Tag Archives: moving

Finding Everyday Rhythm

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The first thing I baked in our new house were hamburger buns using my friend Emma’s recipe posted at The Kitchn.  It was wonderful to bake bread again – I haven’t done it for years.  My mom was baking bread for us in this past year and I loved it.  But I missed the feel of young dough in my own hands.  These buns are the best I’ve ever had so if you want to have a hamburger bun that will stand up to your burgers – make this recipe!

Unpacking is a slow process when you’re me.  I get easily overwhelmed by all the other details of moves that must be attended to, such as getting your new State license (you’re supposed to do it within 10 days of moving!!!!!) and paying off old bills and communicating with the IRS and setting up new accounts for everything.  Still, we’re making progress.  Even though we don’t have everything we own down here yet.  Yes, there’s one more trip with a truck to go.  Were we worried about fitting all our furniture here for good reason?  No.  It’s pretty bare in here and we could use all the furniture we already have that’s mouldering in our poor old house in McMinnville.

My sister visited us this weekend and lit a fire under our ass such that my old rhythm was kickstarted: we cleaned, we unpacked, we did house things that normal people do weekly like sweep the porch and the floors and mop and scrub… it was brilliant and I haven’t felt that good in a long time.  Maybe 7 years.  If you think that’s pathetic you are invited to keep that to yourself.
Everything here is way more expensive than it was in McMinnville.  Our water bill for July is $145 and the biggest water bill we ever paid in Oregon was $90.  Food is more costly and the most shocking thing I’ve noticed so far is that the produce in the supermarkets is not nearly as good and fresh as it is in Winco – the poor people’s discount market – I haven’t been to the farmer’s market yet which is probably where I’ll find the best produce but this is California for God’s sake!  Everything grows here.  There is little excuse for produce to be bruised, old, or sad here.  Yet, this is what is.

It is heartening and also telling to see more and more vegetable growing going on in empty lots here and in front gardens.  It is going to be a real boon to grow food on my FIL’s property for the family (if he lets me).

Sometimes I wonder if anyone misses seeing that fat chick whizzing by them on her conspicuous Vespa.  I can’t help but hope my Vespa will be remembered.

I have been having a lot of thoughts about home economy and what that means and how to evaluate it after having a troll plague an old post of mine that tackles the question of whether or not sewing your own clothes in economical.  I have been wondering how best to evaluate the cost of living and the cost of doing things oneself – there’s the compound way of looking at the numbers, there’s the flat way that takes some allowances, and there’s the straight across the board price comparison.  Now that I’m living in such an expensive place I’m compelled to look for new ways of conserving energy and of saving money.

I have so many details to sort out still.  I have to pass my motorcycle written DMV test, I have to pick primary doctors, I have to unpack and do laundry.  But the bottom line is that except for missing the people I care about and enjoy who still live in Yamhill County – I’m so fucking happy to be home I feel incandescent under this bloated disgusting body that I am going to reclaim.

I’m not lonely.  I’m not an outcast here.  I’m not outside all the social circles – I’m in my own social circle!  There aren’t so many social cliques – or at least if there are I am blissfully unaware of them and therefore unable to feel left out and leprous.

Life isn’t perfect anywhere.  I’m terrified for Max to start school.  I’m worried about the price of life.  But I’m also hopeful and this house is amazing.  Every morning I feel lucky to wake up here.

The reality for a person with chronic major depressive disorder and GED is that life WILL be full of difficult days and no amount of life happiness is going to prove the easy cure to what is wrong with my body.  Still – the base line of comfort and happiness matter a great deal – if your baseline is pretty good then the bad days are easier to handle.  If your  baseline is very low and dark then it’s only that much more of a struggle to see light.

I feel my life rhythm returning and that is vital to my stability and my overall sense of well being.

I swept my front porch and trimmed my geranium to encourage more growth.

To most people this would be the most ridiculous thing to celebrate.

