Monday, July 26, 2010

Big Push Day

Today was going to be the big push. All in all I'm sure a lot got done, but I am beginning to see that this is the sort of thing that never seems to move (and then hopefully it ends). My sister says she's amazed at how much we've accomplished, but I'm afraid that the TD in me feels the remaining items much more than whatever has gone before.

I'm also now much more aware of what I will call estate wrapping kryptonite. You can be merrily purging your way along through item after item doing the "keep, donate, trash" thing and then you open a box, or look in a file and SLAM - you stop dead. Old pictures, ancient paperwork, items from your past; these things with no predictability can stop you dead in your tracks, unable to move. It's not just happening to me, I've seen it in my sister and in my cousin. Some things that did that to me today: my CMU tuition bills ($12,000/yr), Dad's college notebooks, 40 years of teaching evaluations of my dad. It's stuff I'll never need, probably won't ever have a reason to look at, but that have this incredible gravity making them very very difficult to purge. Jury's still out, but I bet a bunch of them wind up in a box someplace.

To did:

  1. Email to the GC - he does use email - set up a meeting.
  2. Phone call with the Estate lady - set a meeting.
  3. Made up some boxes, this is an everyday activity I think.
  4. Boxed a ton of books I was hoping a teacher buddy of my Dad's would take. He didn't.
  5. Loaded a ton of other books into my truck for a trip to the library.
  6. Did the sort thing on a bunch of stuff that came up from the basement.
  7. Did the library trip - that was less than.
  8. Met up with the GC and signed for the work, made a deposit.
  9. Surprise meet up with the investment person - she was in the neighborhood.
  10. Skipped out on a meeting with the estate lady, Jessica handled it. Looks like we won't have an estate sale.
  11. Did my daily trip to Goodwill. TIP: Goodwill is a good place to get free boxes (seems ok if I'm just bringing them back the next day).
  12. Emailed the accountant.
Tomorrow is push day two. I hope at the end of that it feels like we're further along. I can't properly convey the feeling, but at the end of each day, when we recompose the garage so it will close, every day it looks like we're no closer; even though I know we must be.

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