…if
you’ve heard any, have been premature and greatly exaggerated. I am alive, and
(relatively) well, but life has been… complicated.
It all
started getting messed up when my husband came home one day and said, “I’m
going to retire.” Well, yes, eventually I expected he would, possibly even this
year, so I didn’t think it was anything to worry about, because his 62nd
birthday was still 5 months away. And then, a few days later, he added, “I can
apply for social security 3 months before I turn 62. Let’s get the house ready
to go on the market.”
In a
nutshell, that pretty much turned our world upside down.
We knew
we had to remove a lot of the personal stuff from our home, so we packed our
book collection, our art collection, our video collection… We hired some young
helpers to put these heavy boxes in our storage unit. He packed up everything
in his office except his computer. I packed or threw out a lot of stuff from my
office until I ran out of time.
We had a
vacation scheduled for most of May. The paperwork for retiring was signed, and
the day husband flew down to Orlando for that vacation was his last day of
work. We spent a couple days in the parks and visiting friends while he tried
to get his head around his new status. We checked out a few houses that were
for sale while we were down there, and started the process of getting
pre-approved for a mortgage.
And then…
that infamous ‘hurry up and wait’ segment settled in. For the past 3 weeks (and
probably for at least another week), the 2 of us have been living in 1 room
while all the rest of the house gets fixed up and painted. While we are in that
room, the only computer we have access to is the laptop we had in Florida,
which I perch on a folding chair while I sit in an easy chair. Is it any wonder
my neck, shoulders and back almost constantly ache?
It
doesn’t help that I was surprised by a rush editing job just before leaving
Florida; the 4th manuscript in a 5-book series. I got that one done
and back to the publisher, but I’m wondering when #5 will appear in my mailbox.
At first,
we spent a lot of time in that room, watching various tv shows. By now, we have
opted to spend our mornings at dospace (If you live in Omaha and haven’t
checked out dospace at 72nd & Dodge, you should – dospace.com);
several afternoons of the week we go to the gym and work out; and at least once
a week, we go see a movie – or 3.
Being
confined to 1 room is mind-numbing. Most of the time, I just can’t concentrate.
Oh, and if you are waiting impatiently for me to add another episode to
MacOnFireball.blogspot.com, don’t hold your breath. I will get back to it, but
guess what? The notebook holding the original story got packed when I wasn’t
looking. Actually, I found the notebook, but the 10-20 pages I had out, next to
my desk-top computer, to be typed in and tweaked… also got packed, and has
proven to be elusive.
Eventually,
the work on the house will be done. Eventually, our Omaha house will sell.
Eventually, we will buy a new house in central Florida (we’ve been told it
takes a minimum of 6 weeks from bid acceptance to document signing/closing) and
can get the household belongings shipped down there. But right now, as the days
grind by at a snail’s pace, ‘eventually’ seems a terribly long time from now.
