Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Thursday, February 23, 2006

I got an email from a website regular the other day gently reminding me that I’d been playing hooky from the site for nine weeks now, and it was about time for an update. “How was your trip?” she wanted to know. “What’s happening with the show?” “Did Henry learn some Polish?”

You know, the world is full of excuses, and I certainly have had my share in not checking in before today. When Frank, Henry and I returned from Poland on January 23—a month ago today—we came home to piles of correspondence, bills to pay, thank-you notes to write for all the hospitality overseas. There were unopened Christmas presents, unanswered holiday cards. Henry needed to be reintegrated into his third grade class at Jones Intermediate School.

And then, there was THE MOVE.

On February 1, Frank and I moved out of our previous office space at 214 North Main Street into the wonderful space that has been graciously donated to our operation from the Gilmer-Smith Foundation of Mount Airy. Though we just moved three blocks north on Main Street, we had all the accumulated file folders, correspondence, furniture, desks, book, video and dvd inventory and much more to pack up and get down a flight of stairs, into the back of Frank’s pick up and into our new quarters. In characteristic small-town fashion, the move dragged out for several days, with nary a squawk from anyone involved. Because of a delay in the telephone transfer, at one point Frank and I sat on the floor having a conference call on a speakerphone which rested on carpet, all the furniture being gone.

I will say that moves are blessings in disguise. They force us to look at our lives and our possessions: What do we really need? What can you live without? They constitute an exercise in stripping down and hauling off to Goodwill. Having just moved makes me reluctant to buy new things without giving those purchases ample consideration.

So now we’re mostly settled in. Frank is in his new office, determined to counter his packrat tendencies and to leave it spare. I have made the same vow, and I still have several boxes to unpack, more things to find, more things to give away, more things to rearrange. But we’re happy to have this hurdle behind us, to look out the wonderful windows and see trees, birds and a historic granite house next door. Isn’t life wonderful?