Lasts, ending, more lasts....  My last Saturday morning.  My last Saturday Star.  My second to last day before my life, my stuff, my blight of hoarding, goes public.  Last time for a massage this afternoon, cocooned with warm blankets and lavendar oils, my lungs being gently squeezed and revived by pressures on my rib cage.  Last time tonight to get irritated and bicker with C about the TV channel.  Last time with a snoring puppy beside me in this house, which creaks and scratches to the winds blowing outside.  Last time for departed spirits of this place to sigh.  

Goodbye hoard of dish-soap, laundry soap, body soap, fabreeze and bleach.  What was I trying to wash away?  What else can I say goodbye to that won't shame me as it is unloaded by tired and terse  men on a deep freeze day in Alberta in ten day's time.  I freaked out on the head packer guy on Friday when he came to collect the cheque.  Steady, deep and calm voice, me going high pitch in thirty seconds, panting and pacing, gulping air and holding my throat.  As a truism of understatement, I was told it was stressful.  Up to last week I've been watching all my goodbyes slightly apart.  I wrote big cheques for houses, picked paint colours, strode confidently through options and signatures.

The real goodbyes started this week.  A goodbye to J dissolved me, my nearly constant companion (and boss) of nearly twenty five years.  Goodbyes to program friends at a dinner, the backbone of my sanity for the past two decades sagging a bit.  Goodbye to gal pals and work friends this Sunday.   And then the unimaginable goodbyes to good and steady friends, and a peck on the cheek to C which will ache my body and numb my face.

Last time in a quiet house.  Last time for me to know where my underwear is, with confidence.  Last time on solid ground for awhile.