A moving day

We woke up this morning to very hard rain. By the time it stopped at about 8, we had had slightly more than 3". We did get some water in the basement. John went up on the roof, and flushed out the downspout, finally discovering that the underground drain from the bottom of the downspout was stopped up. He worked in the heat and humidity for a good while, then finally decided that the smart thing to do was to abandon the old pipe, and just put in a new drainage pipe on top of the ground and English ivy.

Sue came in first, driving Matt's truck. Margaret came in later in her van. Margaret and John got the two chests loaded in her van, while Sue was packing up Pink's "blue glass" Fostoria crystal. They then got the china cabinet and boxes loaded into the truck. About that time, Vicki came by to see S&M, and to make some suggestions for paintings to hang on the naked bedroom walls. Of course, she left with a load of okra, corn on the cob, and tomatoes. Sue and Margaret then went to Lowe's to get a tarp for the truck and John's replacement drain pipe. They managed to get in a trip to the mall while they were out, too.

Having to empty and repack these chests certainly made me do some much needed purging and rearranging. There's still a lot to do in that department. But at least we've gotten a start on it. Part of the trouble with that is always having a place to put stuff while you making new place for it. With some of the furniture gone, that made it easier - there's some empty floor space.

We managed to get in a lot of talking, some carry-out Chinese for dinner, and some looking at old photos in John's mother's albums. It is quiet now - I'm the last one left up.

We must learn to seek change without violence - always change, and never violence, not even in words, much less in deeds.
We must try to understand each other by reconciling ourselves to the fact that most of us never really mature; we simply grow taller.
The Many Worlds of Leo Rosten, Leo Rosten (1962)

Today's photo is an Ancestral Puebloan storage unit near Cortez, CO.