It's Almost "Go Time!!"

I can’t remember when I last updated, but lots has progressed since that moment. After all, it’s almost “Go Time” and I need to get my rear in gear if we want this moving thing to be successful. 

The whole packing process started out pretty well. In fact, it actually started the night we decided we were moving. PJ was all gung ho and decided that we should pack the kitchen. Lately, he has mentioned several times that perhaps it wasn’t the best idea. I agree, but personally, I like not having a sink full of dishes to clean. All of our dishes fit into our literally mini dish washer and I can do a load a day and have clean dishes for the next day. Regardless, he has needed a few things that are just too inconvenient to get to. So, we improvise a lot of the time. And, it works.

The next day, I packed up the majority of everything that we don’t use or that we just forgot we had. I can’t honestly say that I missed much of it. I do get a thrill of going through it though to see what treasures I don’t use and probably still won’t. It will have a use someday. By the way, I have no problem with throwing stuff away. I am not a hoarder, honest. I’ve thrown a TON of stuff away in this packing process, taken many trips to the dumpster and expect to take at least a few more within the next 4 days.

Yes, we only have 4 days, not counting today until we move. Truthfully, it seems like forever away. Thankfully though, I am more prepared for it than I was 2 days ago. I put a fire under my own tushy and made an extensive list of what needed to be done each day that we still had time to prepare. Mostly, I wanted some personal reassurance that by it getting done, it would release the “oh my word! The house is a filthy wreck! We have stuff everywhere!” And, it did!

When I got up yesterday, I ate breakfast and then almost immediately started my To-Do list. First on it was the car. I was pretty crummy and I wanted to get it all spiffed up before we moved. I spent about an hour plus some vacuuming it out with my mom’s vacuum cleaner that she lent me. It has a hose, unlike ours. I personally think I did a better job that if I was to go to the carwash place. You pay $1.00 to use the hose for 4 minutes. I’d typically use $5.00 worth and then have to settle for the little crumbs that I just couldn’t get and didn’t need to spend another $1.00 for. This time, I was able to spend as much time as I needed to get it clean. I wanted to save the seats and plastic stuff for the next day.

Later that evening, after my nap, I spent about 5 hours cleaning which mostly consisting of cleaning the smudges off the walls that I could reach, cleaning the baseboards (with a dryer sheet, which I got from Pinterest), cleaning the edges of every place I could reach (there were A LOT of dead buggies shoved in those crevices…even some with PAINT on them, which means that the previous owners forgot them and the maintenance people just painted over them…yuck.) I also packed some loose stuff that had been bugging me, vacuumed the carpet that I could get to, reorganized everything so that it looked better and less like “the house is a disaster, we are in the process of moving,” and cleaned all the shelves and drawers in the house, which included the kitchen, bathroom and closet. 

Today, I woke up, ate breakfast, and got ready to go to Dollar Tree. I needed a lint brush. If you know anything about our car, then you’d know that our seats are much like a pair of black pants that attract EVERY LITTLE hair and fuzz it comes in contact with. (I really dislike that aspect of our vehicle especially since I shed like a cat and because the red hat I donned this past winter sheds even more! My seat, the passenger seat, was littered with little red fuzzies! What a mess!!) 

Anyway, I got the lint brush, came home and braced myself for the rainy situation I was about to subject myself to. It wasn’t pouring, only a little more than a sprinkle, so I figured I just needed to get it done. For the plastic parts of the car, I found a Pinterest recipe about how using 1:1 water to vinegar was a good way to get the job done. I knew we had vinegar (from all those red velvet cakes I’d make) so I found PJ’s empty body wash container, cleaned it and filled it with the stuff. 

Upon using it in the car, I realized pretty fast that I’d need to open the windows and doors if I wanted to come out smelling relatively decent. This was a challenge considering it was raining. I opened the windows though and just accepted that I’d have to clean up the water. The plastic got cleaned and smelled like salad. I took that stuff inside to get myself ready for part 2. Onto the seats!

I got my lint brush, a bag for the used pieces and headed back outside. I couldn’t really sit on the seats and do the job like I could with the plastic so I decided to just get wet. The lint brush was of shabby construction and the roll wouldn’t stay still on the handle so I ended up cutting up my right hand pointer finger knuckle pretty extensively, not to the point of blood, but it’s sore and I have a skin flap. Still, I continued because those seats really get under my skin. I spent a good while on my seat because it was CAKED with red fuzzies, hair and other fuzzies which I wasn’t able to identify. The rest wasn’t so bad but I did make a discovery that I thought was weird.

The back seat was covered in a small layer of white cat fur. Hmm, that’s odd. We don’t have a cat and I don’t EVER remember letting a white feline frolic about in our car. As I was getting all of that up, I realized it was from JJ, PJ’s cousin in Ohio. We had him as out guest in June and he has several cats, some of which have white fur. I never sit in the back seat so I never thought about it until yesterday. I got all of that up and secretly swore to myself that we are NEVER having cat owners in the back seat unless they go through an extensive de-fur process. That mess gets STUCK in the fabric and I had to pull it out before it would stick to the lint roller. (Just kidding about the cat owners, but I will definitely more observant if we do have other people in our car. I’m thinking a weekly check with the lint brush will help keep the fur and fuzzies down.) <<this is something I’ll need to be thinking about anyway since we will have a baby back there.

