Tag Archives: Downshifting

Fall on the Way

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All is quiet on the home front this week. Fall is rolling in and we’ve had rainstorms with thunder and lightning. Weird. We’ve had a lot of that this year. After recovering from an injury to my shoulder, I’m back to re-creating the garden; getting it easier to care for in anticipation of renting out the house in a couple of years. Going through the garden it is striking how many plants I have. Some I cannot even identify anymore, like this little succulent I’ve had in this pot for about 6 years. I noticed a bloom on it for the first time today. It is pollinated by flies, I remember. If I stop trying to remember it will come to me. Some days I’d kill to get my estrogen back.

An unusual flower, to be sure. A Stapelia, perhaps? From South Africa, I’m pretty sure.

Mike and I have been talking about finding another home for my beloved koi. I bought them when they were little babies and now they are all huge and swim to the edge of the pond to be fed when people approach. Alas, a 4000 gallon pond is a liability when renting a house. Plus, no one would really know how to care for this pond since I designed the system and know all of its quirks. Mike has a vision for a pondless stream that would allow our bird friends to continue to enjoy the water without all the care a pond requires. I have a vision for a firepit next to the stream. Things have to be un-created to make room for new creations.

Migrating Cedar Waxwings

This week a flock of hundreds of migrating Cedar Waxwings descended upon our stream to bathe and play in the water. I managed to creep outside with my camera and watch for awhile. Then, in response to some silent signal, they took flight and were gone. I still remember the sound of their wings in the air, the rush of the wind as they flew past and were gone.

This lovely hardy begonia requires no care at all. It will have a place in the newly created garden. It’s in bloom right now.

Lest you think it’s all about gardens and other land based things, boat business is never far below the surface. We have our eyes on another boat and are crossing our fingers and toes that this one turns out better than the last time our hearts were sprung. This time the current owner contacted us directly to tell us about his boat. We were intrigued. We visited, and were more intrigued. So we tread slowly, carefully, and deliberately, even though we still have our Moonrise. If it works out, you’ll be the first to know.

More Boat Stuff

Here are a couple of photos from our recent trip to Friday Harbor. I’m currently working on my review of the Amazon 44 we went to see.

Leaving Seattle behind.

The Victoria Clipper took the route through Deception Pass to the San Juan Islands. Mike and I have never sailed through this way and this gave us a chance to witness the amazing currents without putting our own boat at risk. Unbelievable. And then the fog…

Deception Pass. The cracks of doom. 

Boiling water and fog at 25 knots! What could possibly go wrong?

Another foggy Deception Pass.

Stay tuned.

 

 

 

Life Review

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This week my life flashed before my eyes. Generally when one says that, people respond with “Oh No! Did you have a bad accident? Did you get a terminal diagnosis? Did you have a clairvoyant episode outlining the details of your own death, and if so, do you know the date? (And by the way, can I have that painting I’ve always admired?)” I assure you, hopeful reader, that none of these things is true because none of these things is necessary for me to have my life flash quickly and alarmingly before my very eyes. All that is required is a trip to my attic.

See those dark recesses toward the back? You have no idea how much stuff is there. But I do. This is only one side. The other side is worse, and goes back further.

Long time readers will know that part of our cunning plan is to get rid of most of our stuff and move aboard a sailboat. They will know, as well, that we have been married for 31 years. That we have two adult children, that our home is large and has large grounds. What they might not know is that cloistered in our attic is the considerable remains of that 31 year history. Our house has about 3000 square feet. Our attic covers the entire house. Easily 2/3 of that attic is crammed with boxes big and small. Oy vey. I have spent many hours since this blog’s inception going through ‘things’ in my house and toting them to Goodwill. We have the tax deductions to prove it, thanks be to God. But I have not yet touched the attic. Until now.

Over the years as children have outgrown special toys, graduated to new grades in school, or decided they wanted a room ‘remodel’, things got stuffed into the attic for storage because I’ve lived with kids long enough to know that the minute I get rid of something they intuitively know it and look for it. Likewise when my own mother downsized dramatically, I was the recipient of special things that were hers or my father’s. They currently reside in the attic. Then there are things from my own childhood that I have kept for decades. All in the attic. Mike’s home burned to the ground twice when he was growing up, so he has very little from his childhood. He knows what it’s like to lose everything and then be okay.

Just imagine this, times 2 million.

In our attic is a gazillion dollars worth of Legos, Playmobil, action figures, American Girl dolls and their accouterments, Christmas ornaments, old LP’s, Nancy Drew books, a huge collection of rubber animals (anatomically correct, don’t you know), wedding and baby momentos, dressup clothes… Seems like our kids’ entire childhoods are in that attic, safely tucked away for the grandchildren we may never have. If there were any young children in our lives just now, they would be having an amazing time in our attic if we could get them to put down the Nintendo DS.

