Sandra’s Miscellany

Can you believe it? The dSO and I are thinking about moving into a house. We have a couple of candidates we’re looking at, but haven’t completely decided whether to pursue it or not.

My biggest problem isn’t with moving in. That’s a cinch: Cart my clothes over and I’m done. It’s the getting of things that gives me the heebie-jeebies. Furniture! Ick. Cookware and dinnerplates! Ick. A sofa! Ick.

I’ve lived for the past 6 years with as many things as will fit on a nice-size boat, and that’s been wonderful. There’s a freeing feeling to being able to pack up your life into a van and go somewhere (which we did for Hurricane Rita).

I’m not saying I don’t have plenty of junk to deal with, because I do — papers that just don’t quite make it to the garbage, a drawer starting to bulge with photographs I still need to scan, the paraphernalia of being a pubbed author (bookmarks, author copies, my little Post-It notes with my name on them). If I were to put my mind to it and make some decisions, I could get that stuff down to a single box. So it’s not as bad as it sounds.

But I am pondering how it will be to live with general “stuff” again.

I suppose it’s not the stuff so much as my attitude toward it that matters. If I don’t let it own me — if I see the stuff as a collection of tools rather than as a millstone around my neck — I’ll be okay with it. I’ve called the Salvation Army to come cart off all my furniture before… Maybe the trick is to be able to do that again.

Regardless of what we decide, we’ll still be on the Texas coast, contrary to anything my fake bio may be saying in the front of Dead Reckoning….