And For Their Final Act

I'm sure you're tired of the exclamations that I start these posts with, but... I'm not.

Holy Toledo.

Last Thursday, C and I (with some very valuable help) loaded our every belonging into a 26-foot U-Haul truck, went out for sushi with the best mopper/sister, and returned home to fall asleep on an air mattress in our house.

For the very     last     time.

And what's remarkable is that it felt ok.  It wasn't like I was leaping for joy or popping some bubbly or having any kind of warm, fuzzy feelings, but all the same, I wasn't weeping and clawing at my hair, which really must be some kind of small victory, don't you think?  Maybe more than small...

What's also remarkable is that the very mattress that we slept on has been continuously inflated for... wait for it... FOUR YEARS.  And it hasn't leaked, period.  If that doesn't totally shock you, I don't know what to say, other than to say  lay off the meds, for both our sakes.  This is my shameless and enthusiastic plug for the Simmons Beautyrest air mattress.  Go.  Buy one.  Mine's flawless, but if yours pops, don't come crying to me.  I'm sure it will be your fault.

So Friday morning, we deflated the mattress (for the first time), threw it in it's bag and closed the garage door behind us on our way out.  C hopped into our pickup truck and I clamored into the U-Haul.  There must be a height requirement for truckers, because I had a seriously hard time getting into and out of the cab of this thing.  It was a strange turn of fate when we first laid eyes on our 26-footer.  You know how U-Haul's have those fairly tacky cartoonish pictures of random world destinations?  Like a sumo wrestler and a giant Macy's float in the shape of a Spicy Tuna Roll painted on the side of a trailer with the words, "Visit Japan!" written above the picture in Indiana Jones font?  Well, I'm pretty sure that this particular U-Haul was manufactured especially for us.

Along with a picture of our favorite neighborly woodland creature, our U-Haul was showcasing the up and coming Canadian hotspot - Saskatchewan!  It was like someone just knew where we were headed. I cackled up a storm driving that thing north toward the border - driving increasingly slow, mind you, because if a moose ran in from of that gas hog, there was going to be a very small chance that I'd manage to avoid it.

We arrived at camp around 11:00 PM and unloaded one important passenger - a gigantic jade plant that has been in my family since I was a little girl.  A certain jade plant that was now (sorry mom) frozen solid.  The leaves snapped like sheets of ice, and were scattered on the floor of the truck.  Jades are members of the succulent family, intended to inhabit an arid climate, which is distressingly far from the  -10 degree temperature that night.  I still haven't given up on her, though.  We brought her drooping body in from the chill and I gave her some water and whispered some nice, I'msosorry kind of words.  The next day I pruned off the limbs that felt like water balloons, because there is just no way that a texture like that could be healthy.  So now she's a little ragged, and probably still dying, but we're not letting her go without a fight.

On a related note, this summer I kept a Bonsai on my desk at the rafting office.  This plant, too, got sick and dried up, but I had recently read about the ever-important "cut off the gangrenous limbs or you'll lose the patient" policy and quickly got to work.  A month later, the plant was sailing into the woods where it became part of the earth again, and not simply a prickly naked single stalk of what used to be a thriving maze of branches.  I have a tendency to get carried away with scissors.

So Mama Jade, Kiwi the cat, our air mattress and cookware I haven't seen in a year are finally in one place.  And even though the process was tedious, maddening and sometimes ugly, it's made for a good life story.  And as one of my dear friends, Amy, put it:


Soon it will be all over (for now, for a while) and you'll be settled in to a cozy log-ish home with far fewer moose than you're accustomed to, that is not a small kitchen-less apartment above a restaurant, and that does not come with its own wheels. 


Thanks, Amy.  You always know how to make a girl feel good.

The First Step Is Admitting You Have A Problem

I’m going to write a book on how to shorten the moving process.  It will be titled Burn it Down, and will have exactly zero pages. 

I will be rich.

