Last night when I got home I wanted to do some more prep for the painting that starts bright and early Saturday morning.  Frank stressed to me that the less stuff that is in the living space, the better in terms of knocking everything out efficiently.  After looking at the weather forecast for the next few days that appear precipitation free I decided that one way I could clear space was by moving some furniture out to the covered part of the lanai. I moved furniture from the guest bedroom and office out there last night.  The stuff that remains in those spaces should be able to moved as needed without major hassle for the painters.

I plan to move more stuff out there between tonight and tomorrow, which I took off.  Of course moving furniture requires some grunt work.  I utilized furniture sliders for most of it.  With the few really heavy pieces that I will keep in the house I plan to put sliders under them so the painters can move things pretty easily. It’s taken some time to be drawn up on my mental whiteboard but I think I have a workable plan in place to get to the painting finish line.

During my last riding video I spoke about the house situation and how I feel like I am getting to the light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel in this case being the house painted and put back together.  I also talked about the longer term goal of finding/moving into a new home with less demands and more convenient geography which will add to my overall quality of life.

Much like I’ve experienced with the house prep, at this point there are a lot of question marks as to how I will get to the final goal.  I used an EUC riding analogy.  When learning to ride the advice I have given repeatedly is to look up, look forward towards where you are going.  When you look down at your feet it causes instability and a potential loss of control.  When you look ahead your body takes over and the mind takes the co-pilot seat.  At this point in regards to my future living situation I am focusing on the intent I have and less on the ins and outs of how I will arrive there.

I have been continuing to run scenarios in my head on how the interior painting is going to go this weekend.  To be proactive I took Friday off to allow me time to move whatever furniture that still needs it.  I will also be doing a last minute clearing out of the pantry and master closet.  I have not quite figured out where I will shove all that stuff yet.  I will also be taking Elsa to Ali’s place for the weekend so she will not be in the middle of what surely will be chaos.  I haven’t quite figured out what I am going to be doing while there is an army of painters in the house.  I am thinking I will have my laptop set up outside and get some yard work done as I need to be available as needed if something pops up.  When the painting wraps up I need to then reorient/refurnish the house, albeit a much more minimalist version of it.  Once that is done, I can finally sit down, take a deep breath and evaluate.

I have had conversations with friends about the house scenario.  In those conversations I have expressed some of my reservations about selling/moving, much of which centers around the unknown outcomes.  The saying, “a bird in hand is better than two in a bush” is famous for a reason.  In this case, I have a home that I love and know.  More than one of my friends have suggested that there is no reason I have to sell, and they are right.  Maybe a fresh face on the house and tremendously less amount of things in it should be enough of a change, for now.  Of course I have thought about that scenario.  However when I do I have equated it to someone fearful of jumping off the high dive climbing to the top of the platform, sticking their toes over the edge, look down, and then retreat back to the ladder, climbing down to the firm ground that they are familiar with.  I have come this far, it seems stupid to not jump at this point, to me.  One of my favorite sayings is “do the hard thing, the power will come”.  I am putting trust in those words.

I once again have rolled into a prolonged period of time where my quality of sleep has been lacking.  The simple act of falling asleep can be challenging unless I am absolutely exhausted.  The maddening scenario is when I wake up around 3-4 AM and my mind clicks on, refusing to quiet down no matter how much I want to go back to sleep.  I have always had a big focus on health and wellness.  Inadequate sleep is an anchor that can drag everything else down with it.  Sure I prop myself up artificially with caffeine during the day but that is certainly not treating the problem, just the symptoms.

I got a report from Ali that Sadie likely had another seizure and her ability to stand and support her own weight continues to go downhill.  I think we will have to make an emotionally crushing but necessary decision, soon.

My Monday had a lot of similarities to my Saturday and Sunday where the tedious process of deciding what does/doesn’t matter and then acting accordingly is repeated hundreds of time.  This process resulted in a huge pile of things by the street to be freely taken by whomever wanted them, a bunch of things that were not thrown being relocated to the small shed, and the garage and utility room having most of the stuff removed from them.  I also temporarily relocated all of my PEVs to the chicken coop until the painting is done.

