robin tidwell « Robin Writes

What is with all the “do this to raise awareness of” insert-cause-of-choice?

Wear red, wear pink, turn your porchlight blue, et cetera, et cetera. Type “amen,” “like and/or share,” if you “hate” something. Change your profile pic to—

These things are silly.

There, I said it.

Come on, we are ALL AWARE of cancer, heart disease, and police lives. We can contribute, or not, talk about issues, or not, but wearing a color or changing your profile pic or whatever is NOT GOING TO ACCOMPLISH A DAMN THING.

Raise your hand if you ever saw a friend’s social media post that said “cancer sucks, so wear pink today” and you went to your closet and changed into a pink shirt, so now EVERYONE WHO SEES YOU will say, “Oh, wow, yes cancer is horrible; I never knew that until you wore a pink shirt!”

Puh-lease.

Here’s your challenge:

Tell me something, anything, of which we are not collectively aware, some issue of today.

And then tell me how a social media post is going to make a difference.

The weather forecast, aside from the blowing flurries today, seems to be gifting us with some cold and possible snow accumulation. Gee, thanks, weather!

While that means that all our outside prepping is being put on a short—very short—hiatus, we have plenty to do at our STL house:

Painting

Packing

Moving—at least as far as the garage

Minor repairs

Landscaping

Of course, that last will wait until this blast of cold is over, hopefully and as forecasted in a week or ten days. But the house will go on the market in a few weeks, and our target move date is May 20.

Unless, as my husband unhelpfully pointed out this morning, the darn thing sells immediately with a requested possession of March or April.

Stress much??

Meanwhile, one kid is moving from Boston, by way of Chicago, to Austin on or around March 1st. Now, since she’s nearly 30—sorry, Liz—it shouldn’t be a big deal for us, except she’s coming through STL to 1) pick up some furniture and things and 2) coming back in a few days to buy a car and pick up her kitties.

This way, I’ll only have one small dog, one 20-pound cat, and an ailing, elderly dog to pack up and cart off when we have a house showing . . .

So.

The middle kid is/was moving. Still unclear on that, and again, he’s married, no concern of ours, except . . . he, too, is picking up furniture and stuff. Or a friend is. Some time. Maybe over the weekend.

Not really sure.

The youngest, aka the kid, will be staying in STL when we move—so, besides college registration, which I discovered isn’t until April-something, thank goodness—we’re apartment-hunting and trying to coordinate dates.

So, you know, mid-May. Or, if the house sells sooner, March or April. According to that same husband, who, by the way, has managed to put up with me for 19 years as of today. Or vice versa. The jury’s still out.

I mean, seriously, who leaves their high school senior kid living alone for the last few months??

These date-coordination things are driving me nuts!

While I know that downsizing and simplifying are definitely the way to live, the transition, especially with everything else going on, is crazy!

102 days to go . . .