3 Days, 9 Days, 15 Days...

...and Counting.

This is our last weekend of peace, quiet and order in our apartment and I am enjoying it. It's a rainy Sunday morning and Manila from my window is buried in fog and wet. On Wednesday the move begins in earnest. That is the day the movers come in and start packing. A week Tuesday they will load us out of here and we'll be off to the hotel. The following Monday (July 4) I'll be on the plane.

In between sorting, selling (220volt appliances mostly) and gifting, I've spent most of the past week designing the new blog. I don't recall this one being quite so complicated when I built it 4 years ago but I suppose it's because instead of using a basic template I'm changing it up and customizing it a whole lot more which has required learning a bit about coding. This is taking hours and hours of nit-picking, which suits me fine and distracts me beautifully from thoughts of the chaos that is coming my way.

I've decided to create this new blog for the new life, partially because I don't want to disappoint both of my readers, but mostly because I've had a blast writing this one. It's turned out to be a great memory maker of the last 4 years and when I go back and reread parts I'm always smiling. A picture or a cartoon or a joke or a story brings back the sights, sounds, smells and feelings. Even "in memory" posts brings me back to the lives before the passing, and I still smile.

My blog is not open, meaning it will not be found through a search engine, nor does it show up on Blogger lists. I'm not interested in a wide audience. It's still for family and friends (and, as it turns out, their family and friends) and I'll keep the next one that way too. Every now and then I'll get an email from someone I didn't know was reading it and that's always way fun, but for the most part I write for me, which solves the issue of "finding my voice". Finding inspiration comes with the curiosity. I see something or hear something or think of something that sparks the urge to write about it, a fine way to entertain myself.

It also may be a way of deluding myself to believe that I'm compensating for my lazy-making habits of not staying in touch often enough!