Of course, a literary bomb like this would require me to actually burn our beautiful house to the ground, a thing I haven’t done and honestly may not get around to, since 1) I'm not quite sure how C would react, and 2) I haven’t nailed down the extent of the physical incarceration consequences. 

Does this look like the face of a girl who would commit arson?  Don't answer that.

I don’t want to jinx it yet, so I’ll whisper the big news:

I think we’ve sold our house.

We’re under contract with a nice young family (I say “nice” because I can’t bear to think of them as anything but a set of perfect human beings - adequately clean, dreadfully hospitable and exceedingly hip), so C and I have begun the process of moving, also recognized in our marriage as dancing through the house with cardboard boxes in our arms, wearing bubble wrap tutus and waving curly streamers made of reinforced tape.  We’ve gotten so good at packing that we can spend our time doing jazz ensembles instead of any real work.  This isn’t true of course, but what is true is the fact that we are becoming proficient at squashing any emotional turmoil surrounding our decision to sell.  When people ask how “it” is going - you know, “tossing through the memories bound within the walls of your first home” - I have a reliable if not canned reply:

It’s like war. 

You can’t think about casualties. You can’t second-guess decisions.  And above all else, you can’t give in and start crying on the bedroom floor.  If you do, you’ll wind up huddled in a dark linen closet with Blue Christmas playing on repeat, or something worse - and what could be worse than that??

We’re working hard to avoid the other great challenge of moving, one I think we can all relate to on some level.  Over time, we humans have this unfortunate tendency to form emotional bonds with things.  When I was a kid, I would go ballistic if I had to throw away old socks.  Socks.  Or, I’d be so upset that mom wanted me to take on a new toothbrush that I would wrap the old one in tissues and slide it into a clear ziploc bag before placing it gently in the least repulsive corner of the bathroom trash, whispering some parting words as it settled in to it's Kleenex coffin.  In the same way, we adults like to hang on to things that serve little or no purpose to us, such as the knick-knacks we keep on our bookshelves or sometimes even the books themselves.  We find ways to justify hoarding old yogurt containers, half-used chapstick tubes, and empty cleaning product bottles.  We hold on to unnecessary ceramics and superfluous furniture pieces. 

Well friends, no longer are we are in bondage to our hoarding ways – we are sorting through our knick-knacks with an iron fist and selling our wares to the highest bidder.  Need a side table?  We can help.  Always wanted to own a non-reclining recliner? Call 1-800-WE-GOT-IT.  Framed pictures of our vacations and family holidays?  Creepy, but we’re open to it.  You see, it’s not worth placing all of our desperate hope and separation anxiety on the shoulders of inanimate objects that aren’t capable of offering any love or hope in return.  Why else would we have pets?

I apologize in advance if I’m untimely with my posting in the next few weeks, but just remember that a transition like this has plenty of potential for spousal blowups, misplaced financial records, damaged stemware, and the occasional box-flew-off-the-back-of-the-truck highway accidents.  The laughter that I hope you experience over my mishaps is the shining light that keeps me from veering off the tunnel tracks. 

Or striking a match.

Have Wheels, Will Travel

And here we are.

It wasn’t the easiest move, nor was it the hardest.  It wasn’t particularly graceful and yet we’ve emerged on the other side in a fairly seamless progression.  C and I are the new summer residents of a roughly 30-foot long travel trailer.  Now, before you chuckle too hard, keep in mind that this may very well be our most technologically advanced camp home.  It certainly gleams in comparison with our first. 

About six months after C and I tied the knot, we - with the help of our family - packed all of our worldly possessions into a small U-Haul truck and a station wagon (something impossible to consider now).  We drove northwest to the Hudson Valley of New York state, and ultimately reached a tiny hillside outside of a wonderfully hippie college town, where one could reliably find organic local produce and [I imagine] illegal substances in large supply. 

We were starting work for an organization that served adults and youth from New York City, and in particular, C and I were going to help design and run a summer camp program for kids who had generally never seen more green space than the manicured landscape of Central Park.  This was an adventure that could easily be its own blog post, so what I really want to focus on today is simply the fascinating nature of our living quarters. 

