Twenty-five years

Twenty-five years we've been giving this party now. Twenty-five years spring and fall. We were giving the party before the younger guys were born, we were giving it while I was eight months pregnant, while the guys were in nappies. Back when, we started cleaning for it weeks beforehand because of the inevitable trash and destruction that two toddler types could wreak.

As the younger guys got older, they helped with the process and we got to where we started clearing up only the weekend before, with a final polishing a couple hours beforehand.

This year is different. The house is a-shamble. We still have an overflow of stuff from Casey's place which sold two years ago which we never dealt with, just tucking it all away in any spare spot. We have added to that all the stuff from the condo that we cleared out and leased out earlier this year. Added to that all the stuff from the place down south, which sold two months ago, which we're slowly sorting through. We've been toting boxes and bags to the Goodwill once and twice a week.

... but now we have a dollop of added upheaval thrown in.

We've decided ... almost ... to sell Dale.

We're in escrow on a loft in Dogpatch that we found on one of our prowls a week ago Sunday. The loft is perfect for holding my books and all the stuff we can't bear to part with that won't fit in Hill. Escrow closes the last Monday of this month.

We've decided ... almost ... to cut our ties to this bucolic village nestled in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains, this place that I've lived in for over a quarter of a century and which his nibs has lived in off and on for the last fifty-five years.

We've decided ... almost ... to stop the city-peninsula existence we've been living.

We're talking to an agent we know, he's given us comps, we need to get back with him.

We found out on Friday that our Dogpatch offer'd been accepted. We'll need to clear out (um. de-clutter) Dale before we can show and sell it. (Have we really decided to sell it? Sounds like it. Yikes!)

We spent the three-day weekend clearing through stuff, sorting through a huge pile of kitchen utensils, recycling bags full of back issues of magazines that I've been saving for decades, tossing out plastic plant pots, boxing up books.

The house is more a-shamble than it's ever been and the party is Friday 7:30P and I am on the hook to finish the clearing up in time for the spring fling and we just got a call from Bay Alarm that the alarm's gone off at Hill and I need to go check up on what's happening.

Aaaaarrrgh ...

If you don't hear from me for a while, it's because ...