The seats got cleaned and then I febrezed the fabric stuff to try to get that awful vinegar smell at least diminished. I think it worked to an extent. (I don’t have to get into the car until Sunday for church so maybe it will have aired out by then. I told PJ he gets to drive a salad for the next few days. Hehe).

By the way, if you are wondering, during this entire process of cleaning the car, my skin didn’t get wet. I was wearing a hoodie and the rain wasn’t strong enough to soak that. The hoodie took all of the water! 

Not too much else has happened today. PJ made some funky flourless oatmeal, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies that he ended up liking. I didn’t. I ate something, took and nap and woke up to another To Do list. I only did about half since my back has been hurting after yesterday’s busy-ness.

This included cleaning out the laundry room, cleaning the fan…it had sticky dust on it, not that stuff that easily comes off, vacuuming the floor again, and taking out the trash. At that point, I was ready to stop and eat and relax my back muscles.

Here I am now, listening to some music and apparently talking a lot about cleaning and moving.
Apart from all of that, I’ve recently come to realize something really important and helpful.

Last Sunday, we had a Covenant Keepers meeting at our church. (CK is a group of married people; we learn to strengthen our relationship with our spouses while focusing on God’s principles for married life.) We were talking about fear.

I realized that I was in so much fear about moving to Ohio that I was letting it rule my emotions toward EVERYTHING, even PJ. I may have said this a while ago, but when it comes to change, fear comes to me and makes me a stressed out, unsure mental wreck. I used to experience this a lot when we would go into different quarters in college; I was so used to the last one that changing everything made me fearful. 
In regards to moving, I let the Devil attack my mind with fear of the unknown, fear of not being able to figure things out when we moved, fear of being where I needed to be. All this fear came to me EVEN THOUGH I felt COMPLETE peace about this when we made the decision. I was SO in fear that I was freaking out about whether or not this was the right thing or not. 

The lesson taught me that almost every fear that we have is linked to death in some way. People who are afraid of heights aren’t afraid of being high up, they are afraid of falling. People afraid of spiders are afraid of getting bitten and having something bad happen to them (which I totally understand; I’ve been bitten before.) I was afraid of driving 7-9 hours, I was afraid that PJ wouldn’t find a job, I was afraid almost every aspect, which does have it’s connections to death. 

I also learned that we really shouldn’t fear death. If we have Christ in us and believe that he died for us, we 
are going to wake up in heaven. Death really shouldn’t be feared if we know where were are going. I may die on earth, but I’ll wake up in a much much much better place! 

We know the presence of God by peace. Much the same, we know the Devil’s presence by fear. Fear is used to keep us from living, from going to places that God has ordained for us. If I keep myself in fear about moving to Ohio, I could keep myself and my family from something God has for us. 

Moreover, fear seems HUGE when we keep it all bottled up within us. We think about the details, we imagine the things that could happen, we build this entire scenario in our minds that makes the fear even worse. In reality, facing the fear makes us realize that what we were afraid of was so small. For instance, with the college situation. I was so afraid to start another quarter (perhaps it was because I didn’t think I would do as well as I did with the previous one) but once I actually got into it, it wasn’t any big thing. It’s important to resist the Devil and face your fears.

I said all that to say that my mind is no longer troubled with fear about moving. 

Jimmy Evans taught the message (How to Overcome Fear) and gave 4 points on how to do so:

1.) Admit your fear without shame - anything in the dark will only get worse and a lot of times, married people are fighting over what they fear. (Fear that they won’t have enough money, fear that one of them won’t be able to provide, etc.)

2.) Submit your fear to God - God already knows what’s going on but once we realized that our feelings are not our master, we get one step closer to being freed. We have emotions, yes, but it doesn’t mean that they are right emotions.

3.) Focus on God’s presence and love - Peace comes from God, as stated above, focusing on God will help us get out of fear.

4.) Face your fears by faith and you will not crumble - once we decide to face our fears, we are set free. It no longer keeps up bound and immobile. We also realize that it’s not as bad as we thought it would be.

As you might have observed, this past Sunday helped me TREMENDOUSLY!! I’m so glad I went to the CK meeting, even though PJ couldn’t go with me. I can definitely say that my mind has been eased and I am ready to take on this new adventure.

***

In baby news, I am 16 weeks tomorrow. I haven’t heard his little heartbeat in over 5 weeks and haven’t seen him in 7. It’s been kind of sad. He didn’t have fingers or toes 7 weeks ago. I’m thinking that our next appointment will be the gender reveal appointment. I am SO EXCITED for that!!! I’ll be posting a belly pic tomorrow…even though it doesn’t seem like my belly is going anywhere or getting bigger for that matter. 

Until next time, be blessed and enjoy your night!!

Momma Sherri 
^^PJ’s roommates used to call me that since I would clean their apartment (they were nasty slobs and I didn’t like to visit unless it was clean…and I liked to visit ;)