Posted on

Embrace it or get rid of it

We successfully arrived in our new neighborhood.  It looks like a toy bomb went off in here, but otherwise we are having a really good time so far.

Until I have time to write a longer post, here’s the short version: lots of neighborhood kids, family visits, firefly catching, running around in bare feet, splashing in blow-up pools.  Summer perfection.

My husband and I are desperately trying to get the house together.  It’s considerably smaller than our California apartment, which is a good thing, actually, and has turned out to be an exercise in acceptance and letting go.

Yesterday I saw our new neighbor’s home.  Her house is the other side of our twin, so, it’s pretty much a mirror image of ours, though she has done a number of excellent renovations and additions.

Her home is lovely, a model of taste, comfort and clean simplicity.  I felt such pangs going through that house, a real longing to have  a life different than the 10,000 lb. reality of our life. (Well, actually, our belongings weigh 10,000 lbs, plus the weight of the 44 boxes of books we mailed through the post office; they were obviously not on the moving truck, so they weren’t weighed with the rest of our things.)

As I was falling asleep last night on our new bed (we had to sell our Cal. King bed — ultra-comfy mattress and gorgeous Mission-style frame — right off the moving truck.  When we realized that it would never fit in our bedroom, I used Craigslist and an impossibly low price to make sure that we didn’t have to take that beast into this tiny home) I thought about that yearning for a simpler existence.

That desire makes me subscribe to Real Simple magazine and stimulates my salivary glands when I see displays at Ikea, all organized and neat and impossibly wispy-light.

When I woke up this morning, I realized that moving offers an opportunity to see all your worldly possessions, to touch them again after they’ve been stored away in plastic bins for years, to make the decision to bring them with you, to give them away, to sell them or to trash them.  And when you arrive at your new destination, you get that opportunity all over again as you unpack and settle in.

I figured that I can either embrace all this stuff and celebrate where I’ve been, who I am and what I’ve collected or I can throw it all out.  

For whatever reason, this is a real challenge for me.

Whatever I do, I realized that it’s no use fretting about it.  Either way, the kids will still come over and play and will still run in and out, demanding snacks and juice.

And it’s all good.

Posted on

OK, now *that’s* disgusting

Short post here, but I just had to take a minute in the midst of packing hell to share this.

There is a new tenant in our building, and she seems to be, uh, a troubled sort. Late at night, she brings home drunken men, and there have been a number of scenes in the parking lot behind our building. Once, one of her friends threw up all the way from the parking lot to the woman’s apartment, so we were treated to piles of vomit when we came outside in the morning.  Excellent.

Last night, though, her friends topped even that.

I was packing like mad yesterday, and I got tired at the end of the day and left a few things outside of the storage space — a few bins of Christmas ornaments, a few empty boxes, and a bin of bike helmets and bike gear.  I vaguely thought, at one point, that I should go outside and put everything away, but I was just too tired.

So I left the stuff outside and did a little more work dismantling my office.  I did think a couple more times that I should go out to move the stuff in, but I just couldn’t propel myself in that direction.  

A little later, around 12:30 am, I heard the woman pull in the parking lot, and a few guys poured themselves out of her car and started staggering around.  I heard them all, cursing, talking loud, and one of the neighbors yelled out of her window at the drunken revelers to shut up and watch the language.

Then, I heard a scuffle on the side of the building, and then one of the drunk guys said, “Dude, [garbled name] just pissed all over the [garbled description of something or other].”

I knew in my heart that one of the drunken idiots had just peed all over my Christmas ornaments.

I ran outside, and sure enough, there was a fresh wet spray on the wall.  The amount was impressive, I’ll give him that.  The liquid was pooling on the ground, threatening the neatly stacked boxes.  I couldn’t even bear to look at the bins of ornaments.

I scooted out to the driveway just in time to see the woman running to her car from her apartment.  I guess she knew that she needed to leave before the cops got there.

I called the cops, explaining that a drunken fool had just urinated on my Christmas ornaments.  It was one of those moments when you don’t know whether to laugh or cry at how completely bizarre life can be.

When the police came, the nice officer shined his flashlight on the bins of Christmas ornaments, nicely illuminating the drops of pee, and explained that there was nothing they could do since the car and the dudes were gone.  

So, my husband and I got water and doused the area and moved everything inside, which I should have done in the first place.

I guess the lesson is: you never know when someone will pee on your Christmas ornaments.

