Making Progress?

    My stuff is a key part of this entire dilemma. At least I think it is. And it is something I can, maybe, do something about, unlike most of the other parts of this dilemma -- like figuring out where home is, missing my kids so much it hurts, what to do about work, having no friends and other little sideline issues like that. 

    I just don't like the fact that most of my stuff, collected over the past two decades, is in storage. And most of my dead parents' stuff that they left me is in storage too.

    I don't like that, as a woman in her mid-fifties, I don't have a home with my stuff in it, rented or not. And I don't know if I can settle without most of my stuff around me.  

    Call me bourgeois. But first look around your own home. Do you have most of your stuff there? Then you'll see what I'm talking about.

     And it's been almost a year now. We moved out of the house we were so lucky to have sold last August and moved into a small flat downtown where we lived until we left the States in mid-February. More stuff actually fit in there than here, though, even though it was smaller. There was no infinitesimal stairwell to get around. 

     Anyway, no point crying over spilled milk or any of that. Gets your nowhere and gotta move forward. That's what my husband tells me: Move Forward.

     So, I'm taking a giant leap forward today. I'm calling both the storage companies where our stuff is (one in East London, the other in West London) to get quotes on consolidating all our stuff and moving it to the side of our hill in Italy.

    I'm going to take all our stuff there and create our new home there. Where else? Wait to get a bigger place here? Not sure I ever will.

    After I move all my stuff to Italy, I'll have all my stuff somewhere I don't actually live.

    But at least it won't be in two different storage facilities where I will never see it again -- and have to pay for that pleasure.   

     And then I'll try and divide my time between what will really become my home there, because all my stuff's there, and my rented flat here where I really do live with my husband, who works here. And thank God he's got a job 'cause there's still a year of college to pay.  

     That's what you call progress.