The biggest hurdle I am going to have is trying to move furniture to enable them to paint certain rooms. I may try to temporarily stick some furniture on the covered part of the lanai to make it more workable. There will also be a last minute rush to empty the closet and pantry so those areas can be painted.  It’s weird but in some ways it feels like this part of the journey might be more bumpy than the move itself since I have already done a substantial amount of heavy lifting when it comes to simply getting rid of stuff, the hardest part of any move.

Late in the afternoon I went on another stress relieving ride, this time on my Begode T4.  It’s 16 inch form factor is a lot of fun to zip around on.  During the ride I talked about my incoming Sherman S and the state of the house prep work.  It felt good to get out of the house and just do something I enjoy.

I saw in my USPS informed delivery email that I have a citation coming from the city of Downey, one last annoying reminder of the shit show which was the AirBnB that we stayed at.  The citation is because the rental car was left on the street during the street cleaning day, something I was not made aware of by the AirBnB host until the day of the cleaning, after I was already out of the area.  I can hardly wait to pay my citation.

This past weekend was the Naples Half Marathon, for many years this was one of the most stressful times of the year when I was the race timer for the running club.  This was the most prestigious event we held with people coming from all over the country and world to participate.  It was a tremendous responsibility that I took very seriously.  Well one year I had an unmitigated disaster where I failed in upholding that responsibility.

Without getting too technical, the timing devices that were used have a unique code associated with them.  Each one of these devices is assigned to a runner bib number which is associated to a runner.  When setting up the timing system for a race there is a file that gets loaded that has all of these codes in them.  You get this file from the chip vendor when you buy chips.  It’s not a complicated process and I did it for every race before without issue which perhaps made me too complacent.

So as the first elite runner crossed the finish line I noticed a chip code for the runner popped up instead of the runners name, odd.  I also was running a manual timer as a back up where you hit a button as a runner crosses.  However once large amounts of runners start coming across simultaneously it becomes unreliable.  As more elite runners started crossing and all I saw was codes I felt sick to my stomach, something was screwed up.  This was my worst case scenario.

Distance runners care about how they did against their competition and the way they do that is via the official race timing, which I could not provide.  I had other club members shielding me from questions as I feverishly tried to figure out what happened, which I finally did.  The code file I got from the vendor was incorrect causing the mismatch.  I desperately tried getting someone from their support to see if they had the ability to send me the correct chip file which would have allowed me to correct the issue, they could not provide it to me.  I was dead in the water, I had failed.  So although the error was from the vendor, the cold truth was I could have scanned a few chips before the race just to verify everything looked ok.  I could have caught it.

So we did a half ass awards ceremony where we were only able to hand out a few awards based on the manual timing we captured at the finish.  I am the type of person that takes any responsibility I agree to take on seriously, failing that responsibility to thousands of runners hit me hard. The club got a letter from the mayor at the time, who was also a runner, complaining about how disappointed he was that the race results were not available.  Similar complaints rained in over the next several days and I deserved every one of them.  That feeling of failure ate at me and even though the race was over and the damage was done I was still trying to figure out a way to make things right.  I then came up with an idea.

There was a race photographer at the event that took a picture of every finisher.  I asked him if he would be willing to let me have those finish line shots.  He said I could but was curious what I wanted them for.  I told him I was going to use them to provide race results, manually. He was a bit shocked but sent me the thousands of pictures.  What followed was hours upon hours of work where I was cross referencing the timing data that I captured with the finish line photos which allowed me to associate a runner bib number with the chip code.  In the end I was able to formulate nearly complete results for every participant, albeit a week late.  It was one of my biggest failures but also turned out to be a one of my biggest triumphs as a race timer in the end.  I don’t give up.

As expected my weekend has been pretty stuffed with precious few breaks.  On Friday night after eating pizza I turned my attention to the office.  I set my sights on getting my old desk ripped down, out to the curb and replaced by the glass desk that has sat unused in the office for a year and a half.  My desk had a lot of shit on and in it.  I used it as an opportunity to do some more culling, tossing out things that had no viable use anymore.

