Progress

“Have you seen Finding Nemo?” I asked as we headed out of the amusement park. When Friend and H nodded, I continued my thought. “When I’m very tired, but there’s no real option of quitting, I often sing Dory’s little song.”

“Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim. Swim! Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming…”

I don’t even remember their replies, so busy was my brain with singing and continuing to move out the exit and toward the car. Given that I’m currently in the position of having tons of work to do and a limited time in which to accomplish it, I find myself pushing through and singing little songs a lot of the time lately.

“OK,” I said, feet scrambling to retain some balance at 6:45 yesterday morning under the weight of a very old mattress. “Heavier than I thought, but that’s fine.”

Having napped much of Friday away, I woke early yesterday and decided I was going to work. Move bed out of guest room, replace with bed that was in the office. Clean, pack, make rooms pretty. So I wrestled a mattress older than I am off the bed and into the garage. I sighed and stared at it when it flopped on the floor, breathing hard and sweating and deciding I’d ask Friend for help if she came out this weekend.

“Cushioned with hair on both sides?” She read when we maneuvered it on its side and shoved it across the garage to sit upright against a wall next to the box springs. “Gross. This thing must be older than I am.”

I nodded, thinking earlier I’d called my parents to make sure Mom was OK with me trashing Grandpa’s old mattress. The springs are beginning to get pokey (apparently the hair is thinning) and when I put the new mattresses on the old frame, the bed suddenly looked inviting and soft.

“Of course,” Mom answered. “You can sell or throw away anything you’d like. Aren’t you getting rid of your living room furniture too?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly, curling further into the corner of the loveseat. This is where I’ve written most of my blog posts, where I’ve shared countless conversations and even more quiet moments with Friend. And while I have plenty to keep me busily distracted – dusting alone could take days – there are moments where I think of Friend and close my eyes against the pain of not seeing her so often. Of having her slip into the category of friends I miss and try to keep up with and visit when I can.

“I was thinking of putting slipcovers on it,” I told Mom of my furniture that really is falling apart. Stuffing is escaping from the cushions, there are stains on the stripey material and the large pieces aren’t so visually appealing. “I could put it in the basement of my new house,” I said. “Then Sprout or Chloe could use it down there.” Or, I thought silently, I could go curl up and write a blog post and chat online with Friend. If there are tornado warnings, I could find a book and read on a piece of furniture that once resided in the house I loved in the south.

“I need slipcovers,” I told Friend. She drove down, we had lunch and got caught up on happenings online and off, and headed to Target to use my coupon. One arrives pretty much every month – I think I only need to spend $1000 to get my 10% off reward. And since the two of us can almost make it to $500 in a single trip and there are double points for money spent at Target, the little coupons arrive pretty regularly. “I also want those giant Ziploc bags and a new doormat. To make a good first impression to potential buyers!”

We shopped companionably – I didn’t rush her as I sometimes do. Instead we each pushed our respective carts through the aisles, picking up all sorts of random odds and ends in addition to the items that made it on the list. We returned to the house to unpack our purchases, settling in our respective seats and deciding to look at Bed, Bath and Beyond for slipcovers since none were found at Target.

“I also need mulch,” I reminded her. I’d meant to stop at Lowe’s but there was no room left in the car for the bags of chips I’d use to fill in the flower bed and prevent weed growth in my absence. I still need to arrange for people to come to take care of tasks – I have these brown spiders everywhere in the yard and some of them are making it inside. My pest company should come and spray again to make sure they don’t take over the house. I want to get the house listed on Monday if at all possible. I need someone to mow and trim every week.

I did it myself last night at dusk, moving the mower easily through the front yard and thinking it didn’t seem too terribly hot out. I scowled at the weeds that had randomly grown very tall – they sometimes twisted to elude the mower blades so I had to run over them twice. But I finished as cars drove past with headlights on – it was pretty dark – and let the mower take a spot in the center of the garage between the boxes that are packed to go and those that are haphazardly filled with stuff to get rid of. Friend and I moved the mattress and returned to the house so I could do more packing and cleaning.

I took breaks to look at listings online, falling deeper and deeper in love with an adorable home with a 2-sided fireplace between the living room and kitchen. I also keep looking at a huge builders model with 3.5 bathrooms! ("Why?" Friend cried. "You'll just get them all dirty!") It looks like I have a number of choices – most of them lovely, though not all of them perfect – in terms of houses to buy. I’ll miss this one – I range from being excited about the future to painfully nostalgic. I go between thinking I’m in excellent shape in terms of packing, so proud of my progress to thinking with some panic that there’s no way I’ll get everything done.

Just keep swimming, I remind myself. So I’ll go have coffee and deal with the kitchen.