Did our walk through of the new house this morning. Everything is lovely in this new place. Aside from some additional cleaning — of course the sellers cleaned things, but still — everything is lovely here. One of the rooms has a blackboard wall. This will be The Yankee’s home office. The sellers left us a lovely note.
We went over to an office to sign all of the forms you must sign to buy a home, and all of the forms you must sign to acknowledge that you just signed the last form. So long is the process now that two separate people race through a thumbnail sketch of what they’re putting in front of you in a lab-tested voice that sounds interested but, you know, has gone through this so many times they’re clearly just bored with it and won’t you sign it so the fees can get transferred.
So we signed them.
There are at least 762 treaties that ended armed conflicts that involve less paperwork and signatures than the modern house process. I know because I counted them, in my head, in between the taut recitation of how this form notes that you will provide your own ninja security detail on your new property, and this document notes we’ve not told you which agencies to hire them from …
When all of that was done, everyone went their separate ways. Someone must work in that office, but I’m not sure which of the four people in the room that might be. And we went back to the new house. The movers were there waiting for us.
They loaded us up with four guys. They unloaded everything with two guys. Two guys plus us. Those fellows worked so hard today, and so did we, to a slightly lesser extent.
At the same time, the ISP guy came by. Bald, long braided beard. Probably rides a motorcycle when he’s not in his service van. It made him look older than he was, and older than his humor. Overly polite, like he’d just come out of some company-mandated customer service workshop. He got his job done in a hurry, and gave us more of the gigabytes than we expected.
At the same time we met our first neighbor. She was dispatched by the sellers to pick up from us a few things that they’d accidentally left behind. We were, of course, happy to oblige them of the sentimental. And the neighbor is lovely. A retired teacher, she watched the kids that used to live here grow up, and now those children are young adults. That’s just part of it for teachers. We talked for maybe five minutes, a welcome break in the air conditioning for me, and you can already tell she’s got plenty of stories and is ready to share them. In a week or two, when the house is in order, I’m going to have to think of a good excuse to stop by and visit her.
Everything is everywhere, but everything is here. Well, except for the cats. We’ll fetch them on Sunday. Because we’ll have wrung order from chaos in just two days.
Hah.
Tonight, we set up part of the kitchen and living room. Tomorrow we learn where all the light switches are and start breaking down boxes.
Do you know how long this drive is? Hint: the answer is, “Longer than online maps suggest.”
So this is a quick photo post. We are staying at my godsister-in-law’s (just go with it) tonight. Tomorrow, we do the last walk through on our new house, sign 1.2 million documents to make it ours, and then watch all of our stuff come out of a truck and into the house. Ya know, the easy part.
I am so tired.
When the bucket of the dozer needs a series of supports, you’re talking about some serious machinery.
Do you know what it is like to stare at your bike for nine-plus hours, and not be able to ride it?
Yes, there was a lot of traffic like that. But, then, somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania, around dinner time (because we’d driven through breakfast and lunch already, so why not?) all of the cars just disappeared. Everyone had gotten where they needed to be. That’s always a warm thought, especially when you’re not there yet. But the sun was getting low, which meant we were getting closer.
And it was good to see it in the mirror behind me.
Moving is a terrible thing. Packing is a tedious, physical chore. And if that’s not physical enough, there’s the move part. This is why people don’t do it frequently, if they can help it. But thank goodness, thank the universe and thank Providence for movers. At 8:30 this morning, precisely when they said, the movers arrived.
The owner of the company is the former student of one of our colleagues. And that professor has hired this company twice for moves, and is about to hire him a third time. A good endorsement.
Four guys come in. Two of them former D-1 football players. All of them strong and young and confident. All of them, “Sir” and “Ma’am” and “May I put my water in your refrigerator?” and “May I use your restroom?” These guys were great.
They were taking our things out of our hands because, as they said over and over, this was their job. And that’s true, but you’d feel like a total heel if you didn’t help.
One of the guys loaded his pickup with the last bit of junk and trash for the nearby dumpster run and followed me there to help us get it out of the way. These guys were great, and they worked hard.