After clearing the desk getting it out to the curb actually was not that bad, a well utilized hand truck can make all things possible.  Ripping out the old desk was actually a little easier than figuring out how to reestablish my core workstation on the new smaller glass desk.  I probably spent a solid hour getting everything hooked back up in a way that was acceptable to me.  The good news is when it comes time to move things for interior painting next weekend this desk has wheels.  Unplugging a couple things from the wall should be all that is needed to make my computer portable.

Elsa was not a fan of me removing the old desk as she always liked hiding under there by my feet.  I have come up with a workaround with the new desk that allows her to go under there if she wants although the experience is clearly not the same.

I set my alarm for 6:15 Saturday morning in anticipation of Frank’s painting crew.  When I moved my Tesla out of the garage there was already a car in the driveway with some of the crew even though it was only 6:45.  Hey I’ll always be a fan of being early instead of late.  The rest of the crew showed up within a few minutes.  No time was wasted at all as there was paint getting put on the walls a few minutes after 7 AM.  It was interesting seeing how the crew of 6 or 7 worked.  There were guys with the pole rollers that were covering large sections of wall but stopping a couple inches from the top and bottom.  Others were the detail painters who would do those last couple inches as well as the tricky spots like around the window casings.

Frank was inside the house early sanding down the spots on the ceiling he repaired last week.  The repair looks good now, unfortunately the work unleashed a storm of plaster dust that covered a large area in the main living space.  I don’t really think it could be avoided, sanding sort of does that.  I ran out to do a couple errands with Elsa.  When I got back I was amazed at just how far they had gotten.  When the house was last painted it was by spray gun, I couldn’t believe they did this with rollers and paint brushes.

When I first saw the main color applied to the walls I had a bit of hesitation as it looked very close to the color of the metal roof, the lack of contrast concerned me a bit.  However as it dried and the second coat was applied the paint color lightened a bit, leaving me with an end result I really liked. The crew was completely done by 2:30 PM.  For some reason I thought this was going to be a multiple day job, I was very, very wrong.

I paid Frank and thanked him for the good work.  We talked about next weekend and the need for me to make sure as much stuff as possible is out of their way since he will have an even larger crew doing the work this time.  I assured him I will do as much as I can but there is no way to avoid having to move some things around as the paint is applied.  If I wasn’t still living here it would be a different story.  He said worse case if a lot of moving needs to be done he could charge me a relatively small amount for the extra time/effort needed which was fine with me.

Once they left I wasted little time heading out to the lanai to install the new fan that was picked out earlier in the week.  It’s a more modern black fan that looks great against the new grey base color.  Installation was pretty simple compared to some of the numerous fan installs I have done over the years.  I think it looks good.

Despite a very long day I had a live stream scheduled for Saturday night.  It was the first time I had done a conventional style stream from home in awhile.  What wasn’t conventional was the visual.  I was using the new desk, a new camera, the mic was converted to a tabletop style, and the furniture in the room was mostly missing.  It was a long stream that touched 3 hours.  There were a lot of funny moments along the way.

I was tired, staying in bed until almost 8AM this morning, late for me.  When I took Elsa out to the bathroom I did a quick double take, forgetting for a second that the house was just painted.  I like the color combo even more on day two which was a good feeling.  My bill paying session was terrible because I had the credit card statement from Christmas to reconcile which is always the most brutal and lengthy of the year.  I then also had all of the charges from the PA trip and California so in total I was working on bills/reconciliation for at least an hour and a half.  After returning from the coffee/Home Depot run with Elsa I turned my attention indoors.

Frank had made the suggestion I get some fresh white weather stripping for the freshly painted front door.  He said it will help give that fresh appearance when someone walks in the front door.  I appreciated the suggestion and popped the new strips in.  He was right, it makes a difference.

I then turned my attention to the main living space that had a layer of dust on most surfaces.  I thoroughly cleaned all of the counters, vacuumed the floor and then followed up with the steam cleaner to grab whatever was left.  The space felt and looked cleaner than it has in quite awhile which was welcomed.  The visual chaos that has been associated with this process has been one of the more unpleasant aspects of it all.  The cleaning swung the needle back the other way a little bit.