The family that we went to work with spent a humbling amount of man-hours and effort into converting a summer-only nurse’s station into a winterized cabin for a young set of newlyweds.  They installed a propane wall heater, put in appliances (3/4 size refrigerator, half-oven), and even converted an outdoor shed into an indoor closet (a 4’X4’ space that held our hanging clothes, pantry, a bookshelf, aquarium and various instruments of cookery).  They painted walls, spread gravel for a parking space, and even gave us a welcome basket for a housecabinwarming gift.  It was a startling illustration of overwhelming kindness.

Despite the love and kindness that was poured into our first freestanding home, other things were also pouring in.  And pouring out.  First were the spiders: giant, fat ones the size of a quarter (found in the closet) and tiny, feathery ones that crawled up and out of the rusty shower drain. There were the ants and beetles that I would find on/behind my mattress at night before bed.  Soon I was performing rigorous “bug checks” on a near paranoia-inducing basis. If we had lived there for more than six months, I suspect that I would have developed a substantial mental illness.   This was before the day I stomped in the hallway and a bumblebee flew out of the floor.

This is my favorite spot in Vermont.  Also, not our house.

When I mention that there were things pouring out, I did not mean to suggest that the insects and arachnids that were waltzing into our cabin were dancing their way out as well.  Although I’m sure they were, what eventually game drizzling – no, wait – projecting out of the side of our cabin was an embarrassing amount of foul-smelling, unsightly sewage.  It turns out that this little seasonal getaway was moderately unprepared for two full-time residents with regular bowel movements. I was unprepared for what would come to spew from beneath our bathroom floor.  Our saint-of-a-maintenance director spent hours, perhaps days, working with his son to install a plumbing line that would permit us to introduce fruits and vegetables back into our diet.

So, as I mentioned, we have now found ourselves in a house with wheels.  And yes, as a friend commented today, I married not a man, but an adventure.  And yet the reality of home is to be found and loved, but whether that truth lies on a poured foundation, the sands of a shanty town, or on a set of Goodyear tires is left to the heart of the subject.  If life is the canvas, and experiences are the paint, then I want a story that rivals the sunset.

So go grab your paintbrush and let’s take this show on the road.

Clear The Room, Stat!

If you find yourself in a half-empty apartment, disheveled by brown moving boxes and the Hefty garbage bags that are starting to haunt your dreams and fill your reality, promise me something.  When your late-night lust for snacking creeps up on you like a sneaky tiger, push it away with both hands.  This is especially important  when you've moved all of the food items out of your house, except the ones you'll eat for breakfast and those leftover baking ingredients that you wish you weren't going to throw out (but should've already, since you haven't had an oven in a month and a half).

Above all, avoid eating italian-seasoned bread crumbs by the spoonful.  I don't care how salty and garlicky it tastes, or how easily it becomes a very yummy, chewable ball in your mouth.  In ten minutes, you will have the breath of a monster fueled by breadsticks, fresh garlic, and hellfire.  If you aren't convinced, your spouse will be sure to inform you.

And when you wake up the next morning, you'll wish you could use chlorine bleach to rinse your mouth with, because coffee is not going to cover that up.  I have a feeling my co-workers will be quarantining me giving me plenty of space to "focus on my work" for the day.

The Big Dig [Through My Basement]

In any move, a person is likely to stumble upon a myriad of strange and forgotten objects of yesteryear.  As C and I contemplate never eventually selling our home, I am terrified by what memorabilia might be unearthed from our basement storage and dragged from our closet shelves.

Some examples of what I fear I will discover in the Great Task:

• Bundles of letters - some received from old boyfriends and others written to imaginary ones 

Dear Guy Reading This, if we go back far enough, this could be you.  How does that make you feel?  Should I even ask?  Probably not.

