Just Write {83}

From snowing to seventy-something degrees in a just a few days, we jumped.

We’ve been soaking up sun like the pale and vitamin D depleted Minnesotans that we are. The sliding glass door bangs every few seconds, in and out and in and out. There’s dirt sticking to my bare feet from the muddy shoes. I don’t even care this time, this winter was just too long to begrudge a little dried spring mud.

We are going through all of our things and really considering each item, Do we need this? Are we taking this to Austin? Will we get there and open a box and say “Why in the world did I pack this? Now I have to find a place for it and we never use it.”

I’m a tosser, he’s a keeper. Our new garage is about a quarter of the size it would need to be to fit all of his tools and toys.

Let’s have a sale! I say. Because there’s so much extra time. Heh.

We rake and shovel, a winter’s worth of chicken poop straw, from cleaning out the coop. It has finally been uncovered, snow melting away and it’s like all the dog poop out in the yard, just everywhere. A minefield of yuck.

My ADD brain forces me to drop the shovel and walk to the lilac bushes that have gotten too tall. There are vine-y dead skinny sticks like a thread through the top. All connected, all sucking the life from the new growth. I reach up with my gloved hand, grab one part and start to back up and it all just keeps coming and coming, so long and so much. It yanks at the entire tree and it all bends as I back up and pull it free.

It feels so good.

I drag my reward across the yard and throw it on top the trailer and go back for more, again and again. It’s good hard work and I do it until it’s done.

Then my husband gets in the car with me and we take the trailer to the brush site to leave all of the straw and sticks, brittle vines and branches from all the pruning. We get to the gate and can’t go through, it doesn’t open until May 4th.

So we take ourselves and our work back home, unhitch the trailer and leave it for now.

Progress, not perfection, I think. We were going to load up more things to haul away but today is not that day.

We head inside and I started going through the kids’ clothes, item by item, sorting and piling up for the growing up. It hurts and feels good all at once, like all of the things we’re doing to prepare our lives for one ginormous shift that will land us in Texas. We are combing through and sifting and pruning and with each moment I’m remembering so many things from all these years.

From snowing to seventy degrees in just a few days. We jumped.

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This is the 83rd installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page, and please don’t link to posts that are not freely written in the spirit of capturing moments–you know, don’t link to how-to lists or sponsored posts. Also, please link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.

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