And so have we! I told you about the packing. Things hurt on me, and part of that is a direct result of this. Moving is a terrible thing.
But the worst, perhaps, was the last little bit. Truck is full. Movers are thanked individually and collectively and sincerely. Ibuprofen was offered. Tips were delivered. And then they left with our stuff to … wherever. The plan is we’ll see it again on Thursday.
Now, we have to finish cleaning, and then load the cars. And then take a shower. And then, somehow, keep loading the last of the things into the cars. Where do these things keep coming from? Will there be room in the car for me? Can I take another shower now, because this is ridiculous?
And so we got on the road, a bit later than we wanted, but just fine in the scheme of things. And we pointed east.
We’re going to New Jersey, which is a good thing. More on that later. You might think, as I did at first, that moving to New Jersey would mean I wouldn’t see views like this …
Or important farm equipment like this …
That’s a stereotype, and stereotypes aren’t always accurate. We’re going to South Jersey. We’re going to be in a beautiful, bucolic, pastoral, verdant region. We will be surrounded by farmland, with the Delaware River a short distance away, the beach a bit farther away, and plenty of wonderful new places to explore and learn about. It’s quiet and small and really quite something.
But I’m getting well ahead of myself. Tonight we are in Ohio, just north of Cincinnati. It seemed a good idea, I dunno, a few weeks ago before we realized just how much work we’d put in ourselves over the last five days, to break this trip up. So it’s a hotel tonight, and on the road again in the morning. Driving in packed cars that, in any other context, you might think of as troubling, with limited visibility that is possibly flirting with the legal limits in some of the jurisdictions we’re driving through.
The thing I learned this evening — while loading up my car, full of a “You want it to go, I’ll get it in here” bravado that was mostly sincere — is that there’s something sad about some of those last few things that you put into the car when you’re moving your entire life.
Oh, some things you need. And I stupidly put my suitcase in the middle of the back seat, so everything is on top of it. Some things are important or are sentimental, and they go in their places. Some things are practical. We needed the vacuum and cleaning supplies for the last run through of the house for the buyers (a nice young family of four, first time home owners). And then there’s whatever else you keep running across in your last half dozen walk throughs of every room. And some of that stuff, dear reader, is just pitiful.
But now, underway, in a hotel, with pizza topped with plans and dreams and contingencies, we are past the hardest, most hectic part of the move. We packed it all. It all got loaded. Everything is in motion. It is almost difficult to believe it all came together, considering where we were on Friday. The few hours of driving this evening was a welcome break. A full day’s worth of driving tomorrow … seems like a long day. After that, there’s just the new house, being reunited with our things, and getting settled.
Here’s the thing. This has been in the works for a while — and we’ll get into that later this week, I’m sure. Talks have been going on even longer. None of this is a surprise. And, happily, our new employer is paying for our packers.
Oh, they talked a good game on the phone. Walked them through the house verbally, they estimated the boxes. The guy that was going to be leading the actual work wanted to do a visual check via Facetime. That turned into a drop in visit on Wednesday or so. He looked at everything, thought the people on the phone in the office were about right. Said he’d be here with his crew on Friday to whip all of our things into boxes in a few hours.
So, you see, while none of this is a surprise, we’ve spent a few months just hanging out, thinking, Maybe we should be doing something?
Nahhh, we’ve got packers.
And they were scheduled to come at about 4 p.m. on Friday.
I bet you can tell where this is going.
On Friday at the end of the day I loaded my car with the last of my things from my on-campus office. Said goodbye to … well, no one, really, but I got a nice Slack message … and drove to the house. My lovely bride’s car was the only one in the drive.
These guys are fast!
I pulled in the garage, slid out the boxes from my office and stacked them in the fledgling pile of stuff we’ve actually put in the garage and walked inside, expecting a forest of boxes. Columns of cardboard, a feat of fort-making.
And there’s my lovely bride, packing a box.
Where, I asked, are the packers?
She gave me the smile that isn’t a smile, but is a smile, but really isn’t. The packers hadn’t turned up.