During the afternoon my main focus became the garage which also needed to be cleared for painting.  I came up with what I thought was a good plan, utilizing the small shed for temporary storage.  However when I went into the small shed I discovered another treasure trove of unwanted/unneeded items. Much like other areas of the house, I never did a thorough clean up of the shed in the last 18 months so I was able to clear up a TON of space.  Much of it went straight to the curb where several curb shoppers helped themselves to the items almost immediately which was great.

So with this additional space cleared I started the process of moving things I DID still want in the garage to the small shed which will make painting the garage much cleaner.  I made a good dent in the garage and plan to continue the strategy tomorrow as well as doing something similar with all the stuff that is in the laundry room.  Evaluate, curb, throw out and whatever I deem worthy can go in the small shed for now until painting is done.  It actually is working pretty well.  I am utilizing the wheelbarrow to make each trip more impactful.

I also went around and put things back on the exterior of the house like the hose hangers and some additional gutter down spout where I pulled the water barrel from.  The only Ring camera I reattached was the front door camera.  The devices on the east and west side of the structure are going in a box for now.  It was a very productive day.  I’m hoping for similar results tomorrow.

Although my churn and burn attitude has remained mostly intact doing this massive clean up there have been a few moments where I have sputtered.  There were a couple times on Saturday while the painting was being done where I just sort of sat and stared at the space, feeling a bit lost.  Luckily those moments were relatively brief until my inner taskmaster was back on my shoulder telling me to get back to work.  There just isn’t time for reflection at this point and time.  Maybe once the house painting is done I can pull the foot off the gas and coast, just a little bit.

Yesterday morning I went out to to feed the two office black cats as I do every morning.  The more dominant cat that has white paws will always come over to me as I  put the food down.  Yesterday he did not.  Instead he was laying on the outdoor pet bed I got them last year and was just looking at me.  I was concerned something was wrong with him.  I got closer and did not see any physical signs of an issue.  I put the food down anyway which the other cat quickly started eating and went back inside, concerned.

Throughout the morning I kept glancing out the window to see if white paws came over to the food, I did not see him.  Mid-afternoon I went back out to check on him.  He was still on the pet bed.  I plopped myself down on the cement pad next to where his bed was and just hung with him a bit to observe.  A few times he stretched his legs and crossed them while he sort of turned his head into the bed, something I associate with a cat being happy/content, not sick.  The second cat came closer than normal and laid down, not wanting to miss out on our first ever cat hang out session. I was probably out there for 10 minutes but got the sense he was ok, just tired for some reason.  When I went back out today he came over to eat so hopefully all is well.

Yesterday I played pickleball at lunch and after work out at the park by the house.  At the end of the session last night I played two competitive singles games against Jeff that included a ton of hard charging, stop and go action that left my knees feeling like hamburger at the end of play. I love playing but I also love walking without a limp so I need to be a bit smarter when it comes to walking that line as to how much is too much.

Last night marked the third night in a row where I didn’t do anything significant in terms of continuing the prep of the house for sale.  I have found my motivation reserves on the low side this week which is less than ideal timing considering what lies ahead of me.  Tomorrow the exterior of the house is due to be painted, I only a have a few tasks to complete to facilitate that luckily.  Inside I came up with the idea of dismantling/disposing of my huge, ugly, but effective computer desk.  I have a smaller/cleaner glass style desk in the room that I should be able to migrate my stuff to which should be more visually appealing to show the house.  I have an extended three day weekend so I will need to kick myself in the ass and take advantage of that time to get the interior of the house as ready as possible for painting the following weekend.  My goal is to have anything and everything I can do short of pulling clothes out of the closets done before I return to work on Tuesday.

I have a lot of navigation to do to figure out how this potential transition is going to eventually work out.  I need to run scenarios, come up with multiple solutions depending on circumstances, while doing my best to maintain a stable platform to keep the rest of my life moving forward as normally as possible.  Of course I have ample experience knowing that whatever you think/plan is going to happen quite often gets thrown out the window.  It’s in those times where improvisation becomes a valuable skill.

