Keeping up

Call the electric company and set a cancel date. Call the phone company and do likewise. Call cable company for same. Call the garbage pickup company and schedule last pickup. Change billing addresses. Forward mail. Pick up absentee ballot. Rent U-Haul truck. Rent storage container. Advertise yard sale. Check on new lot preparation. Make a list. Make another list. Make several lists. Lose the lists. Find the lists.

These are just some of the inevitable tasks before us this week as our countdown to the big move continues. I have heard enough voices saying "Press 1 for this, press 2 for that, press 3 for something else..." to last me a lifetime. I have marked up my calendars so that I can barely decipher anything. I have finally bit the bullet and started to go through all my hundreds of quilt magazines to decide which ones I want to keep and which ones I am willing to part with. (Ed has been trying to get me to do that for years, and I insisted I wanted to keep all of them. However, when I cleared out a storage area in the house where I had stored the magazines, even I realized I had way too many!)

We did find and visit our new "City Hall" in Hancock. When I stopped by the post office to ask where City Hall was, the poor lady laughed for ten minutes. "City Hall?" she said as she tried to catch her breath. "We don't have cities around here!" She wiped her eyes. "You mean Town Hall? It's the next road to the right." So sue me. I'm originally from Memphis. Town Hall, Shmown Hall. It's all the same - it's where you go to find out rules and regulations of your new habitat.

Town Hall of Hancock is in an old small building which also houses the Hancock Historical Society upstairs. (I almost typed "Hancock Hysterical Society" because I'm still thinking about the laughing post office worker.) It's a one-stop shop. We will get the usual things there like dog licenses. We will pay our taxes. We will vote. All in its one room. We'll definitely be in a small town. Makes Ellsworth, our current town, seem like the big city.

All in all, I'm going crazy. When others are hunkering down for the winter and looking forward to Halloween, we're busy unhunkering down in preparation for closing on Halloween.

I hear people compare busy, frustrating times like these as being on a treadmill. You work and huff and puff but don't get anywhere.

Oh, we're getting somewhere, all right. I have little balls of chocolate candy in my mouth, my sleeve, my pockets, and under my hat. Yes, like the photo above, I feel less like I'm on a treadmill and more like I'm Lucy and Ethel trying to keep up on the candy factory assembly line. As the move date approaches, those candies keep coming faster and faster and it's all I can do to stuff them anywhere I can.

It's now about three weeks until move date. I think I'm going to have a eat a chocolate or two to get through this!