busy as a bee

It is busyness that has limited my recent posting. That's a good thing. Between prepping the house for sale, all of Avery's usual activities and school, a volunteer project I'm working on, and regular life stuff, things are chugging away. It doesn't feel like too much at the moment, at least not on most days.

Regarding the separation, I'm doing very good. I always feel like I need to put in a disclaimer that I wish things were different, and I wish this wasn't happening, as if the fact that I'm doing well somehow means that I don't want to work on things.  Anyway, I suppose you should consider this a disclaimer for any future mentions of it. Avery and I being at Mom's house since returning from vacation is a good thing. I'm away from constant reminders. It's also nice to just envision our new place without the old place getting in the way. Avery is doing better with it. She is regressing less and protests less when transitioning from one of us to the other. A lot of our transitions are done over family lunches, so that type of transition helps things as well. Avery's therapist said D and I are doing "awesome" and commends us for following through on our commitment to put Avery first. She said it's really rare. Talk about awkward compliments: "hey! you're doing great at minimizing the chaos you've created in your daughter's life!" But I guess it reaffirms that despite the suckiness of the situation, we're both putting Avery's needs first now that the separation is reality. Google Calendar is a key tool in all this. Google Docs, too. In a bit of dark humor when we were leaving our coparenting session with Mariah a couple of months, I came up with the tagline, "Google Docs: making separation easier for everyone!" Sad, but true. 

The prepping of the house for sale is going well. The garage is in disarray with a massive pile of stuff to get rid of. I toyed with the idea of having a big garage sale. Then I realized that the potential profit from sales was minimal while the stress, work, and logistics of it all would be huge. So now I'm focusing on selling individual large items on craigslist (CL), then getting rid of the rest of the stuff via freecycle (FC). I was surprised with the amount of dishes and kitchen stuff I had in all those cupboards. For those types of items I have contacted Lutheran Community Services, through which I sponsor a refugee family every Christmas. Since the families come here with nothing, they need to acquire dishes, housewares, etc. That organization is coming to pick out whatever they want. After that I'll FC the rest. 

The house is completely decluttered as far as what the eye sees. I have only gone through the kitchen to pack up the inside of the cabinets. My office is also almost completely packed since it was done when the hardwoods were refinished and I just left it that way afterward. My plan is to go through the other areas of the house as time permits with the idea that I'll be almost completely packed by the time closing on the new place rolls around. This will allow me to more carefully think about what I want to keep and allow me to give away items on FC. I'd much rather do that than just dump it all at Goodwill or wherever. It means the items are going to a specific person who needs/wants that specific item. That feels good. So far I've given away my snowboard, bindings, and two pairs of boots; rollerblades; baby gates; baby play yard; foam letters for a play mat; office chair which has been in our garage for 8 years; a bed desk; and shoe storage cube. And that was all with one day of posting. I love FC in case you can't tell. My batched method for FC is also making it quite easy. I put in each ad that people who could pick up the items after 10:30 on Monday would be given preference. That way I can get rid of stuff in batches. I'm going to head over today to put out recycling, as well as to get details to post another batch of stuff on FC. 

Speaking of stuff, anyone need a 60 bottle wine fridge? D is allergic to (just red?) wine now. Yep, we've got a lot of wine. That's pretty much spoken for, but we still have the fridge. I'm going to try to sell it on CL, but if any friends want it, I'll discount it even more for you. :) It's a nice looking fridge.

Today is mother's day. I'm doing much better with it than I expected. Holidays generally aren't a big deal for me, but given how related to our marriage mother's day is, I was feeling a bit of apprehension heading into it. But the weekend has been fine emotionally. Just shows I can't predict the things that are difficult and those that aren't. I'm just grateful when things are unexpectedly easy.