Some of you more thrifty and organized readers may be echoing my own superego just about now, giving voice to the general tongue lashing that goes on in my head. You know the words, so sing right along with me:  I am reaping what I sowed because I should have been getting rid of stuff all along and shouldn’t have collected so much stuff to begin with. Sure, you would have a good point because there is a lot of ‘sunk costs’ sitting up there in that space. But, by way of ‘walking a mile in my orthotics’, consider this: I grew up a military child. We moved a couple of times in early childhood, then in kindergarten; then again in grades 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 9. We then had three years where I had a stable high school experience, more or less. I’m not complaining, as there are many blessings that come from this kind of upbringing. But I am making the point that the only things that remained stable in our lives were our immediate family, and our stuff. I do not easily get attached to people, but I do get attached to things; the dirty little secret of this vagabond kind of childhood, at least for me.

Home may be where the heart is, but in my upbringing it was defined as where mom hung the portrait of me and my sister over the piano. When the big book cases (which currently grace my family room) were placed, and all the decorator items were in place in the living room, we were ‘home’, for however long it lasted. When the movers brought our stuff to our new digs, it was like Christmas. My brain and my body, and mostly my heart, developed around ‘stuff’ defining our space, and thus defining my feelings of ‘home’. So I guess part of my karmic learning is how to let go of things and still feel whole. I’m getting there but it’s a slow thing.

I’m not quite ready to let go of Andrew’s Playmobil collection. It’s just so cool! And he was so completely adorable with it.

Anyway, this attic has been literally hanging over my head for years. It has been the huge elephant in the middle of the living room of my mind. I knew it was there, but I preferred to walk around it rather than try to tame it.  Caught between a rock and a hard place, I have been wondering if this task of ridding ourselves of the stuff would ever end. And if it never ended, surely we would never get to go sailing down the coast to Mexico and beyond. We would never sail around the U.K. We toyed with the idea of renting out our house furnished, locking up the attic as our continued storage space. But on some level, that just felt like a cop out, like not really making a decision.

So this week Claire and I began with the attic. I pulled down as much stuff as I had space on the garage floor. We threw out a huge bag of trash, sent some stuff to Goodwill, put aside a few things for a friend’s garage sale, and packed up a box of treasures for Kitty down in Texas. Then I stared in horror at the collection of dolls, baby clothes, dress-up costumes and other assorted things that I just don’t have the heart to deal with. All I could think was “there are only about 200 more boxes upstairs”.  The word ‘discouraged’ doesn’t even touch my feelings. Just thinking about it makes me want to go lie down in a dark room with a whiskey and soda. Large, please. This took an entire day, and I was not finished yet because it was only the easy part that we had accomplished. Only about 200 more boxes to go, and countless decisions to make. I walked away from it to prepare dinner.

Goodbye cute little paper giraffe Claire made in the first grade. Goodbye hand decorated photo frame with starfish picture that she won a prize for.

I decided that this was just too much work, both physically and emotionally. There had to be another way. So I waited for the epiphany, and then it came:   What if, instead of having to touch each thing and make the decision to keep or get rid of it, I touched only the things that were most important to me? What if I began to look at things in terms of what I would choose to take to a new house in the future? If I were building my dream home today, what would I take with me? What things give me that comfortable feeling of ‘home’? What things tell me that it is I who live here? If I could choose those things, I would hire an estate agent to come in and have a big estate sale and let go of the rest.

I cannot avoid going through the things in the attic forever. But I can let someone else do all the unpacking; laying things out on tables in an orderly way, then giving me the final say about what I will pull out to keep.  Dear Lord, what a concept! I am almost breathless from the freedom of it. The thought of someone else coming in and doing all that work makes me positively giddy. The sale itself would probably feel about like chopping off an arm, but at least it would be fast and then I could get over it and get on with other things. This idea fills me with a sense of relief that is palpable and that makes me know that it’s the right direction to go. If the feeling is of relief, then the soul has spoken.

This display in our living room is filled with family history from both sides of our family. There is just no way I am getting rid of all of these things. Some, but not all.  We will find a way to store them while we are gone.

As the idea began to take shape, I found that removing the emotional and physical burden of the continual exercise in mourning that is stored in our attic allowed other ideas to take root. Selling the house and buying land we could leave to our children, for instance. I have always wanted to leave land for my children.  Perhaps designing and building a small house on that land in the future, a house that would be easy to keep and that would take us safely into our old age when we are finished with the sailing. Removing the burden of the attic gives me room to dream again.

As I began thinking more about it, I discovered that aside from a select few pieces of furniture,  most of the things that bring me comfort in my home are the decorator items that can easily be packed away. My mother’s Cottage Ware teapot, the piece of art pottery Claire brought me from the Scottish Highlands, the small paintings of our boats, the Native American fetishes I collected in the southwest, my father’s lithograph of the seven mortal sins. Specific stones. The cement maple leaf I made. The block print of Skimmers that Mike and I got when we were first married. These are things that will be put away, waiting to be placed in my next house so I can quickly call it ‘home’.

With the burden of constant purging removed I will be able to enjoy the time I have left in our house, this home we’ve created together, with all of the creative energy of our family’s youth still held firmly in its very bones.  I will be able to focus now on what we will take with us from this place into the bold future, turning my face from what we are leaving behind.

I will likely never make another one of these. It took me a year to perfect the formula to make the cement strong yet thin. The casting is of a maple leaf from the tree in our backyard.

