Truckin’ (not!)

In which our intrepid heroine feels somewhat Dead, though not necessarily Grateful.

Is it just me, or has this been the longest month of the year? It seems as if I have been packing since February, but it was July when I finally got sufficiently fed up with the no-hot-water, et al, and started packing towards a future home purchase. And am I ever glad that I did! When LittleBit came home from visiting Middlest in August, I had two dozen boxes stacked along the living room wall, each neatly catalogued in Excel and labeled within an inch of its life. And then we got the offer we couldn’t refuse from our new landlord, and the rest is packing/moving history.

We are still not done with the boxes. But we are getting very, very close. I have worked steadily since the big stuff got moved on the 15th, a box or three most nights, more on others. I have taken Sabbaths off, partly from reverence and partly from the sort of weepy exhaustion that causes strong men to think “uh-oh, hormones!” and wise men to find reasons to be quietly busy, elsewhere.

I had a little scare a couple of nights ago. Pulled around the corner and prepared to park the car when I noticed that there were stickers in my dining room window and a grill on the stoop. How could they move somebody in so quickly, with several days left on my lease? I took a deep breath and realized that I was two doors west of where I should be. A little embarrassing, but thankfully not fatal.

Yeah. I’m that tired.

LittleBit was chatting with the Relief Society president at seminary yesterday morning, who said that if we needed any help, I should call, and she would round up some sisters. So I did, while on the road. I don’t need a lot of help [some folks might disagree, particularly if they are related to me], just a little moral support and a few gazillion more boxes. Oh, and some chocolate, preferably in the form of an IV drip. I would be a happy camper if I could just plug it into my bloodstream and bypass the entire digestive process.

Math du jour:
I : Cherry Coke :: Pirate : Rum

I had that old Grateful Dead song rumbling through the back of my head all day. Especially the line, “What in the world ever became of Sweet Jane? She’s lost her sparkle, somehow she isn’t the same … and all her friends can say is Ain’t it a shame?” I have also been drinking 8-20 ounces of Cherry Coke nearly every workday for the past two weeks. I need about three days of nonstop sleep, a full-body massage, and somebody else to be in charge for awhile.

I guess it’s time to establish the Ravelled Sleave Center for Cherry Coke Buzzed Latter Day Saints and check myself in as First Patient. I woke at 2:36 yesterday, or maybe it was 3:26, and couldn’t get back to sleep because I was remembering what LittleBit’s room looked like when I left the old apartment Wednesday night. She says it’s all under control, and she may well be right. She is, after all, my daughter, and immensely capable and intermittently organized in her own way. She also camps alongside that famous river – Denial – on a regular basis. [See “she is, after all, my daughter”, above.]

When I dropped her at school after seminary, she looked like I felt. Somewhere between “stick a fork in me, I’m done” and “death warmed over”. I suggested that when she got home from school, she go straight to bed for a nap, and we would pack after I got home. When I walked in the door with two blackberry shakes from JITB and checked on her, she asked me to stick her shake in the fridge and said that she’d only just gotten home. I let her sleep. It seemed by far the kindest thing to do. And I spent the evening, what there was of it, quietly emptying boxes and stacking them by the front door. I think I went to bed about 7:30, myself.

Phone rang a hair after 9:00; it was the missionaries. I had signed up for another drive-by fooding for their dinner tonight, and they were calling to confirm. I told them we were in the middle of moving and that I would run by Wal-Mart and pick up something and hang it on their front door this morning. They told me *they* had moved, effective yesterday. I told them I would turn the ringer off and asked them to call back and give me the address. They are now over by LittleBit’s restaurant, and the place where we do our laundry, and our favorite ice cream store.

It is now 2:00am, and she’s still asleep, and I am not. And I am ravenous. I need to charge my phone, and the charger is in her room, and I don’t feel like getting in the car and driving around until the phone is charged. Her wall charger died just before she went to VA, so I gave her mine and have been making do with the car charger. Considering that I log 250 miles a week just getting to and from work, it’s not been a problem.

The living room and dining room are looking pretty good at the moment. Just in time for the second wave of boxes from the old place. I found the oatmeal when I was puttering last night! I also saw a not-ugly sideboard and hutch at Wally World when I went there yesterday to get cash for LittleBit’s lunches for the next week [both ATMs at my bank were out of order at 6:00am on a Payday Friday] but I resisted the temptation and instead bought her the markers she needed for choir, and some of those pointy pop-on erasers [the kind that look a little like Monopoly houses] for my pencils at work and two red aluminum crochet hooks that are properly entered on Ravelry.

Ravelry. Remember when getting my invitation was the big obsession? They seem to have fixed what seemed to be a bug with cataloguing my needles; I was able to delete the extra pair of Brittany 10 DPs last night. And unfortunately that was not my only error, and I do not remember which needle size I entered the wrong length on, so I’ll have to root around before I can fix that. Would it be the needles which are in the rolling carts which wait invitingly beneath my folding tables in what I laughingly call the sewing corner in my room? Or is it the needles that are in some yet-unpacked box, and if so at which place?

I am still wondering where to put my portable forest: the 7’ green ficus with red underleaves, the 4’ variegated ficus, the folk art Christmas tree, and the fake palm I bought last spring. Maybe I should stack all the incoming bins and boxes against the short wall of the dining room and see if I can borrow Firstborn’s old folding screen to camouflage them and place the trees strategically, with a sign that says “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”. Do you think that Toto would yap at me if I did?

And I still have no idea where my camera cable has gotten to.

Well maybe I do. I just opened a red bin, thinking “Wonder what’s in here?” and there was a neatly bundled cable. I’m not sure if it’s the one for my camera, or if it goes to the camera that LittleBit is still borrowing from one of her friends. I think I remember putting my cable “in a safe place” so that it wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. But it’s not in my red tote, and it’s not in my knitting bag, and I think I remember lots of things that either didn’t happen at all, or didn’t happen the way that I remember them. So your guess is as good as mine.

Suddenly I am sleepy. A bowl of cereal will do that, sometimes. And since it's not yet 4:00am, sleep seems like the most rational choice.