it's "boxing" day

 Well, no, not really, that's December 26. But today I'm going to try to clear up some stuff to make space for the workers to "pop out" the windows as the GC said (I really, really hope his assessment was wrong and that won't need to be done, but I'm going to prepare as if it has to be) - there's stuff in my bedroom (the whole rack of CDs under one window, the old Papasan chair that I mostly stack quilts on now) that can easily be moved, and stuff in the guest room that can be moved. 

The challenge is - much of this stuff is stuff I don't WANT to put in the storage unit (some of it won't survive the heat) and there's not a lot of room in my house. I CAN stack stuff in my newly-cleaned sewing room closet, but not all of it. I'm going to make sure the dining room's ready (that will be easy enough and that's where they're gonna start) and I can do a little in the kitchen (but the bulk of it will have to be done right before the guys work, because otherwise I won't be able to cook or wash dishes). My bedroom and the guest room would be the easiest to do (mostly - I will probably remove all the stuffed animals from my bed early in the day they're due to work in that room - I don't sleep well without them in the bed, but I know they'll need to move stuff around and as I said, I recognize that it's a weird thing for anyone, let alone an adult, to have that many stuffed animals in their bed. I have a couple of laundry baskets I can put them in and move them to another room)

I'm REALLY anxious about this. Anxious that the "biopsy" of my house when they take off the siding will reveal an "inoperable cancer" and I'll be faced with either spending more money than I can possibly scrape together to make it livable, or finding a different place to live. The worst thing would be, what would I do with my piano? In an apartment that would be a no-go, and most of the available-for-rent places are small enough it wouldn't be doable. 

I'm also anxious that there's going to be problems that inflate the estimate beyond the point where I can easily pay. Yes, I could take out a loan against my retirement fund BUT that also means instead of a couple years of extreme belt-tightening, it would be something like 10-15 years of extreme belt-tightening, to the point where I don't take vacations, or buy books or fabric, or do anything but replace clothes as they wear out. It's hard to live like that. 

And even beyond those anxieties, there's the anxiety of having Guys in the house - making noise, cutting stuff, touching and moving my stuff. One of the reason I'm boxing up as much as I can because I figure I'll care more about it than someone else and things will be less likely to get lost or broken (I remember when the movers my parents used had to box up stuff we didn't get packed at the last minute, and ALL the damage we had claims for was on the stuff they packed, and some stuff that was irreplaceable got damaged)

It's REALLY hard doing all of this all alone. I have visions of me coming back from my Tuesday morning doctor's checkup and him meeting me in the yard and going "hey we have bad news did you know..." and pointing out something REALLY wrong underneath the old siding they are supposed to be pulling off. And no, I WOULDN'T know, I've only ever lived before in newer houses and also I was a kid/teen and Other People took care of that stuff, and....one of the other things that annoys me about this is feeling stupid when the guy points out something that I maybe should have known but did not. 

Anyway. If I ever buy another house (unlikely at this point and I'm praying I'm able to hang on to this one), I'm definitely not buying an 80 year old one; I'll get the newest one I can afford.