Down Comes the Office

Today is the day I'm going to have to start tearing my office apart.
We've been working on our house for the past month, just trying to get it ready to put on the market. We've cleaned out the clutter, boxed up our most prized things, marking those boxes "Keep: __________." The rest have been marked with "Moving Sale."
We've moved furniture for the painters and the guys who laid the linoleum and then we moved it back again.
My last piece of normal was here in my office - that is until Saturday, when Spot, our fish, was taken from his tank to his new home at a friend's house. I no longer had the whir of the air filter behind my desk.
And I knew today would come when it would be time to clean out the filing cabinet and decide what I absolutely will need for my business for probably a good 6 months while we wait to sell this house and have our new house built in Arkansas. It's crucial now that everything must be out of this room to make way for the new carpet that's coming on Monday.
I've pictured how my new office will look. I plan on having plenty of shelving and bookcases built and I've been collecting news media memorabilia for a while now. I have a sheet of first issue postage stamps of the flag raising at the World Trade Center, signed by the photographer who shot it; a signed Women of the Media stamp series; a printers drawer from the University of Missouri's J-school; printers blocks from the old now closed newspaper in our new hometown in Arkansas; a newspaper from the day JFK was shot, given to me by my mother...and lots of other stuff I will use to surround myself for inspiration.
But this is the first time I've really thought about how different it will be for me working from a place easily attainable only by a 4-wheel drive. No more all-inclusive long distance (it isn't available) and no more running out for a coffee or beer if I'm starting to feel the effects of this sometimes lonely profession.
Not having the luxury of calling people all the time might be a good thing, I could get more done. I also won't have to worry about scheduling my interview and writing time around the mailman or school buses (drives the dogs crazy) or have distractions when our neighbors decide they're going to have their trees trimmed or put on a new roof (we don't have but one neighbor and they're at least 1/2 mile away). And if I get antsy, a nice walk on the country road or through the woods in the winter with the dogs will be better for me, the dogs and the environment than a coffee or beer run anyway.
"You know, life as we know it is gone, it will never be normal again," my husband said a couple of weeks ago.
I didn't know what to say to him then.
Today I would say, "No. But we'll have a new normal again someday soon. And it will be better than any normal we ever knew here."