Happy Thanksgiving!

I've been doing a lot of typing since my last post, but not really very much writing. Our situation with regard to moving plans has changed significantly recently, and it's put me in a super stressful place mentally. I'm trying to stay sane by planning, and being obsessive about planning, and doing as many things as I can think of to bring in extra funds.

So far that's been a lot of online transcription work when I can stand it, and swap meet Sundays. I think now that Thanksgiving has passed, the next time I go to the swap meet I'll have to go to SLO and see if I can get a better crowd there with more interest in my hand made items. It is prime time for picking up Christmas gifts. With this long weekend, I intend to knit like crazy, and see if I can come up with enough pieces to make my spot at the swap meet more craft-faire and less yard-sale, but we'll see.

Today was a whirlwind in the kitchen, but I find that I'm happiest there a lot of the time. We'll have leftovers to munch on for the weekend which will hopefully give me more time to get my crafts in order for the swap meet.

Reflecting on what I'm thankful for today, I realize that the position we're in is not a bad one. It's tough because the longer we're in this apartment, the harder it is financially to move out. Thinking about trying to move "all of our stuff" though is a thing I am starting to see from a new perspective. I know I have some things that are very special and important to me, and those things will definitely be coming along, but the more I look at all the stuff I've accumulated over my life, the more I see this as an opportunity to reduce what I own down to what's really important.

I've lived in California, within a bubble of about 60 miles, for almost my entire life. Every move I've made has been dozens of trips with a car dragging boxes and bins full of things to a new location. I want this time to be different. I want to get where we're going and look at what we brought and feel certain that it's only the stuff that matters.

The only part of this whole ordeal I'm still very nervous about is the part where I have to go on a hail-mary trip to what we expect will be our new hometown, and find a place for us to live in a few short days. Doing so during the holiday season might be a double-edged sword, because things like a hotel, car, and flight may prove to be more expensive, but everything I've read about moving suggests that rents are lowest during the holidays because nobody wants to be moving at that time of year, or during the winter. Hopefully that's true.

Anybody want to come with me on a brief trip to Oregon in the next few weeks?