I've got troubles, as I said:
Mother is dying, Father's dead.
All my uncles are in jail.
It's a very moving tale.
(Dorothy Parker - "Venice Gavotte," Candide)
Gentle Reader, consider yourself lucky that I have been too busy packing to let my grubby little fingers go dancing across the keyboard. Yes, I know that everybody hates to move. Yes, I am aware that I am not the only person who has ever done so. Yes, I agree - I am extremely fortunate to have this many personal possessions that mean a great deal to me, and I am even more fortunate to have a roof to put them under.
All the same - I'm just tired.
What sustains me is the vision of our new home, beautifully arranged, with all the books back on the shelves, the paintings hung on the walls, the curtains framing the nice big windows that let in all that luscious sunlight (my doctor told me I had a Vitamin D deficiency, so I will have to put my reading chair near a window) and all the china put away in the kitchen cabinets, except, of course, for Grandma's China, which will go in the Fancy Display China Cabinet. At the moment, the china, haphazardly wrapped in my neighbors' old copies of the Post and the New York Times, is crammed into my neighbors' discarded Fresh Direct boxes (I buy my groceries in the grocery store so that I can be fussy about bruises on the nectarines, and I read the Times online, so I am grateful to have neighbors who do the opposite) with only hasty scrawls of
FRAGILE! NOTHING ON TOP!
to deter the contractor's henchmen from sitting down on top of them to enjoy their lunch. (I know they're not henchmen - they're carpenters - but until I unpack my china and make sure it's still in one piece, they're henchmen.)
Frankly, I am having a good deal of anxiety about my decision to take the Parian bust of Charles Dickens up there today, because he is Fragile- Nothing On Top! - but the Complete Works already made the trip, and I fear he is lonely without his children, so I shook a lot of packing noodles into the box and am hoping for the best. Charles Dickens will make the trip upstate sitting on my lap. I wish I had an extra seat belt for him.
We have been hauling everything up the Palisades Parkway, one Honda CR-V load at a time (I know I said we have a Saab. We do have a Saab. We also, it seems, have this Honda CR-V, and I don't know what the CR-V stands for, but my husband was in a hurry to get a car with four-wheel-drive, in case it snows this July. Hey, the weather has been nutty enough this year that it could happen.) In any event, I don't recognize our new car when I see it - it looks like every other damn grey car in the parking lot - and I am going to have to find a distinctive bumper sticker so I don't lose the thing, which I how I identify the Saab whenever I find myself in a sea of other Small Dark Blue Cars - the Phish bumper sticker is bright yellow.
I woke up this morning with Generalized Angst after dreaming about packing all night. It must be contagious, this Generalized Angst thing, because a few minutes after I'd poured my coffee, my husband shuffled in - it was a mere ten minutes or so past 5:00 a.m., Gentle Reader - and sadly remarked that he couldn't sleep, either, and would I like some help sorting through the canned goods in the kitchen and in throwing out everything that had expired?
Indeed I would.
So now there is a huge box of canned goods, pastas, spices, Goya black bean soup, hearts of palm, ackee, Heath Bar Chips, and God only knows what else sitting on the kitchen table. There it must remain until the next time we go up, since the car is full of books and china today. We can't put it on the floor, because the dog will get at it while we're hauling books and china. Last time we went, we forgot to close my son's bedroom door and came wearily home to find the place looking like Times Square on New Year's Eve - she'd merrily dug all the Kleenex out of the garbage, hollered the canine equivalent of "Whoopee!" and shredded it into confetti.
And I'd tell you more, but my cell phone just droned out DROID! in that annoying robot voice that always makes me jump, and it's my husband, so off I go to drop off more FRAGILE! NOTHING ON TOP! I'll bet Dorothy Parker had other people pack her belongings when she moved.
