Seeking a path through the chaos

Our library is not open, but they are again allowing us to reserve and pick up books, so I was finally able to get the book on expressive drawing that was recommended to me a couple of months ago. Good thing, because it's no longer in print, and the one copy on Amazon is going for over $200...

For the first exercise we were supposed to be working on a large scale, but I only had my little book of watercolor paper; this was the best (I thought) of several efforts done on the backs of some earlier pages.

I'm liking it, but I'm not sure it's speaking to me of anything more than "this is something I like." But I enjoyed the exercise enough that I invested in a largish roll of paper that arrived yesterday from Amazon, so tomorrow we'll get to see what happens when I work on a larger scale.

In the meantime, we are in the final stages of packing: with less than a week til the move, we've broken down what remains into categories -- take today, take this weekend, take after the movers leave, take after the cleaners leave, leave til it sells, leave forever, and the highly desirable take to goodwill...

My hubby is off on another goodwill run at the moment, and then heading to the store to buy all the makings for my birthday lunch with the kids tomorrow -- and one last pack of toilet paper to get us through these last few days. We meet with our agent today to finalize the price on this place, and then we'll just keep slogging through our to-do list until we're out of here.

It's daunting, and mind-boggling, to see how much stuff is already at the new place, needing to be sorted through.  I wonder, sometimes, if the appeal of that space is simply that -- unlike this one -- it's fairly empty. Will we still love it as much when it's full of all our dark woodsy furnishings? Time will tell... Perhaps that's all the meaning this painting has: just trying to find a path through the chaos...