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Begin by lightly announcing to friends and family that you are
leaving Los Angeles and moving "up north" to be near your daughter.
Patiently explain to well-meaning friends who question this rather
startling news that you know what you're doing. You've moved a total of
37 times in your life. You could probably pull off this move in less
than a month!
Realize you must pull off this move in less than a month.
Make
repeated trips to visit your new friend, Harry, at the U-Haul place
around the corner. He sells boxes. And mama, do you need them.
Take everything you have accumulated for the past 28 years and begin to pack.
After 10 hours straight, stand back and survey your progress.
Panic.
Fall
asleep and have dreams of missed trains, rabid dogs, dead friends,
ex-husbands, and killer-rapist-box-salesmen hunting you down using your
Discover Card information.
Make tea for well-meaning friends who come to help you pack.
Make more tea for more well-meaning friends who come to pack.
Pick up your sister who has flown in from Philadelphia to help you pack.
Try not to notice the look of utter horror on her face when she sees how much progress you've made.
Pack for several days with your sister. Thank God for her about 100 times each day.
Call
your ex-cleaning people whom you haven't had clean for you for six
months because you didn't have the money. Give them items you know
won't fit in your new one bedroom apartment. Like your treadmill, a TV,
an iron bed, mattress and box spring, and several pieces of furniture.
They take it all, except one sorry, broken chair. Oh well, it will go
out on the curb with the other undesirables.
Movers come.
Everything seems to be going along swell. You remind them to please put
the broken chair out on the curb. The foreman, Russian, says, "Sure, no
problem." He says this to everything, even your offer of a cup of
coffee.
Once they double your orignal estimate, tell you you'll
get your stuff between 1 and 7 business days, take your money and then
cart everything away, you discover how much dust can accumulate in 9
years.
You clean it all up in 3 hours because the new owners - you know, the ones who can actually afford to live here - will do their final walk through that afternoon.
You
cry yourself to sleep in the empty house, remembering wonderful
Christmases, scary birthdays, new relationships, break-ups, and most of
all, your daughter growing up. You loved this house. Goodbye, house.
You
drive, with a full car and one cat and one dog, to San Francisco. You
will be staying with your daughter and her roommate for perhaps up to
one week.
You venture into their scary bathroom. The same empty
Bud Light 24 oz is laying on the filth encrusted floor in the exact
same spot it was when you came up apartment hunting 3 weeks ago. You
shudder in disgust. You vow to clean the bathroom the next day.
You wake that night with an asthma attack. No amount of sucking on inhaler allows you to breathe.
You
spend your first day "up north" in the emergency room at UCSF on
continuous nebulizers. After 10 hours, you convince the doctors to let
you go. They give you facemasks to wear at daughter's dusty filthy
house. Whoo hoo.
Day after boring day goes by as you convalesce. I'm too old for this shit, you think. And then it hits you. You are too old for this shit.
Finally,
the movers bring your stuff. Your daughter gets told by some of the
lovely tenants that, "You can't move in on a weekend. It's a rule.
You're going to get a fine for this." Great. Looks like you've moved
into Nazi central.(This is later confirmed when the Cable Guy can't get
signal on his phone when he tries to get information on how to access
the telecom closet so I can have cable, internet, phone. "Damn, lady,
it's like a PRISON in here!" Oh my brother, prophesy!)
Box after box after box after box comes in. Movers leave. You roll up your sleeves.
Within 2 hours you are filthy, sweaty and have not, it would appear, made even the slightest dent in this mess.
There
is no safe haven. You have to walk sideways, step over, slide by, and
keep an eye out for errant cabinet doors that administer nasty head
wounds.
On the way out for her walk, your dog pees on the
carpet in the hallway, right in front of someone's door. You drag her
to the elevator, hoping she'll stop but there is an unmistakable trail,
about 50 ft long, of pee. As you get to the elevator, you hear the
offended
