the moving countdown has begun. yesterday i bought the last of the boxes we'll need (at least hope so! yeesh!) and we've become a bit more serious about our packing. saxy will clean out our bedroom later today, in hopes that we'll sell the bed. the furniture is in the green sheet, but so far we've had next to no calls on anything. i hope we sell some of this stuff. we won't get much of anything for it all, but something is better than nothing. we cleared 1 of the bookcases and put them in the back room, which means all but a very few of our dvd's are now in boxes, all but the few books i keep by the desk or have out to read, and so on. all but the bare minimum of dishes were packed today and all the "to sell" stuff has been moved over to one side of the dining room to keep it separate from the "to keep and pack" stuff. the toybox has been cleared and everything in it packed.

and slowly the house gets emptier.

tuesday i pay our rent and put a deposit down on the truck. thursday i turn in our notice, which has me not sleeping well again, of course. i trust my brother so this is going to work out, but it's still more than a little nerve wracking when you have kids involved. if things went disastrously wrong, we'd figure it out, we always have, but it's still worries me. but, then, i always was a worry wart. even though we haven't seen each other in a very long time, i think even my brother can attest to that. lol

on the 10th i'll pick up copies of our driving records. someone told me that cali is basically paranoid when it comes to privacy of records and it will be difficult (and that's putting it mildly) to request them from out of state. we can't have them delayed if we want sax to be able to start hunting for work as soon as we get there (well, within a few days, but you know what i mean). the next 2 weekends we're having yard sales in another attempt to get rid of what we're not taking for money. anything left, linnorm will be taking to the dump after we leave or taking for himself (might as well, he's helped out a lot and even though it was for his kids too, the least we can do is give him any furniture that may be left if he wants it! lol).

the next week gets hysterical. the dog gets shaved. the jewel and taz have their last of day of school, so we'll probably pull froggy out too, and then i have to convince the schools to give me their cume files (however that's spelled). then comes the flurry of packing, getting food for the ice chests, setting the utility disconnect date, and then climbing in the trucks and going.

we've done pretty good at the prep i think. most of the stuff on my checklist is crossed out, most the rest we can't do much about yet - they aren't things done easily a head of schedule. it would be nice to have an address to forward things to before we walk out the door, but if he doesn't have a place for us yet, maybe i can forward to someone else and have them hold it for us, then send it out when we have an address for it all to be sent to. but beyond little stuff like that, we're pretty well set.

and despite the nerves, we're very ready. so many people have told us the job situation out there is really good. i'm looking forward to being able to go out of my house without risking my physical being. and being in a place that's pretty. that probably sounds silly, but i've always been an artist and pretty counts with me.

heck, i'll just be happy with safe.