

After that, the next logical step would be for us to go through the old storage unit, hold that yard sale, and consolidate back down to one unit. I'm figuring that things won't work out that way since nothing else has gone according to plan. In the meantime, too, we still need to make sure my mother-in-law recovers and gets the additional help she needs at home, finish removing the deck, clean up some yard mess created over the past week, and get rid of all the deck debris. We've had mixed success with giving away salvaged material and may, sadly, end up having to haul materials to the landfill. I'm still looking into all options possible, but the horses are about to push the cart off a cliff and bolt so I don't have a whole lot of time.

And, of course, all of this is just skirting around the big Clydesdale stomping all over the little tiny one man-cart. All of this energy, time, and money is being spent on destruction of a perfectly usable deck, getting rid of things we like and will probably need again later, and fulfilling other requirements instead of preparing a property and our lives for further economic collapse, climate change, and peak oil. We can't even begin to focus on that now so we just pretend the Clydesdale is a cute little miniature horse.

We do want to live more in the present since all of the losses we've suffered in the last six months have driven home the message that life cannot be lived in preparation for the future only. However, we're on other people's schedules, still having to focus more on the future than the present - getting projects done by their deadline and then hoping we have the energy left to do something we want to do.

In the meantime, anybody want some wood? How about some wood-working tools? And a big shed to put them in. Don't you need more jars and bottles for preserving food? Blankets to keep warm? Some clothes? They don't fit me now and probably never will again. How about a nice house, on a beautiful little acre with lots of wildlife, to put all these things in? And some pretty artwork for the shelves and walls, along with some books to read? Anybody? Please?