I am not most people.

I am happy right now.

 

My 25th Move

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Some things I’ve observed about moving that I have probably already observed during many of the previous 24* times I’ve moved:

1.  Every single thing you own you should own because it has an actual useful place in your life NOT because you just hate throwing things out or giving them away.

2.  In spite of learning the above wisdom, I still have hundreds of pounds worth of stuff that I am simply unable to make decisions about right now so I’m moving it with me.  What can I say?  I’m a work in progress.

3.  Moving is expensive.  Just like going bankrupt is very expensive.  We can’t really afford this move but we can’t afford NOT to move.  Quite a snag.

4.  Try to arrange a move so that you’re not on the rag while you pack, plan, or execute the actual move.  Especially if your PMSing makes you semi-suicidal.

5.  Don’t have pets if you ever plan to move.  Or, at least, don’t have six of them.

6.  It turns out I’m a serious box snob.  Half of our boxes are new and half are used boxes we bought for cheap off of Craig’s list.  One person’s idea of “good condition” is another person’s idea of “derelict quality almost not worth using”.  I like brand new boxes with full integrity and no writing already on them.  This does NOT agree with my philosophy of re-using and recycling.

7.  I tape boxes better than my mom and Philip.  They will not likely agree with this.  I have a method I have been using since I was the shipping manager at Weston Wear.

8.  Moving is one of the best ways to test your family relationships.  (Second only to having babies with someone which is followed by traveling with someone.)

9.  Moving requires good friends.  This is why you must MUST help your friends move when they need you because eventually you will need them too.  One of life’s greatest opportunities for reciprocity and community bonding which is necessary for getting through things like hard winters or a zombie apocalypse.

10.  It used to be that books and clothes made up the vast majority of my belongings.  Now it’s kitchen and pantry stuff.  I have very few clothes over all but I have a minimum of 25 boxes of jars, tools, pots, peelers, strainers, and other things necessary for cooking and preserving food.  When I’m done I may well find I have closer to 40 boxes of this stuff.

11.  Moving while also working can make children into orphans.  My kid is awesome.  He’s so flipping awesome about the fact that I’m pretty much ignoring the crap out of him because I don’t have enough hours in the day to work, pack, breathe, and also hang with him.  Plus he’s awesome because he’s being patient with how snappish I’ve been.

12.  I need a bigger brain and a better nervous system if I’m ever going to go through this again.

13.  Moving is unhealthy.  The dust it kicks up into your lungs is awful (especially for people like Philip who have asthma).  It wears you out.  It strains your back.  It deteriorates your diet (if it was already unhealthy, it will become even less healthy) because you don’t have time to cook or plan for healthy meals.  You use up things you have in the cupboard and buy easy to make things like cheese sandwiches.

14.  I have found an inordinate amount of weird office supplies in my house that I’ve never used and can’t think why I thought I needed them in the first place.  Labels, mostly.  Not useful ones.  And reams of paper that are neither good for printing on or using.  Where did it come from?

15.  In general – I see a need for much more careful purchasing in my future.  Do I really need that face cleanser (mild soap has always worked just fine for my skin) or glue (we’ve found 3 bottles of Elmer’s glue and we barely have enough need to justify having 1 bottle of it) or picture framing hardware (most of our stuff is simply hung with nails) or tubes of weird toothpaste I know I’ll hate because there’s only one toothpaste I can stand to use… all over my house are purchases that turned out to be a waste and yet I can’t return them** or give them to the Good Will.  Everywhere I turn there are signs of wasted money and packaging and landfill crap.

That’s all for today.  I have to work and then I have to pack.  Same old same old.  There are exactly 7 days before the move.  7 DAYS.

*Actual number of times I’ve moved in my life.

**I am pathologically incapable of returning things to stores so I probably have a higher percentage of wasted purchases sitting around my house than the average person who has no trouble at all returning stuff they bought that they discovered they really didn’t need or want.