My sanitation driver(s) are very thoughtful.  Routinely I come home on trash day and find one or both trash cans in the middle of the driveway.  I completely understand why taking an extra 5-10 seconds to put the cans down with the robotic arm on the truck on the side of the driveway would be impractical for them.  It’s much faster and fun to start moving as the can is being returned to block the home owners driveway.  I feel badly I forgot to give them a Christmas card.

Last night after work I had my second evening in a row where I did absolutely nothing related to prepping the house for sale.  Instead I headed down to East Naples to play some pickleball, playing both singles and doubles.  My singles game has been pretty solid recently, doubles can be hit and miss.  I have always preferred singles as I like the challenge of 1 on 1 competition.  However doubles are significantly less punishing physically which is something I should give more weight to as I get older.  With doubles I feel myself getting more frustrated when I make a mistake because I also feel like I am letting down my partner.  Even though it was on the chilly side I lost my sweatshirt after the first game.  I didn’t get home until around 10 but felt my time was well spent.

Yesterday I talked to my dad, it was his 76th birthday.  During the call he gave me some sad news, his longtime friend Jay of more than 50 years had recently passed away.  Growing up we used to visit Jay and Jerry with my parents although I think the last time I saw Jay was at my sister Meg’s wedding many years ago. The two things that I remembered about Jay growing up was his Austin Healy Bugeye Sprite and his amazing model train set up. I could tell my dad was affected heavily by the loss and understandably so.

A couple days ago I also saw that the brother of a friend of mine from school recently passed away, he was 56 years old, a scarce year older than I am.  I’m getting to the age that this is going to happen more and more frequently but seeing his passing gave me pause.

It made me think about how you never really know how long you are going to be walking this planet and why it is important to make the most of your time that is gifted upon you.  That is part of why I have put new found effort into trying to connect with people in meaningful ways instead of surface only platitudes.  I feel the risk of putting myself out there is worth the potential reward.  I want my time left to be memorable, with more laughs, love and adventures than I know what to do with.

Last night after work I picked up a new fan for the covered area outside the slider to the lanai.  Years ago I put another fan out there that was specifically for outdoors.  The main component that made it that way were plastic blades that supposedly resisted the droop and sag conventional blades suffer from when placed outdoors exposed to heat and moisture.  Well guess what, they still have wilted like an old flower, making the fan look unattractive.  With listing the house I want things to look appealing not droopy so the modern black fan I will be replacing it with should have more eye appeal.  It was dark when I got home so I wasn’t going to try to swap the fan by flashlight.

I had a lazy mindset last night, not doing anything significant regarding house prep. I was tired, my trashcan was stuffed to the brim and out at the curb so I used that as an opportunity to just have a “normal” evening.  It felt odd. Now that I will be returning home to an empty trash container the festivities can resume.

Saturday Frank showed up as promised at 7AM to start prepping.  His goal was to patch the area of the ceiling that had a small but long crack and pressure wash the house in anticipation of painting the exterior next weekend.  As I walked outside with him he asked about removing stuff that would be in the way for washing/painting.  I have been so focused on working on the inside I paid little attention to the outside.  All of a sudden I went into fire drill mode armed with some hand tools and one of my cordless drills, removing a couple dozen things.  The biggest subtraction was the water barrel which was still functional but the wooden stand I made 15 years ago or more was falling apart so I just ripped it all down and put the barrel out front for the curb shoppers.

During the morning I continued cleaning up the interior, dropped off paint and chemicals at the recycling center, dropped another box at Goodwill and then mowed the grass when I got home.  Frank had entertained the idea of starting to paint the front of the house but decided against it.  He headed out after finishing up the pressure cleaning around 1 or 1:30.  Once he left I kept going.  I made more progress on the hobby room.  The spare desk that was in the office went to the curb as well. It was a productive day.

