The Most Important Product

Jerry liked to quote the old GE line "Progress is our most important product" (as always with Jerry, it was with a large dose of humor that he said it).  Well, more of the product was churned out yesterday.  Two trips over to the storage unit with more books, furniture, even the large Cerwin-Vega speakers I bought in 1986 (just in time to leave them behind for years at my parents' house as I moved first to Minnesota and then to the Soviet Union): I wasn't going to keep them, in this age of much more portable mini-speakers, but Steve convinced me they're "classic," and since they still work, I relented.  Steve is in the enviable, and probably also unenviable, position of having been friends and worked with Jerry: enviable because he was friends with Jerry and that was a fabulous thing to be, as I'm sure all his friends would say; unenviable because I probably talk even more about Jerry with people who knew him, and I'm sure people get tired of hearing all my Jerry stories.  But Steve has been and continues to be so incredibly kind in helping me with the house: I didn't actually know him except to say hi before Jerry died, but I hired him and his company to take care of house repairs and eventually he started doing favors - lots and lots of favors - and refusing to let me pay for most if not all of them, except for materials or if the work was done by an outside contractor.  So grateful, so thankful... so guilty-feeling, of course.

I've packed up a box of books I've sold online to Powell's and will bring it over to the post office today (if you have books you don't want, I recommend them: they pay postage for books they've accepted, and you get store credit with them in return - not a lot, of course, but it's easier and faster than dealing with eBay, for which I don't have the patience right now); other books I'll take to the library for their book sales.  Still lots and lots of stuff to go through.  This weekend I'm attending a wedding in St. Louis, but next week when I get back Steve will arrange to have a dumpster brought to the house, and a lot more will be cleared out.  He also told me that Habitat for Humanity recycles electronics, which I didn't know, so I'll see what needs to go there, too.

I realized something last night.  I was showing Steve the horizontal fir paneling in the bedroom as we were moving out a pine dresser that Jerry made... and I was telling him that the paneling was made from skids that had been piled in the shop, and that I had stained them with a pale white stain that just lightened them and also lacquered them... and it suddenly hit me that while I keep saying I'll be so sorry to leave behind all this gorgeous woodwork that Jerry did, it's also woodwork that I did.  He sprayed the dye stains on the maple paneling in the living room and the maple cabinetry in the living room and kitchen, but I did the power sanding before that and the lacquering and the hand sanding and the second coat of lacquer, I sanded and stained and lacquered the paneling in the bedroom, I sanded and lacquered the parts of the pine dresser.  I don't know why all of that hadn't entered my mind before, but the fact is, I can say with confidence that I'll never again live in a place where I've been involved in actually creating some of the furniture.  Well, I will: I've got pieces I'm taking with me that we - we - made.  But it's not just that it was Jerry's design and creativity and craftsmanship and talent: it was our collaboration, our work together.