And so I joined her. She’d already made a frantic dash out to pick up a few boxes from stores and then hit the U-Haul and bought every packing supply they had in stock, and we got to work.
There was some back and forth with the no-show packers. They weren’t coming until so and so. And then they didn’t come. And then they didn’t come on Saturday. After which, we started demanding our money back. And some of it has been refunded. The next call, because we have time for this nonsense right now, is going to go like this: All of my money back, right now. Otherwise, you’re going to have two media professionals who have an embarrassing, embarrassing, array of media contacts and two months with nothing better to do than talk about you.
(Update: They fully refunded the charge.)
So we packed all night Friday. We packed all day Saturday, until about 8 p.m., when there was a small going away party held in our honor with The Yankee’s triathlon team. We packed all day Sunday. At one point yesterday I was packing some particular box and got sidetracked to help with another packing chore, but was then sidetracked by still two more packing tasks. It was ridiculous. We have packed all day today. (I spent most of that time doing some real work in the garage.) We’ll be packing still tomorrow.
At times, it looks like we’ve made a dent and the spirits are high. Progress! At times you can stand in the same spot and see not the momentum, but all of the things still to do, and you can see how this will never be over. Despair.
At every moment there is something to trip on. Sometimes there is something to trip on, and then you land in something else to stumble over.
Fortunately, we’ve been alternating the emotions between us, so someone is always on an upswing and lifting the other along.
These rotten packers.
The movers, a different company, show up tomorrow morning.
Music is doing us a lot of good right now. There’s been a curious sort of traffic pattern throughout the house. For a while, for some reason, The Yankee will work on something upstairs and I will work on something downstairs. And then she moves downstairs and I drift upstairs. I can’t say it is effortless, because everything is a huge effort right now, but it’s an easy flow. And there’s always some song or another as we pack. And usually two. So here’s some more Indigo Girls from their recent show at The Ryman.
Now, sure, you think, The Ryman. The Mother Church of Country Music, and here’s an Americana band, a folk band, a rock band. And all of that is true. But this song features, from left to right, a fiddle, a mandolin, an acoustic guitar, a resonator and a banjo.
Also there are two Loretta Lynn references in “Second Time Around.” This more country than anything Nashville churns out these days.
I love that lyric about compromise.
Here’s what I find about compromise
Don’t do it if it hurts inside
Cause either way you’re screwed
And eventually you’ll find
That you may as well feel good
You may as well have some pride
This is one of those songs where I find myself thinking about the narrator versus the performer, because Amy Ray has an earlier line about how she doesn’t want to sing again, it has a catchy little meter, but is probably the farthest line possible from the performer. Throughout her career she has talked over and over and over about how she has to do these things, sing and play, like it’s in her and she has to get it out, because from the first time she ever played cover songs with Emily Saliers, when they were kids, that this was what she wanted to do, make these noises with her friend. And here we are 40 years later and there’s no way that woman won’t sing her soul out because it feels right. So it must, then, be the narrator. And anyway, that line about compromise is a good concept and maybe one that should be applied a little bit more.
Point is, there’s a lot of time for your mind to wander while you’re trying to find the right angle to get all of these things to go in boxes. And why do I have this many things anyway?
The good news is that late last evening I got to the place where I am ready to shove it all into boxes, or study the insurance policy about fire. It was easy to get into that last bit of gallows humor when the tornado warnings fired up yesterday. This could solve a few problems at once!
Tomorrow, the movers.
If you ain’t go nothin’ good to say
Don’t say nothin’ at all
I took this photo of my lovely bride 14 years ago, yesterday, the night before we were married. Today, on our anniversary, and every day, I think of the many smiles and laughs and quiet times we have shared. It’s an ever-growing list of wonderful history and adventures both grand and regular. We have a lot for which we are grateful in our relationship, but that the regular is such a delight is one of the most important parts of all.
It’s a special thing, to know and love someone for a great length of time, a great gift to still find new things to learn from one another. It’s a comfort to do all of that in the company of someone invested in you.
Fourteen years, all a blessing.
Tomorrow, it’ll be just a bit better; the day after, a little better still …