On Sunday morning I had a bit of a slower start.  After grabbing coffee Elsa and I did a lap around the park, something I have really been slacking on lately.  Once I got home late morning the clean up resumed.  The white shelf that was by the front door was taken out to the curb, it was picked up in less than 30 minutes.  I delivered a bunch of things to the curb during the day, I would say 2/3 of it was picked up already which is great as it does not require me to transport or lug it elsewhere. I also took a number of filled boxes out to the old chicken coop where I had one of my hobby benches set up to hold them.  It made the main living space look a little less chaotic. The hobby room now has nothing left on the walls and a few things in the closet.  Getting that space handled is a big relief.

Later in the afternoon I hopped on my EX20S for a ride to Dunkin Donuts.  Riding a wheel is very therapeutic for me, turning whatever is front and center in my mind into background noise.  The suspension on this wheel is so soft that it feels like I am riding on a cushion.  The video covers whatever random thoughts popped into my head at the time.

I got to watch the Eagles/Giants game which had a favorable outcome.  The win secured the Eagles with the best record in the NFC giving them a bye week for the first round of playoffs which can be a huge advantage.  It gives them an extra week to get as healthy as possible for a serious playoff push.

I talked recently in my video from last weekend about how my life had reached a point where I was straying from a very established path by deciding to try to sell my house.  Through various periods of upheaval in my life during the last 21 years the place I lay my head at night has always been the same.  The idea that I someday would need to walk away from the place was always in the back of my mind.  The amount of work it requires to maintain, especially since I have been single this time around has been overbearing at times. It’s time to change.

I have never been a huge fan of change and quite often will resist it far longer than it makes sense, at times to my detriment.  The change that is ahead of me is massive, imposing, and filled with question marks. Yet, it is also necessary.  My path is clearly diverging from the main trail I have wandered confidently on for decades.  The new direction is not clearly defined and leads to an unknown destination with unknown consequences.  My life has had a lot of calculated and predictable situations.  I generally like to know what I am getting into as it gives me the best opportunity to have successful outcomes.  I don’t know what is around this blind corner.

Last night on the way home I stopped at Sport Clips to get my hair cut once again.  I had yet a different stylist this time named Kathy.  It’s interesting comparing how each person goes about doing a skin fade style differently.  She was on the quiet side compared to the other two stylists I have had there but I felt she did a good job.  Paying someone to cut my hair makes me realize just how quickly my hair grows.

When I got home last night I looked at the half ripped apart hobby room and felt compelled to get back in there, despite not really wanting to.  Now that this genie is out of the bottle with dates and expectations I have to keep pushing.  Once again I wound up lugging out large things solo, this time being the desk that was in the room.  I pulled it out into the garage and will set it by the street tonight or tomorrow.  Last night the garbage can was put out and I stuffed it with more things from the room, the supply is endless. There is still a long, long way to go.

Tomorrow Frank is supposed to come to the house to pressure wash the exterior in preparation for painting it the following weekend.  He also wants to patch the high point of the ceiling in the main living space to prep for the interior painting which is tentatively scheduled for the 21st.  He will be there early which will get me up and running as well which is a good thing.

So when I became single during late summer 2021 I started a journey, clumsily at times of self analysis with a goal of pushing against long time boundaries that in many cases were entirely self imposed.  Some of these boundaries felt cemented into the ground at times but with consistent effort and pressure, even those started to move.  I had to work hard to get my mind moving in a forward direction instead of treading water or looking over my shoulder at what was in the past.  The more effort I put into positive thinking, more positive things started to come my way.  With a change in mental direction, new opportunities came with it.  Many of these carried a degree of discomfort with the latest and greatest example being my decision to actively try to sell my home, which is one of the biggest boundaries I have.

So you may ask, why do I feel the need to do these things?  You seem to have had a pretty good situation going, why not just be comfortable in what you already have, know, and expect? Why mess with an established good thing?  Because I want to keep moving.  To me happiness is not a static destination that you magically attain.  It’s a constant journey and it’s that journey where the satisfaction is to be harvested from, not a particular destination. My relationship with Kerri has been a catalyst to embrace change even further, not fear it.

I have spent too long being a mental prisoner to my past.  I’m going to keep moving forward, who knows where that momentum will take me.