Hey, Girlfriend!

My husband and I have moved 15 times since we were married. The first 8 moves happened within 6 years. Most of our moves were the result of job promotions.
We learned we would be moving from Washington State to Southern California (YIPPEE!) the week before our wedding. The day after we returned from our Tahitian honeymoon, Jon left for California to start his new job and I stayed behind for a few days to meet the packing and loading crews.

Some of our favorite moves were Santa Barbara, Newport Beach, La Jolla, San Diego, San Francisco and then Long Beach, where we settled and made a wonderful life for 18 years.

In the beginning, we moved so often that we didn’t bother unpacking every box. I am not sure when we discovered the packers pack EVERYTHING, even kitchen and bathroom garbage!

We may have lived in San Diego when Jon’s parents brought a gigantic refrigerator box packed full of memories from Jon’s childhood. There were blankets; tee shirts from his grade school days; old hockey equipment; trophies; elementary and junior high school papers; a Cub Scouts uniform with merit badges attached; and a tiny, adorable, tan cowboy shirt with fringed sleeves, black crewel embroidery on the shoulders and plastic mother of pearl snaps up the front.

A few years ago, we moved to Arizona where we bought and remodeled a home. Our time there was short lived when Jon took a new job in Seattle, the city in which we used to live and where many of our friends and family still live.

We thought we would keep our recent Arizona house as a vacation home, but we didn’t spend enough time there. We put the house on the market and it is in escrow now. I spent the last two weeks of October in Arizona packing our belongings.

I found this research report, by my junior high aged husband, while packing for our latest move

Interesting that Jon would spend so much time working in and enjoying China decades later

We had six drawers of files stored in our garage. They were filled with old paperwork. I told myself we could not bring them to one more home, so I committed to going through every paper. I shredded and threw away anything that was no longer active or relevant. 98% of the files were antiquated with paperwork from as far back as the 1990s. Thankfully, I was careful because I found our social security cards, and a title to one of our current cars!

I filled this huge can twice with mostly shredded paper from our 6 file drawers

I found things like an invite to apply for a Laker’s credit card, from 1995 So if the Laker’s Visa doesn’t date me, this will! I am a winter.I found the awards below in a box in the garage
This award is touching, Joey Patnode was an outstanding hockey player with a promising career ahead of him. He was a mentor to Jon (and many others) and the brother of one of our groomsmen. Tragically, he died in a drowning accident.

At the end of my two weeks in sunny Arizona, the movers loaded our belongings and I spent the last night at my girlfriend Tonya’s house. We bought ingredients to make cold refreshing drinks. My hands were so raw and chapped from packing and cleaning that I couldn’t open a container or squeeze a lime without groaning from pain.

My chapped, swollen and painful hands after a luxurious hand massage

Thankfully, Tonya spent many years working in the field of beauty and knew just what my hands needed. She first massaged them with vitamin E oil and once the oil was well worked in, she continued to massage them with a special heavy duty hand cream. It was an act of care and selflessness. For just a moment, I allowed myself to take the love in.

My little friend, Tonya’s 4 lb. Parti Yorkie, True Lee

After countless games of fetch and tug-o-war with True Lee, we finally got to sit down with refreshing drinks and hors d’ hoeuvres. I thought Tonya’s ice cubes were luxurious! She puts two raspberries and a mint leaf or two in each section, then through the hole in the cover, she fills the tray with water.

An extra deep ice cube tray, perfect for festive cubes. Cranberries and mint would be pretty for the winter holidays, too.

Raspberry and mint ice cubes