Although I am posting this on the weekend. I wrote this on Day five in my new home. It’s been a brutal five days, especially moving day, last Saturday. We spent the better part of the previous week carting over boxes and small items as I packed them, in order to lessen the load for the movers.
We gave away a lot of our furniture and belongings to family, as we were downsizing once again. These factors apparently didn’t help the move take less than thirteen hours! The weather held up thankfully, through last week as we went back and forth with car loads of items to move. It was not too freezing and no snow was on the ground as we crossed our fingers it would stay like that just until Saturday’s move.
Just as the moving truck was getting ready to pull away from our home, the temps dropped drastically and the blowing snow and sleet had begun. It took the movers an hour to get to our new place which normally would have taken a half an hour. Seven hours later they finished unloading after schlepping our things from the loading dock to the elevators and down a long corridor to our apartment. Some of my furniture came up with actual snow on it, which didn’t leave me a happy camper. I mean, bad enough they left some things uncovered, but common sense . . . WIPE THE DAMN SNOW OFF before ruining my stuff!
Our fair sized condo was laden with boxes. I cleared a narrow path for us to try and walk around as I wondered where to begin unpacking. I spent time being meticulous when packing, so that I would clearly label which room every box belonged in so I wouldn’t have to spend time searching for things. Boxes aren’t cheap, and I had well over a hundred of them! We were lucky enough to get a ton of boxes donated to us by family members from a move in their own family. That was the beginning of some unforeseen mix-ups.
Some boxes had so many labels and scratch outs after being reused that the movers didn’t bother to figure out which room they really belonged in, so the hunt was on for misplaced boxes. My body obtained approximately fourteen bruises from banging into scattered boxes and furniture. I somehow sprained the top of my left foot, or so it felt like it after one day of standing fourteen hours in non-supportive shoes, but I finally found some solace in a pair of crocs I managed to pluck out of one of my too many shoe boxes. My tail bone feels as though it was sawed in half from continuous bending, and my legs and neck and shoulders feel like what I’m sure the Tin Man felt like in the Wizard of Oz.
The first two nights, I don’t think I even slept four hours a night, despite my sheer exhaustion. I woke up many times, as if my body knew it was in a strange environment. You know, that weird ‘where am I?’ feeling you sometimes get when you are on vacation and wake up a bit disoriented? I have moved five times in my fifteen years of marriage. Three of those moves were in the last four and a half years!
One may think I’d be quite used to it by now, but the older I get and the more shit I accumulate really adds up to a toll on the body. For some strange reason, this move felt like the most difficult of all moves. I don’t get it as we have downsized along the way, gave so much away and moved from a house to a condo. Perhaps it was the long and many treks of lugging stuff for days through undergrounds and elevators and corridors just to get inside the condo, but it felt like moving went on forever, and my body has the war wounds to prove it.
It was also difficult for me not to be in touch with my writing world. So many ideas whirled around my head, just wanting to land on paper at most inopportune moments, when I had to stay focused on the task at hand. On this Day five after moving in, I still have two rooms to unpack and my body is slowly adjusting to the long days it has put in doing physical labour- other than my taped up hips that couldn’t take the punishment of eternal bending, I’m getting used to being stiff. I’m still trying to get used to my new surroundings and glad the bulk of the move is over and done with.
Only now am I looking forward to my winter vacation which I will be leaving for in less than three weeks! Heading down to the Caribbean and out of the minus thirty temps is just what the doctor ordered! A new year, a new life has begun.
In spring, we will be heading off to Arizona for a few weeks, in search of a place to rent for next winter and all winters after. This big move has afforded us for the extended winter stays away, which was the initial plan. Who knows what other great possibilities await me in my new life!
For now, I am still unpacking and stealing more computer time after not being connected for a few days. I know I have missed reading and commenting on so many of your wonderful blogs and hope to catch up in the next few weeks. And oh . . . despite cuts on every one of my knuckles, I managed to not break a single nail!!
DGKaye©2015
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