Back to the Drawing Board...

Maybe I jinxed the house, after all.  I got a call from the realtor yesterday that I'd been mysteriously misquoted on the rent.  It was $100 more than my limit.  Sigh.  I could feel the house slipping through my fingers.

Back to the drawing board, then.  There were two other houses we looked at that I could afford.  The best of the two was missing part of a fence along one side, so I volunteered my dad and I to build that fence, if the owner would let us deduct materials from the first month's rent.  Haven't heard about that proposal.  Plan C is a smaller house on a slightly busier street, but if the answer is no on the Fence House, then I'll call the Plan C house and see if it's still available. If it isn't... guess what?  I'm driving back to Bentonville tomorrow morning and truly starting the search over.

Meanwhile, I'm packing my belongings to move them.... somewhere.  I spent almost all day yesterday packing books and closets.  I can't even look in Grayson's room.  When he gets home Tuesday night we have to spend some serious time together, culling things from his vast collection. I told him he could keep the money from any of his stuff he sold in the Garage Sale on Saturday, hoping to motivate the boy to let go of more stuff.  He's got toys he hasn't touched in over a year, plus bins and boxes of what I call "junk" – just random bits of things: Happy meal toys, prizes from birthday parties and Chuck E Cheese, plastic animals, things made of Sculpey, a million high-bounce balls, souvenirs from zoos and museums, trinkets and JUNK.  I'm tempted to pour it all into a big cardboard box and put a "25 cents each" sign on it.  But there will certainly be some treasure in there he can't bear to part with, so we'll have to go through it together.

For my part, I culled my books down to 16 boxes, not counting the three or four boxes of picture books and children's books that were already in the garage.  It wasn't the cut I intended, but culling books is always so hard! Some books I've had for twenty years and, though I really have no reason to keep them... I've had them for twenty years!  How can I part with them now?

 I know, for example, that I have not opened my giant, onion-skin paged two-volume Anthology of American Literature from grad school since the 1990s.  But in it went.  Sigh.  I saw my notes on Robert Frost penciled in the margin and it just felt like betrayal to let it go.

I wonder about the trees...

Speaking of Frost. There's a Frost poem that has been running through my head these last few days.  I've quoted it before, here or elsewhere.  It speaks to me.  It's called The Sound of Trees. 
In it, Frost says

They are that that talks of going

But never gets away;

And that talks no less for knowing,

As it grows wiser and older,

That now it means to stay.

It always reminded me of myself:  dreaming and talking about going off somewhere, making a change. But I never did. I never followed through on it. Until now.

I shall set forth for somewhere,

I shall make the reckless choice

Some day when they are in voice

And tossing so as to scare

The white clouds over them on.

I shall have less to say,

But I shall be gone.