About a month to go

Julia and I are moving to Raleigh, North Carolina in about a month.

Of course, when you have a month to get ready to move from a house you have lived in for nearly 11 years, a house with a full basement and a family with a slight tendency toward accumulation of stuff, you need to stay busy with sorting (this goes with us, this is trash, this is...oh, look! What is this? I better spend an hour paging through this material which has had no importance to me at all for the last ten years!) and boxing for shipment or tossing into the trash/recycle/giveaway piles.

And, if you are the Hamricks, you take a two-week break right in the middle and drive 1350 miles to the cottage on the lake.

We have a perfectly reasonable explanation: there is work to be done in the house to make it ready for renting to some loving family who will take care of our home by making it their home for as long as they want. The work can happen more efficiently if we aren't in the way.

Any reasonable explanation for heading to the lake (Lake Michigan, really an inland sea) is one we accept and dutifully act to align with.

It means we need to be really productive between now and head-for-the-lake day, and we will need to be really productive when we get back, but we both know that the break will do us a world of good.

We invested a tremendous amount of energy in launching Choosing Easy World, Julia's new book which was released a month ago today and is doing very well (thanks for asking!), and to go straight from that project to the moving-prep project was looking a bit too much like not-easy to us.

So, we will do all we can do until it is time to leave for Michigan, take our break and enjoy it just as if every day there is one which offers us all that is nurturing, fulfilling, and refilling of the reservoirs of energy, then come home and pick up stakes.

It is an exciting time. Julia is going home, as she has lived the majority of her life in North Carolina, and I'm going to my ancestral home--I was born in Chapel Hill, but have lived 95% of my life elsewhere, most of it in Denver--where both my dad and mom's families of origin put down roots.

I've been a Denverite since I was junior-high age, and giving up the familiarity and comfortable feeling of a place I have called home for more than 40 years is worth it, but it is also scary. It is sad to be moving so far from my mom, too, but that's why God made Skype. My kids are already gallivanting the globe, so us living in NC is just another stop for them as they travel all over.

We are very lucky to have found the ideal place in Raleigh for us, and that's what prompted the move to take place now. Julia found the house, I said no--too much money--and she called the number anyway.

After instantly bonding during that phone call, she and the owner's son started working to figure out how to make it possible for us to rent his mom's home. They got it figured out well enough that I was able to get on board, so now we have a signed lease and a home in Raleigh! (as you can see from the not-great photo grabbed from the Google street-view images, we are in a grade A location [groaning and rolling of eyes okay])

The house is in a beautiful, tree-filled area which has no through traffic--the enclave has one way in, and you exit right back that same way--rural-feeling streets with no curb and gutter, just asphalt and grass, and a pretty little lake only a block from our place.

The house is bigger than our Denver place, although without a basement we won't be able to stash nearly as much stuff. This is a good thing, if adding to our current challenge a little.

This new chapter is one we have been anticipating for a long time, and now we are turning the page to see how the chapter starts. I know it will be filled with adventure, joy, thrills, and satisfaction in all ways possible. There will be opportunities to grow and chances to learn more of our own courage and determination. All in all, it will be one more chapter in the book we started writing about the middle of last century. Julia and I each wrote many chapters, and only since 1998 have we cowritten them. This means our shared chapters have an interesting flavor of new mixed with experienced, still learning about each other mixed with the "here I go again...how many times does this lesson need to revisit my life?" feelings which come with the stuff we find to be our companions. Maybe this chapter, we learn some of those life lessons and move on to the next level!

The Battle

The battle is joined
forces aligned in opposition

The horn sounds
and peace breaks out, unbidden

Julia hits the big time

We are now almost two weeks into the life of Choosing Easy World, Julia's book which details her own journey into the magical realm where we are designed to thrive.

On the way to this, the 13th day since publication, we are having media adventures!

Early on the morning of the 11th, Julia was on TV.


Later that same day, Julia gave a talk and signed copies of Choosing Easy World at the venerable and much-loved independent book store, the Tattered Cover. It is the single-most-famous indie between Chicago and San Francisco. If you are an author and want to sign in the best book store in Denver, you seek to sign there.

Here's the exterior of this, the third edition of Tattered Cover, located south of town.

Julia, holding a copy of Choosing Easy World, awaiting the appointed hour at which she will give her talk.

And, the line forms for folks who want her to sign their pristine new copies of Choosing Easy World.

As you can imagine, since we were at the TV studio before 7 a.m. and did not leave Tattered Cover until close to 9 p.m., followed by a small celebration at Indulge Wine Bar, it was a day we enjoyed to the hilt and one we were ready to close so we could move on to a good night's sleep.

First, though, we had one more impromptu Easy World adventure to experience.

As we drove home on a route different than the one I intended--the freeway on-ramp was closed, so we chose to drive up a city street instead of looking for another place to get on the fast track home--Julia noticed that there was a patrolman partly hidden by foliage on the side of the road. I noticed I was going faster than the posted 35 mph limit. As we passed him, we saw his lights come on, so I immediately pulled over.

He was from the county sheriff's office and was very polite and patient as we searched in the dark for our insurance card in the glove compartment. I'm good at getting those important documents into the little place, but not so good at removing old ones. So, we kept pulling out more and more pieces of paper, all expired.

The officer finally said, "Let's just go with this one which expired last year." He went back to his patrol car and did whatever it was he did. In the six or eight minutes he was in his car, Julia and I sat. She was invoking Easy World, and I was simply resigned to whatever was to come. In a way, it is Easy World, too, just without any rainbow. Allowing is a huge part of moving into Easy World.

When he came back to my side of the van, he said, "I'm going to let you off with a warning. All you need to do is take your proof of insurance to the county office, and they will dismiss this citation for not having it available for me. There is no fine, and there will be no points once you prove you have insurance."

We drove home with big grins on our faces.

At some point in a couple of weeks--the deputy mentioned that it might take that long for the citation to be available on their computer system--I will need to drive ten miles to the office and get the ticket dismissed, but that's small potatoes compared to the impact my mistake of going too fast could have had. I'm happy to run the errand when the time comes!

Oh...and I have cleaned out the glove box. Only current documents are stored there now!