 

Days of Sloth

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It’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, a time when people reflect on their lives and what they’ve accomplished over the year, setting goals for the future. The dark days of winter are, I’m sure, created in order for us to have time to be introspective, thoughtful, mindful of how we live our lives. And I intend to do just that. After I’m finished resting and relaxing.

Hermione knows what I’m talking about. What a face!

Yes, indeed, I have hit the days of Sloth full force with my resting ways. Today I have accomplished the following: a shower, throwing wrapping paper from Christmas into the recycle bin. That is all, really. And I am completely satisfied with my level of usefulness in the world. My needs this week, in terms of being at all useful to others, are small.  And in this slow-moving, deliberate living I have embraced of late, I have, indeed, had some time to think, even if I haven’t given it much notice.

The ultra cool Space Needle in Seattle. I stuck this in here because it’s a groovy photo I took this season. Some day I will buy myself a really awesome camera and learn how to use it.

I’ve been thinking about how this time last year I was on a rampage getting rid of stuff. It’s as though I somehow thought that our cutting of the dock lines was just around the corner of our lives and that I had to hurry up and simplify. Oh, brother.  In so doing, I have complicated things terribly. Whatever you do, don’t believe everything you read about how ‘freeing’ it is to get rid of all your stuff because sometimes that is just a damn lie. And this lie comes home to roost on Christmas day when you have 9 people over for dinner and own only 3 dining room chairs because you gave the other chairs away since they were cluttering up the place. And then you have the neighbors over for dinner and apologize about the lack of chairs, commenting that you don’t know what happened to them and they respond with, “You gave them to our son last year because you didn’t need them anymore. Do you need them back? You don’t have anyplace for people to sit when you entertain.” Right. Like I’m going to take back chairs I gave to someone just starting out in life who can barely make a living much less buy new chairs. How embarrassing.

Oh sure, throwing everything out would be freeing if I didn’t ever need things again, or if I was moving onto a boat, say, tomorrow. But since neither of those things is true, I better slow down or we won’t have anyplace to sit in our own home.

What we have here is a collection of very tiny ornaments. I will NOT be getting rid of my collection of tiny Christmas ornaments. They will go with us on whatever boat we have. They take up almost no room. Without Christmas, there would be no Days of Sloth. And I must have them.

Oh, we’ve de-cluttered the place nicely this year. We’ve made so many trips to Goodwill that they know us by name. But the dirty truth is this: getting rid too much stuff well in advance of making a move to a small place, or a boat, is useless. Why? Because nature abhors a vacuum, that’s why. We live in a 3000 square foot house, more or less. Already with both kids gone most of the time, we feel as though we are knocking around in a huge empty space. Getting rid of things that take up that empty space just creates more empty space, and, naturally, it somehow gets filled with more stuff.  It just feels weird to have big blank areas where furniture needs to be. I took the advice of all the self-help gurus and got rid of all the stuff I didn’t use or have on display. That leaves exactly 3000 square feet of stuff that I DO use and IS on display. The house is too big for just us, but we’re in a transitional phase just now and we’re not getting rid of it anytime soon.

And speaking of that, I’ve been pretty attached to my house lately. Maybe it’s just that it’s winter, and cold and wet but I’ve come to realize that my dreams of being on a boat really do generally include warm weather and sunshine. Not that I don’t want to sail in colder climates. I do, but I don’t intend to be miserable all the time while doing it. So this time of year when I miss the boat and think ‘let’s go sailing’, I look outside, realize that what’s in my head doesn’t match the reality outside,  and then become thankful that I’m warm and dry. Call me middle-aged. Call me a sailing wimp. Whatever. I prefer to think of it as ‘blooming where I’m planted’.

Here’s a photo from the butterfly house at the Pacific Science Center, for those who need a break from the narration. I like how this butterfly totally brings together the colors of the plants. This is how gardeners think in the winter time.

Mike has been more productive today, but then, he has a more finely developed sense of guilt than I have. After all, he did grow up in the south. He and Andrew replaced the brake shoes on two cars today, so he feels like he deserves to be laying on the couch reading one of his many new books he received from Santa this Christmas…books on sailing. Mike received 4 riveting books that are sailing oriented, and we’ll post about them later. For now, suffice to say that while Mike received books on sailing adventures, and Andrew received new sailing boots and a new anchor roller for Danger Kitten, I received kitchen utensils and a gift certificate to the spa. I’m beginning to sense a trend. Now, to be fair, I have been ‘into’ cooking lately, as is evidenced by the luscious Beef Bourguignon I served for Christmas dinner. Still, I believe my point is well taken. I will be reading his books so I dearly hope he is in a sharing kind of mood.

He must be really enjoying this book because I’ve heard a lot of snorting and guffawing, and comments like ‘this guy either has balls or he’s an idiot’. And also things like, “I know what’s going to happen next because we’ve done this. Oh, Lord, at least we know he lived to tell of it.” I can’t wait to read this book.

And so during these days of sloth when I’ve given myself the gift of not giving a damn what I get done, Mike lies on one couch, I type on another couch… you can see where I’m going with this: we simply must buy a boat with two generously built settees. Otherwise, there is no other way this whole plan will actually work.