It took far longer to recover from Covid than I had hoped but luckily things got back to normal in time for the most important thing on the calendar: the visit from the far-flung adult children! The eldest and girlfriend flew in from Portland OR on a Saturday night and then promptly took off for a short getaway to Montreal. They returned on Wednesday in time for the youngest to arrive on Thursday night from Boston and for a few days we had a completely full house: two kids, two girlfriends, one crazy dog and lots of plans!

Part of what was on the agenda was our final family gathering in this country to celebrate our 33rd anniversary. It was so wonderful to have everyone here even if just for a little while. We had a lovely night out with dinner and cocktails then stayed up way too late weeding through baby pictures and other memorabilia. The less fun part of the agenda was the packing up of stuff that the adult children were claiming as their own as we prepared for the mass fire sale of household goods that needs to occur before we can hit the road.

So the pair with two free bags on Southwest cleaned out many of my appliances (did you know that KitchenAid stand mixers weigh 25 pounds?!) along with childhood toys, sheets, towels, and 3 boxes of other items. The boxes got pretty demolished in transit but we think everything made it okay. The youngest Cannon stayed through the weekend but drove away with MUCH more stuff: family heirloom furniture, dishes, glassware, my bicycle, most of the plants. The 10 foot Uhaul wasn’t stuffed to the brim but it was pretty full.

As we closed up the truck and got ready for her to hit the road, my work visa was delivered. It takes up a full page in my passport and shows that I am approved to enter the country as a Skilled Worker as of November 14. Given that we have tentatively planned to buy plane tix for the 15th, things couldn’t have worked out better. But now the last things that we were waiting for to make thing truly real have happened. No more “wait until after the kids leave” or “wait until after we have the visa sorted”. Now it’s really time to get things going.

So if you are in the Rochester area, you will notice that there are more than a dozen items on FB marketplace. This of course means that I am getting spam messages at the rate of about 10 per hour. Sometimes, though, they are genuine and we get to see our stuff being passed along to someone else who will appreciate it. This morning we had just such and experience: a young couple (okay, younger than us…) who just moved here from the west coast into a house a few blocks away came by to look at our dining room table. It’s solid cherry with multiple leafs and 8 chairs and can seat 10-12 people. We’ve had it for 15 years but it’s time for someone else to take it. And one of the couple is the youngest of 7 and is hoping to be able to host the family Thanksgiving now that they have a house and not an apartment. I LOVE the idea that they’ll use the table the way that we did.

I also love the fact that they have no furniture and were very happy to buy the coffee tables and end tables from the living room and family room, the master bedroom furniture, a chair and mirror from the living room and the doggie gate that I hadn’t even thought to sell. So that decreased the number of FB and Craigslist ads and helps to really jump start the cleaning out process.

Which is a good thing because we are out of excuses and the clock is ticking!