As I am moving stuff up from the basement I have been sorting through things, tossing junk out and consolidating things in fewer boxes and such.

It never fails that as I have been going through stuff I still find certain things that bring back specific, strong memories more than some others. I found a little trophy statuette I gave to my mom on Mother’s Day. I remember not having very much money so I gave her that and as always she was elated.

One of the other things I found was this miniature license plate keyring tag above. I believe it was in the 70s that Kansas used to send these out with license plates. If you found a lost keyring with that tag it was postage paid so it could be dropped in any mailbox and returned to the owner.

Another thing about this was Kansas had started to put the county initials (LV for Leavenworth) and an initial for your last name on the license plates plus a number. They would combine some letters together to narrow down the amount of plates to only have 12 initials – one for each month in a year – and those would expire in order each month.

I remember when Kansas decided to get rid of the initial and county on the plates; all of the nosy busybodies – who had nothing better to do than to see who was coming and going by their license plate initial and county – raised holy hell because their lives no longer had purpose and they had to finally mind their own damn business.

I also found a small wooden four-legged stool my dad & I made when I was a kid. It is still painted orange – the very same, yet faded, Burnt Orange my bedroom was painted. Don’t laugh…it matched my plaid wallpaper. Besides…they would not let me paint my room black.

When I find certain items as I am going through things it always makes me pause for a few moments and think about how long ago that was, that time in my life (like above) and, of course, my parents. I really miss them.

I do think more about them as I clean out their house to sell to someone else. It was never a permanent place for me, and much like my recent history I was once again a Caretaker. This is really the last piece of this chapter of my family’s lives coming to a close.

On a personal level, I feel that selling the house and leaving will be a very healing thing for me. Living in their house just keeps a few things stirred up that I cannot get away from as long as I am still here. It is like a “shadow”. Once I am away from the house I feel a few things will finally be at some level of peace that I could really use after ten years of mostly real horrible shit happening and constant turmoil. There was a lot of personal pain and heartache and I can now break free from it.

But, if we are open and honest with ourselves we can usually come out the other side of these types of things wiser, stronger, and probably a different – and maybe even better – person.

Time ends up passing us by before we know it was even here and it is why I live my life to the fullest; I really think that we all should. Don’t put off the things you would “like” to do…quit making excuses, get off your ass and go do them.

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I got most of the scrap metal together and loaded in the truck today. I will finish getting the rest of that together tomorrow and go turn it in Thursday. I moved more stuff upstairs and did some dusting and sweeping. There is not too much really left in the basement so I should be able to get it emptied as far as I can tomorrow. I did get a little firewood cut for tonight and may do some more tomorrow.

Having everything in the garage I can see I will not need as big of a storage unit as I thought I would. I am glad I decided to get everything upstairs to visualize that. I am trying to do the storage last minute since it nay be a few months before I can get back for things.

I will have some help in a week or so to get a few bigger things out of the basement and that will be done. I have worked ahead and gotten most everything inside the house packed up. I will finish up packing a few more kitchen things in the next day or two and start changing over to using things in the trailer.

Their appraiser shows up tomorrow and after that we should be locked in. From the looks of the forecast, I will be getting some great weather here so I will be able to do several things way ahead of schedule.

Getting ahead will give me more time to try to plan a route. That will come in handy. One option I thought of was to just head in the general direction of NW and go as far as I can while seeing as much as I can. If I need to stop due to weather then that is what happens. There are detours for some of the more difficult weather areas.

Luckily, with the options on mine like a tank heater, solar, and propane I am completely self-sufficient even in freezing weather. It is so much better equipped and so much more comfortable than my old Scotty trailer and more efficient.

I am calling this night complete and heading to bed. See you next time. We’ll be in the road soon!

Shawn