Sunday, April 24, 2005

Almost Connected Again

For the first time since we moved into the new house, I am online on my own computer again. Yes, it took me over three weeks to hook up my computer. The past three weeks have been overflowing with accomplishments; they've also been filled with a very special kind of torture. It's as if I've been working right between heaven and hell. I have nearly everything I've ever wanted. I just have almost no goddamn time to enjoy any of it at all.

In addition to moving I have been to rural Mississippi and Memphis for work, and will be in rural Lousiana next week. I did manage at last to get to Chicago for some fun with Kati and Michael. For a weekend in the middle of all this madness, the husband and I took a deep breath and did nothing but tour exhibits, eat good food with friends, and play games and talk and enjoy ourselves. Chicago was needed and neccessary. I do miss Kati so. I want to go back and visit her again before too long...

But I came right back into town and left again; and then my mother-in-law was here and we I was shown, how much, how much I really needed. Tommorrow the husband is home from work and the delivery men will bring a new bookcase for him, two filing cabinets for me, nice old wooden ones, and a dining room table from the 1920's refinished and so overdone in the turning of the legs that my sister Abby could tap dance on the top and it would never wobble. And then there's a kind of china cabinet with no glass, a blind cabinet it's called, that I like very much.

The husband and I have hung a pot rack from the exposed iron girders in the cieling. The whole house, little by little, is coming together quite well. You should come to visit and see it. But do that later - there are still piles and piles of books and clothes in the floor. And I can't figure out when I'll have time to unpack everything because even today I have a report to work on for my job, and then I'm off to Lousiana.

I put in my notice at work. I'm terrified I'll get pregnant and I can't keep up this constant rush of work and travel. I can barely hold everything together now, never mind if I have to do all that thinking about a baby as well. I said in the notice I'd wait until September. Cross your fingers for me that I can make it that long, and think thought in my direction about the National Archives and Records Adminstration. Whenever you think of me, think "8 to 4 desk job". Whenever I think of you, I'll think of warm summer vacations.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Our friend Raven came down from Nashville to help us move last weekend. Raven is the most fabulous moving help ever.

We closed on the house Thursday night, and the husband surprised me by taking me out to one of the nicest restaurants in town, The Oceanaire. We split a lobster and had the most fabulous deserts. I ordered baked Alaska because whenever you have the chance to watch a really good waiter set food on fire, you should. The husband ordered the white chocolate banana crème pie, which did not get set on fire but tasted like the best banana crème pie you’ve ever had, only better.

When we got home we met up with Raven, and the moving began. Raven, for those who haven’t met him, is about 6’ 3” and was raised by interior decorators. He has a habit of wearing a black wool coat and a fedora. His long brown hair goes down to his waist, and his blue eyes are always seeing something that you haven’t. Raven is pure Nashville, walking around in bondage pants and shoes that need mending. He will not move to Atlanta, although the husband and Daniel and I have tried to persuade him. Raven talks about New York sometimes, and I hope he goes there. He talks also some times about Memphis, which has a big goth scene. I hope he doesn’t move to Memphis. Memphis scares me a bit in a way I can’t describe.

We took Raven to Cafe Intermezzo before he left. This made him pretty damn happy, if only because he was able to get a good shot of expresso. Raven says he can't get a good expresso in Nashville anymore, not since Bongo Java changed a few years ago.

We have moved, and moved, and moved for a week nearly now, and we will not be done moving for a couple more weeks. This is the way of moving. Somehow, when you are moving into a house that you own and not an apartment the moving seems more intense and arduous. We have only moved about 5 blocks in the physical, three dimensional world; yet we have moved into another phase and plane somehow, we have crossed rivers and dragged boxes through deserts somehow else.

I can’t explain this to you. I don’t have the words to explain moving into the first home that you own. Nothing seems real to me still. Owning our condo seemed a little more real when I bought a curb key and showed off my ability to turn on the water without the water department’s help. Perhaps owning our condo will seem even more real once we’ve painted and have a chance to sleep in a bed again instead of mattresses on the living room floor.

Does anyone, by chance, know how you get rid of a mattress?