Tales from the Shark Tank

The moving van will arrive at 8:00 a.m. Friday morning whether we’re ready for it or not. In some ways, we’re ready now. The kitchen is packed, although I have won’t clean out the refrigerator until Thursday evening. I’m down to a skeleton kitchen, capable of nuking something for my son, but not of actually cooking anything much more complicated than boxed macaroni and cheese. For me, this is worse than camping out. I can manage quite a decent meal over a campfire, but at this point, I have neither the ingredients nor the equipment for it. I suppose I could manage to grill something, but what I can’t even imagine.

The books are packed as well, along with all the papers, assorted notebooks, sewing projects and notions, and most of the craft supplies. I’ve freecycled my quilt batting, yarn and assorted other things I can replace when I have time for them. Every time I look at something I remind myself that we’ve overflowed the house we’re in, and that the one we’re going to is two rooms smaller, with the remaining rooms smaller than they are in our current abode. It’s strong impetus to dispose of things, but an entirely different turn of mind than my usual. I can see potential uses for nearly everything. It’s how I got into this mess in the first place. Now I have to look at things and ask, not “might there be a use for this someday?” but “will I be able to replace this if I find I want it later?” If it’s easily replaceable, it’s going out. But that’s not how I was trained, and so I’m fighting myself every inch of the way. I’ll be very glad when this is over. I really don’t like feeling like a nervous breakdown would be a relief.

I generally define hell in terms of the weather. When both temperature and humidity are 90 or above, it qualifies. But I’ve realized I have another measure for what constitutes appalling humidity. It is my hair. I learned the trick of twisting my hair into a coil on the back of my head while it’s still wet, sticking a comb in it, and going on with my day. It stays off my neck and out of my way, so I can ignore it. That suits me fine. Most days it just dries in the coil, coming out slightly curlier than usual in the evening when I let it loose.

But when the humidity gets into the “swamp” range, no matter how hot the day, my hair doesn’t dry. Today is a perfect example. I coiled it up about 8:00 this morning, and just uncoiled it at about 8:30 tonight. It’s still wet. Not slightly damp, actually making-the-shoulders-of-my-shirt-damp wet. And while it did rain today, I didn’t get caught out in it. If the air seems thick enough to chew, it’s because it is.

I wish I had a Disney-style magic wand to wave, so that this move would simply be an accomplished thing. It’s the process I dread, the upheaval and the remaining packing and unpacking and learning to find everything anew. Being there is not a problem, though I’d rather stay here for inumerable reasons starting and ending with my friends. It’s a lovely place, and very peaceful, and I’ll admit I’m looking forward to that aspect of it. And I will have a freshwater inland sea (which is how I’ve always seen Lake Michigan) only a little drive away, and that’s wonderful. I suspect I’ll be found walking the dunes at all seasons. The thing I’ve missed here is having places to walk without innumerable people. That is about to change.

But the moving itself is not fun, and not always in the usual ways. Yesterday, packing the desk, I found my journal from 1997 – 1998. It makes rather disconcerting reading, not for the number of things that have changed, but for the ones that haven’t. In a lot of ways, I’m still working on much the same things I was then. Of course, some of them are in the parent or marriage contracts, so it comes as no great surprise. They’re just part of the pattern of life, and all I can change – or want to change – is my own responses. But those juxtaposed against such a different point in my life is kind of an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Our son was a baby then, under a year old. I was working as alterations manager in a snooty department store, dealing with the women in my synagogue’s “mom and baby” group on an entirely different footing than in the meeting room of the temple. I didn’t stay in that group long; I couldn’t find common ground very well with women whose greatest issue seemed to be finding a daytime babysitter so they could meet with their personal trainer. And even now, when I’m back to being the professional I studied to be, I still have no common ground with them. I’m still not buying a Jenn-Air commercial range just because I love to cook, y’know? I’m getting a standard size gas range because the new house isn’t wired for the electric one I’ve got, and I’m storing the electric because heaven knows what we’ll need in the next place and I can’t afford to be buying a really good range every other year. I have this one only because I took it in payment on a legal case, from someone who was moving and couldn’t take it along and didn’t have the cash to pay me. Those are the realities of my life now, and they were the realities of my life seven years ago. I guess I’m just having my nose rubbed in how much things stay the same as they change.

Two friends and I went up to the new house Saturday and Sunday, originally intending to clean the house and get it ready for stuff to arrive. But we were all pretty well exhausted for varying reasons, and it didn’t take us long to declare it a grownup slumber party. It was marvelous. The new house is very peaceful, in part due to lack of neighbors. Of course, my airmattress collapsed in the middle of the night, which was no fun, but hey, Murphy has to get his two cents worth in. I needed the mini-vacation, and I’ve had it. And I came home to find that my beloved husband had done an enormous amount of work toward getting the stuff in the garage out. Much of it simply went into the trash. I’m just sorry we didn’t do this sooner, when we weren’t under the gun timewise. I’ll be getting back to it in my son’s room when I finish this.

And we have a moving date. The truck and its team will show up on Friday, August 12th. I have slightly less than 2 weeks to live in this house. I’m not sure how I feel about that.