TThe movers said they’d be here between 1:00 and 4:00; it’s just about 2:00 and I’ve done all I can do without leaving the house or moving my stupid heavy bookcases myself. I’m just sort of sitting here on my stripped mattress in my glaringly echo-y room…or my former room, I should say, because I won’t sleep here again. Tonight I’ll be in the same bed in the same new awesome orange sheets but I will be in a new room in a new house.
This week I was almost in a car accident, got a UTI, stubbed my toe really hard, slammed my finger in a file drawer, got the nose funk, lost my paper journal, spilled water all over some important papers on my desk at work, forgot my iPod on the day I was supposed to go to the gym, wore a really unflattering shelf-bra cami to bellydance, let the cat outside by mistake, canceled my therapy appointment, sat in a bus seat next to a window smeared with snot, and left a bunch of stupid voice mails for my patients at work that were like, “Yeah, hey, uh, it’s Chiara from the workplace I usually don’t mention on my journal and if you feel like calling me back to do your session, you know, totally great, and if not, totally great too, I mean, whatever you want to do. I’ll call you tomorrow if I don’t hear from you. And the next day after that if I don’t hear from you tomorrow. If you don’t call me back. Which I would appreciate. If you’d call me back. Because that’s basically my job, to call you and call you and call you. Oh, by the way, this is perfectly legitimate federal-grant funded operation, okay? Man, I’m so tired. Okay, call me.”
Tuesday I made a run to the new blue house with some of the stuff I’d already packed that would fit in my car, just to get it physically out of the living room. The three of us are all moving this weekend; me today (assuming the movers DO get here), J tomorrow, and C Sunday. They’re both moving into apartments by themselves and I really hope we still hang out even though we won’t be living together. Anyway, you can just imagine what it looks like right now; our formerly tranquil and lovely house is filled, almost literally to the ceiling, with boxes and furniture and all the rest of our stuff. We’ve left an aisle clear to the front door but that’s basically it.
Anyway, on the way back from the new blue house I stopped at what is now technically my former grocery store for some pudding. I’ve heard some people can deal with the stress of moving completely unassisted by pudding but I’ve also heard those moon shots were faked, so draw your own conclusions. I was so tired. It was late and I was sort of freaking out and I paid for my pudding my New Yorker and said I didn’t need a plastic bag because I just had two things of pudding and the magazine and I thought I’d save a bag. I picked up the pudding and remembered, as soon as I got outside, that I’d left the magazine at the checkout counter. I went back inside, wedged the puddings under my arm to grab the magazine, and promptly dropped one of the puddings on the floor, where one of the…uh, cups, I guess, you know, it’s a pack of four, broke and glopped out everywhere.
I must have hit the checkout guy the saddest and most pathetic case of Bambi eyes ever, because he said I could get a new four pack. The New Yorker was covered with pudding too so I asked if I could have a new one of those too. I got my new pudding pack and found that I had grabbed, apparently, the very last New Yorker in the store. The checkout guy, eying me with growing concern, fished out the pudding-covered magazine from the garbage at my request and gently suggested I might want to put everything in a plastic bag, that it might be a pretty good investment. I did so, placing the rolled up magazine in such a way that it was perfectly poised to liberally smear my passenger car seat with pudding. I haven’t been able to get it off yet and I blame the fact that it’s made out of soy.
I know all of this is just regular transition stress but man, I’m ready just to have this be over. I’m ready for it to be sunny and nice again. I’m ready to decorate my new room and to find a way to integrate my stuff somehow into the new house. I’m ready to go out to dinner and to the locks tomorrow and possibly to realize my lifelong dream of cataloguing all my books in an Excel file at some point. I have a bridal shower on Sunday and I am a little afraid I won’t be able to unpack my clothes enough to find something to wear. Mostly I’m just ready to kind of get on with my life. Mrs. Roboto just emailed me to ask if I want to go for a bike ride with her next week since I’m moving to her neighborhood and I’m ready to do that too as soon as I figure out what the deal with the chain on that bike is.
I know I won’t be in this new blue house forever, or even necessarily for very long after tonight, my first night there. Part of the reason I wanted to move there was because I’m not sure what 2006 is going to look like for me and I wanted to have a lot of flexibility and also save some money on rent for a while, in order to further the Top Secret Plans (and their attendant Plans B and C, at this point). While it’s cool to think about being able to live with my friends and further the Plans and all that, it’s also sort of exhausting to think about moving again even a year from now. I found myself, after the abovementioned pudding-magazine-car seat trifecta, huddling on the bed looking at condos online, an activity in which I have not indulged since February or so. I thought about getting everything in my imaginary house just right without the nagging thought that I may as well not unpack most of the dishes because I won’t be there long enough to have a dinner party, about feeling that a space is really mine, about really feeling a part of a neighborhood. Will that happen for me in Ballard in the new blue house? How long will I stay there? This time next year, what kind of entry will I be writing: about staying or going?
I am pretty evenly divided between a big wish for adventure and spontaneity and a deep desire for stability and community. I can’t figure out right now which one I want more, waiting here on the floor of what is almost my old room for the movers to move my eighteen boxes of books and the purple futon (which is covered with cat hair, thanks so much Zeke The Cat) and my bed and everything else that makes four walls and a roof a home.