kittypaws

A friend of mine who is aware of what is happening in my life wrote and asked ~ How are you doing?

This was my reply:

Hi Ann,

I am holding my own.

We are moving out of our main office and will be using the Design Center as our home base. It has an office area and we have rearranged it to hold 3 desks, a work station and some files. It was foolish to try to hold onto the main office which had become a burial ground for 20+ years of papers and a dumping station for all the models that were lost. It had 6 offices, a conference room and lunch room and only Allan was there full time and Jim and I part time. The move was pretty much forced when the landlord said he could no longer carry a month to month lease as he is re-financing and the banks look at a month to month as a vacancy so we would have to sign a 5 year lease. We were struggling as is to pay the rent. We are still active with remodeling and additions and wanted to maintain a presence and the only option was this move.

One of the hardest things for me is tossing brochures that I toiled on for hours on end and the fact that I know how much they cost. Allan clings to every piece of paper and has moved quite a bit of the "memories" to his home. He calls it the "memoirs of Allan that can be trashed once he is dead" pile. The majority of the papers have been sorted per IRS rules as to what you must keep and for how long; boxed, labeled and moved to storage, the rest about 8 loads in our state body dump truck are now permanent residents at the land fill. The office furniture is now proven to be the hardest thing to find a home for as they are all in very good to good condition, which make it hard to just trash them. Goodwill, Salvation Army and numerous other donation sites that I have contacted are not taking desk….they already have too many; a sign of the economic times.

It has not been an easy week emotional; not so much tossing papers that should have been gone long ago but watching Allan as he places a piece of paper on my desk and says "Remember this?" I keep reminding him that it is not over; the fat lady has not sung she is just changing the pitch. I keep reminding him and myself that we have put tens of thousand of families into dream homes for over thirty years. That it is not over we are just traveling a different path.

So in response to your "how are you doing?" I am here and holding my own.

Always,
Kittypaws