Another Hot and Hard Working Day - uh, Hour.

 Have you ever seen a Pod commercial? They show a family loading or unloading a Pod. The parents are probably in their late 30s, early 40s. The two teenagers are strong, healthy and helpful. Everyone is smiling as they pick up boxes or small pieces of furniture and move them in or out of the Pod. HA! (You do hear the sarcasm in that expletive, I hope.)

Dean and I are in our 80s, moving from 4500 square feet into 406 square feet (me) and however big an AirStream is (Dean). Not your ideal commercial family. We have needed help. 

Fortunately we have had the help of two families ~ both of which brought along a teenager. One came to translate to make sure his mom understood what I wanted. He pitched in and worked over and beyond that though. I didn't realize that was his function until the end of our time. I knew granddaughter Emily had come to work. She is quite the organizer. We'd open a box, I would take a look and sigh, and she would say, "we'll just take it one item at a time" and we'd go to work and rather quickly the box would be sorted and we'd be moving on.

We were supposed to work again this afternoon and the heat is just too much. Dean tells me he needs a rest. He has been doing more than I expected. All I do is sit and supervise into which pile things go.

Emily helps set up a covering to give us some shade. After about 15 minutes the wind began to blow so the tarp came down before it was blown away, Fifteen minutes after that there was no more wind.

Boxes on top of boxes on top of boxes, each one going somewhere to either come to Oregon with me, come later with Dean, go back into storage for Dean to go through later or into a car to be taken to another friend, Monica, who will put the contents on eBay. Slowly and surely with a lot of help from our friends.

And this, my friends, is Old Ted. Ted came to me on my first birthday which means he will soon be 80. When he arrived he was white and fluffy with shiny black tack eyes. The tacks were almost an inch long and very sharp. A wise grandmother said, no. She removed the tacks and replaced them with shiny black button eyes which is all I remember. As you can tell, Ted is real, having been loved long and hard for years and years. He spent the last 21 years on a shelf in our library with several other old and treasured animals. Soon he will return to another shelf in my little apartment with the same friends. It was good for a moment to see him, hold him, and assure him (and me) we are still on this journey together.