First off, I hope to post something here – at least – once per week.  I think it will be good for me.  Maybe someone who reads my blog will find it good for them, too.

Second, it is getting close to the time I sell my house and move into an RV for about two years.  I’m very excited to do this but still dreading all the work involved.  I’m putting one foot in front of the other and I’m just a little behind schedule, right now.  It is so hard to get rid of “stuff”.  And I have a lot of stuff!  It gets harder when I’m shopping with a friend.  He says, “Oh let’s look, I need one of those laptop sleeves to protect my laptop when it goes in my briefcase.”  My mind clicks back a couple of weeks ago when I got rid of one, or was it two, and I start second guessing.  So, maybe I’ll write more – in another post – about being a recovering hoarder.  BTW, I do believe that their is a hoarder gene.  My mom is a hoarder, her mother was a hoarder, my father was a hoarder, his father was a hoarder, and my daughter is fighting it every day.

Finally,  I am about to be living alone again.  Mesha, Shawn, and Damian are moving into their own house.  In the Silver Lining category, I’ll be able to empty my storage unit as soon as they move out because I can move it into one of the empty rooms (see above paragraph).  But I’ll miss all their help and especially that dear boy.  He is so precious.  I keep trying to get him to call me Auntie Michelle, but he barely gets MaMa and DaDa out yet so it will be a while.  Hopefully we can stay in touch so I can hear it someday.  For those who don’t know, Mesha popped into my life in November of 2015.  She was desperate to find a safe place to live where she could work for her rent and I had just accepted a non-profit position that didn’t allow my the opportunity to hire a maid like I had been used to.  It was a win-win for us.

So for the last three years, she has been cleaning my house, cooking my meals, and helping me purge my stuff.  And she has had her first safe living situation.  We added a Shawn in 2016 and Damian came in November of 2017.  They now have two bedrooms, a half bath, and primary use of a full bath.  Shawn helps my handyman out now, too.  It has really been great because I didn’t have the money for all this help.  Another Silver Lining entry, it will be quiet.  No more barking dogs, no more crying babies, no more bumping into someone in the kitchen in the middle of the night.  Lonely.