Talk about a week of mixed emotions.
We had a very enjoyable time at Amy’s parents’ house in Ohio last week. But by Sunday afternoon, despite our hesitation, it was time to make the last leg of this trip. It was time to finish this.
Three hours later, we were back in Indy:
I tried to soak up as much as I could and savor every remaining mile. It was great to see my mom, however, and we were eager to see the apartment that she is letting us use.
Some quick details on that: My mom owns a multi-tenant rental house in downtown Indy (right across the street from her house), and she is letting us live in one of her units. The plan is to stay here for the next 6 to 12 months and hopefully achieve some clairvoyance on where in the world we want to settle down. We’re very grateful for this little “halfway house” as we transition back into normal life, whatever that means.
Here are the girls celebrating their new room. It’s funny: this apartment is only 650 square feet, but to us it seems HUGE! As Carrie put it, we’ll be living “New York City style” for a while.
The excitement of our new place was a welcomed distraction from the heartache of moving out of the RV. That took way longer than I thought it would (almost a couple hours).
After being relieved of its cargo, the ol’ Southy was ready for storage. I noted how it drove differently without all of our stuff in it. It even sounded different inside.
Maybe it was because I’ve seen this thing against backdrops of mountains, deserts, beaches and forests, but it seemed wrong for it to now just be facing a brick wall in a storage lot. I didn’t like that something so central to our family can in an instant become so dormant. I’m sure this all sounds a bit corny, but it was hard to leave it.
The mixed emotions continued on Monday. We rented a U-Haul and drove over to our house to get a few things from the garage for the apartment. Our house and yard look terrible; we have some serious work to do to get it ready to sell.
Going through our stuff was fun, however…it was like opening up a time capsule. We had purged a bunch of our crap before starting our trip two years ago, but it appears we didn’t purge enough. We dropped off a few boxes at Goodwill at the end of the day, and there will be many more where those came from.
It was a long, full day of moving, but I think everyone was glad to sleep on their own mattresses and with their own bedding. It made it feel a little bit more like home.
I feel the need to do a post of “greatest hits”…just something to summarize the last two years before I bring this blog to a close, if only for my own therapy.
Stay tuned…