• Lion King ticket stubs from 1994
• Lion King stuffed animal tags from 1994.  And 1995.  And 1996, and so on.  You probably slept better not knowing that I was playing with plush toys after studying for Algebra II.
• Yearbooks/Annuals:

"M, Thanks for a great year! You are ________ !!! (Blank filled by descriptions such as: awesome, really fun, neat, antisocial, a real downer, or awkward and you make me feel uncomfortable).  Love, Your 8th grade Classmate Teacher.

• Lisa Frank stickers
• Crayons (remember, since we don't have kids, we have no real use for these, unless we were to own coloring books, which would be kind of ridiculous for people our age)
• Coloring Books
• 43 chapstick tubes.  This is insane.  Once I manage to collect them all, it could take me a legitimate 15 year period to use them, if that's even safe.  

Is there a chapstick "best by" date?

A shelf life?

A half-life?

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As a friend's little girl would say, I've got a problem with purchasing far too many "lips".

• Polaroids of my 13-year old sister in her green bathing suit, her hair teased out like Jessie from Saved By the Bell - This is the only artifact I will be happy - no, wait - thrilled to dig up
• Happy Nation by Ace of Base on cassette tape
• "No Detention" awards from ninth through eleventh grade.  As you can imagine, not getting this award my senior year was a real victory for my social life.  A fact that becomes especially evident after reading this list.

At this point you should be able to understand the rumble in my stomach and anxiety fluttering in my chest as I contemplate picking through rubbermaid containers I haven't seen since moving out of my parents' place.    They were glowing at least as bright as I was on my wedding day, I assumed, because I was marrying a spectacular man.  However, as I look back, it's equally possible that they were just that excited to get all of my junior high flotsam out from under the shelter of their roof.  

And now it's under mine, equally untouched.  So I press on, unwilling to let the terror keep me up at night, but also equally unwilling to face it.

I wonder if Goodwill takes chapstick donations.  You think?

It Seems Like We're Walking In Circles...

You know that feeling that you get when you are walking down a street or making pancakes and you just swear that you’ve done it before?  In that exact place, at that exact time, in that exact way?

Déjà vu, right?

Well, this past Saturday night, I experienced the most intensely strong déjà vu of my life.  I found myself in a warm, dark room, surrounded by moose décor, lifting C’s folded t-shirts out of one of many black garbage bags on the floor. Out the window I could see that I was on the second story of a building, and my ears could faintly make out the sound of quiet voices and clinking dinnerware.   The savory aroma of pot roast hung in the air.

But no,

It couldn’t be.

My mind must be playing tricks on me.  I looked at my watch.  It was ten minutes after the alleged rapture, so maybe this wasn’t déjà vu at all?  Maybe this was some strange take on an afterlife?  We’d done this before – we’d been here, we’d left here – how could we be back??

On occasion, the truth hits like a twenty-ton steamroller, and at that moment I was about to get flattened.  This was no déjà vu, no afterlife, no joke, no kidding.

We were back. 

Yes, C and I have returned to our favorite former stomping grounds.  We have again taken up residence above our local restaurant.  Gone are the mornings of sun streaming through the skylights and frying a couple of eggs on the gas stove.  Say hello to the daily spritz of bacon body spray and making coffee in the bathroom.  Good-bye to hosting dinner.  Hello take-out pizza.  We are returning to the realm of multi-function everything.  Need to shave your legs and do the dishes?  No problem – pull a Kramer and take it all to the shower – just don't trip on a spoon.  Want to eat breakfast and pick out today’s clothes?  Great, just turn around from the table and grab a hangar.  The only thing we can’t do here is watch TV from the bathroom, which I guess is ok considering all of the things we can do. 

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Even as I throw it around as a dramatic foil for most other living arrangements, we’ve got it pretty good.  We can walk to almost anything in town (which now includes the only-open-in-the-summer ice cream stand – a hazardous personal vice), don’t need to worry about paying for oil heat (someone throw another log on the deep fryer!), and... (big finish)…  it’s not -10 degrees out, which it was the last time we lived here. 

Everything is better above freezing.   Even déjà vu.