Cutting Ties with Land

So we sold our house.  Awesome.  This means no more mortgage.  No more experiencing the frustration of waiting for the cable guy to make an appearance to basically plug in the box and talk to you like you’re an idiot.  (Funny how they always show up at the very end of the four hour window they give you, or even better, never show up at all.)  No more grass to cut.  No more raking leaves until your hands blister and you feel like you have arthritis at the ripe old age of 28. No more spending hours at Ikea or HomeGoods searching for the perfect set of curtains or duvet cover... For the seventh time (I’m actually going to miss this, Matt will not).  No more arguing over just how many decorative pillows are appropriate on a bed or couch.  (Oh come on, that’s not just us, is is?!)

However, for all of the things that we couldn’t wait to give up there is a list of equal size of the things that we WILL miss.  No more decorating the house for Christmas/Halloween/4th of July/basically any holiday with flair.  No more walking down the street to hang out with neighbors for a glass of wine and a home cooked Southern BBQ (Dave & Holly, we’re talking about you!).  No more spending an entire weekend lounging on the big comfy couch with a pizza, binge watching the latest season of whatever it was that we’re into at the time.  No more feeling the satisfaction of finishing a project that required you to spend most of the weekend at Home Depot.  I always said those big box home improvement stores smelled of optimism (or despair – it can go either way).  Our weekend trips to West Marine just aren’t the same.

Since we no longer have the house, now comes the arduous task of changing our address on just about everything.  This has to be the worst by far. Loan Documents. Insurance.  Boat related forms and registrations. EPIRB. Our bank/savings/credit card accounts.  My subscription to Real Simple magazine.  (How will I get the best tips on how to organize my closet while also learning ten new uses for baking soda?  Clearly, both are necessities in life!)  Ugh.  The list goes on and on.

Luckily I already have exceptional organizational skills and made us a huge binder that keeps all of our important boat documents in one place.  With dividers. And sheet protectors.  Maybe I don’t need that magazine subscription after all.

Behold and bask in the beauty that is The Binder.  This is like our boat version of the New Testament.  Registrations, manuals, notes from the previous owner on the intricacies of each system.  Everything.

Isn't it so beautiful? Something about staring at that big hunk of paper and plastic gives me such a sense of accomplishment. It's more than the fact that I have everything organized, it's a physical representation that we have transitioned from one way of life (life on land) to another (life on a boat). It's like WOAH! I can't believe we're actually doing this! It's official!

But back to that beautiful Binder.

It may LOOK intimdating, but it's not at all. I don’t have to troll thru the whole binder to get to everything.  I made sure to put all of the important documents in the front with a tab labeled Important.  That’s Strategery at it’s finest there, folks.  I made a list of everything I needed to update and got to work.  This was my office today.  Sure beats corporate!

I took a few breaks to tend to other projects.  Like figuring out what to do with the 10lb watermelon we so greedily bought from a local produce stand on our way home from Delaware this weekend.  Seriously, what does one do with that much watermelon?  The answer appeared to me in the July issue of Bon Appetit… cut it into chunks and freeze it so I can make frozen slushy drinks (of the adult kind) later on this summer.  I threw in some over ripe peaches as well.  I found they make awesome ice cubes in a nice glass of Sauvignon Blanc.  #summertimebliss.

Oh yeah.  Diver Mike came by to clean the thick layer of sludge and barnacles that are making themselves right at home on the bottom of our boat.  It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.  Just not us, now anyway.

That was my day.  How was yours?