Little did I think Friday, when I arrived home from the office (mind still chugging through what I was going to do for my feature in Comics Buyer's Guide #1643 -- a feature which is turning out to be a lot of fun), that I'd be hearing so soon from my near-and-dear son, Stephen.
And "near" was the operative term, since it turned out that he was calling, not from his office in Washington, D.C., not from his home in Silver Spring, Md., but from Madison, Wis. -- a mere two hours' drive away! What th--?
Seems he and wife, Denise, had decided that a storage unit in Madison, where they'd been storing much of their Stuff for the past two years, had become (a) a nuisance and (b) a financial drain. So he and some of Denise's kindly (strong) family members were clearing out the storage unit into a U-Haul and were driving said truck to Denise's parents' home in Gresham (a mere one hour's drive away for me).
So Saturday morning, I drove to Gresham (much to the surprise of Denise's mom, who was not expecting me) and got there about 10 minutes before the U-Haul hove into sight. At which point, those of us with strong backs began to unload a strange assortment of Stuff into a basement. It's just as well the decision was taken at this point, because (warning! warning! warning!) you can't always count on a storage unit to be water-tight, and several boxes were starting to disintegrate.
I have come away from the experience with arms that are sore, if I move them this way (so don't move them this way, silly!), and the determination that this will be the year that sees some of my Stuff out of my house and dispersed to locales where no one of my acquaintance will have to deal with it any more.