Posted on

The bizarro world of buying & selling on Craigslist

My husband and I decided to take our girls to Disneyland before we move to Philadelphia.  In spite of the economy, we decided to go ahead and splurge.  None of the amusement parks near Philadelphia is like Disneyland, and we have no idea when we’ll get to Florida, though we would love to get there to check out The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at some point after it opens in 2010.

But it’s a small fortune to take a family of four to Disneyland, and we don’t have any of our birthdays coming up in time so that one of us can go in for free in order to save at least a little money.

So, we decided that we would sell some things on Craigslist and that we’d put the proceeds toward our Disneyland trip.  We are also on the prowl for boxes and a couple of other things that we want to buy on Craigslist.

Easier said than done.  Craigslist is unpredictable, to say the least.

Here is a little list of my Craigslist lessons:

*Mostly, the e-mails I send for items I would like to buy go unanswered. Why do people put ads up and then not answer their e-mails?  I don’t get it.  Ditto for the e-mails I send in response to e-mails I get for the ads I’ve placed.  People express avid interest in an item, and then when I respond, then they can’t take a minute to say they’ve found something else or that they’ve lost interest?  I’m not sure what the lesson is, except to not count on anyone to get back to you.

*I placed an ad for these super heavy carved stone lamps I got from my step-father years ago when he first moved in with my mother.  There was a flurry of e-mails, and they all said they were very serious about the stone lamps, but I felt obliged to respond to them in a first come, first served fashion.  But every time I exchanged e-mails with the first woman who had responded, she said she was serious, but then she had more questions, like, “Are the lamps more yellow or more white?  The pictures you sent don’t really show the color too well.”  Suffice it to say, the lamps were yellowish white, and the pictures showed that just fine.  I did my best to answer all her questions, and finally I was able to set up a time for this woman to come all the way down from Ventura to see the stinking lamps.  In the meantime, I had to put two other serious buyers on hold, just because I wanted to stick to my original plan of first come, first served.  Well, to my amazement, the Ventura woman actually stood us up and never bothered to call to cancel her appointment with us.  My husband waited all afternoon for this lady.  Nevermind that we weren’t sure if she was OK, if she got lost on the way to our home, or what.  Finally, I just decided that she was a flake, and I called the next woman on my list. She came right over and was so excited to get the lamps because they went perfectly with her decor.  I had wanted to sell to this woman all along because she was so upbeat and charming in her e-mails, so I’m glad she got the lamps in the end.  My lesson was that next time I’ll go with my gut instead of worrying about first come, first served.  

* I wanted to replace a missing hubcap on my Matrix, and I found a scratched up one for $10 on Craigslist.  Perfect!  I figured that the others are scratched up, so they might as well have a scratched up friend to match.  So, I set up a time to meet the hubcap owner in her town, which was kind of far from mine.  Later in the day, she kindly contacted me to let me know that she had decided to spend the night with a friend in a town closer to mine and that I could pick up the hubcap there.  That was nice, I thought.  And so I headed out the next morning, as agreed, and knocked on her friend’s door at 9:30 a.m.  There was no answer.  I waited a couple of minutes and heard stirring inside the apartment.  A young woman stuck her head out the door, and it was clear I had woken her up.  I apologized and said that I had come for the hubcap.  From inside the apartment, I heard more stirring, and then a sleepy voice that said, “Oh, the Craigslist person.  Right, sorry.  Let me put on some pants.”  So I lingered outside of the apartment, trying to look casual, and then another young woman came out of the apartment in a t-shirt, jeans and flip-flops.  She was carrying some car keys.  I realized that she must have left the hubcap in her car.  As we walked to the car, we chatted, and I thanked her for bringing the hubcap to a town closer to mine.  She said it was no problem and then explained that she and her friend had gone to a birthday party the night before and that it had gotten a little wild.  Then I noticed that there was something red smeared on one of her feet.  I thought of the party and thought, Is that ketchup?  Had they been dancing in ketchup?  But what it really looked like was blood.  I was freaked out but determined to get the bargain hubcap, which I did.   And it looks perfect.  The Craigslist lesson?  Beats me.  Don’t dance in ketchup, I guess.

*Another hubcap story.  I was looking for hubcaps for my Corolla too.  I sent an e-mail to someone in South Pasadena because that is a town very near to my workplace.  Of all crazy things, the person who answered my e-mail was one of the teachers at my school!  This cracked both of us up, of course.  He brought the hubcaps to work, but they didn’t fit my car.  No lesson here, except that you never know who you’re gonna meet on Craigslist.

And that’s it for now.  Through Craigslist we have made a little money towards our Disneyland trip, and we’ve met a few nice people who have made our moving load a little lighter.