random thoughts – Day 1,907 – (Friday) – storm and a showcase

Thunderstorms rolled in this morning, it rained like the heavens were power washing the city, and then it all rolled back out. There was the option to work from home due to the weather, but once it calmed down I went to the office for my regularly scheduled day. Every minute I’m not in the house is time I’m not messing up the newly pristine, uncluttered environment recently captured in pixels. Also, the mailroom had some boxes to help with the packing and organizing operation. As a cherry for the top of the sundae, the department head said I could park in his spot in the lot adjacent to the building. It was a good morning.

I was the only person in attendance on the fourth floor and it didn’t bother me today. It was a half-day for me, and I was handling a multi-step task that was a bit more complicated than usual. It was a great opportunity to focus on it. The countdown is on now with 25 days to the merger date, meaning it is definitely the last time I will have to do the aggravating task. Eliminating one horrid ongoing task really doesn't make up for all the good things that will be lost, though.

When I got home with the four fresh boxes I was ready to pack some stuff. One was filled with vintage purses and the other with shoes. They were run out to the big moving box and let me tell you, it was hot in there, and I, the one who is always cold, was sweating.

First half performers. Photo by Richard Finney.

It was belly dance showcase night, which started with a costume check, makeup application and hot weather hair plan. Then it was a heavy-traffic drive for an hour. I arrived in Natick early enough to have a few minutes to sit on a bench in the common and relax.

Seven dance sisters from the troupe and I performed two dances in the first half of the show. My cell phone and glasses were upstairs in the prep room, so I didn't get any photos from that half and my view of it was slightly fuzzy. There was a group photo of the first half performers, and another at the end of the show. It was a paparazzi moment with lots of friends and family getting photos.

The showcase was fun and there were some familiar faces in the audience from the Tuesday dance group. The other dancers in the showcase were amazing and the costumes were gorgeous. It’s always great to see different styles and interpretations of dance – glamorous, playful, folkloric, earthy, flirty and more. Now, the troupe and I prepare for a couple summer performance dates for a festival and a farmer's market in Jaffrey, NH. It’s fun to have things to look forward to.

A troupe at the Natick Dance Showcase.

random thoughts – Day 1,906 – (Thursday) – mini-mission accomplished

The mini-mission leading up to the big mission was accomplished. The objective was met. The house was decluttered and hasn’t looked this good since, well, possibly ever since I moved in. It looks so good I’m afraid to touch anything. The counters haven’t been this free and clear in the past nearly nine years. I feel like I should go live in a hotel until the place sells so I don’t mess up the effort it too to get to this point. If only I came from rich folk with summer homes. Sigh.

The pictures were taken today. The listing is being prepared by my ace realtor and will be live soon. Things are moving along. The official merger date for work and my looming unemployment has been set (July 1), and I’m ready to move on and let the next chapter begin, for many reasons.

There is still a ton of work to be done, but for tonight, I was able to relax. A glass of wine was poured and I sat on the couch without a mind-numbing list of tasks needing immediate attention. I caught up on reading the day’s emails and half-watched a Spanish-language crime drama thinking I would catch the language after all the time spent with Duolingo, but that isn’t working out like I imagined. So far, I know someone was killed. But that is kind of the case with most crime dramas, so there was no linguistic wizardry there.

A supper of cheese and saltine crackers on a paper plate allowed for not disturbing the currently pristine kitchen, which may be declared “closed” indefinitely. Saltines are not necessarily my first choice for a “meal,” but they were available and were the last sleeve left from the box. The next mini-phase will be cleaning out the food cabinets by consuming the food reserves.

 There is still a lot of other stuff to be rid of, but there is another donation pickup scheduled for next Tuesday, this time with Big Brothers Big Sisters. The bag of clothing to donate was started tonight. I cannot express the depth of my love for the convenience of donation pickups.

Kiki seems completely puzzled by all the activity in the past week. First, it was the total chaos of boxes and stuff everywhere. Today, it is the complete absence of such. Poor kitty knows something is up, just not what, or what it means. Or maybe she has seen this before and does know. 

random thoughts – Day 1,905 – (Wednesday) – hustle, cuss, and adoration

The pressure is on and there was a lot of hustling tonight. Interior house photos are scheduled for Thursday. Emptying an entire storage room and decluttering the rest of a house is hard and time consuming. And man, I have a lot of stuff. I’m reminded of a time in junior high school when a friend was at my house. She would ask about the many things in my room and there was always a story about where it came from and why I liked it. She finally said, “you have a lot of stuff, and it all means something.” Exactly, and that is why it’s so hard to shed things.  

I would love to be one of those people who can easily discard items. One of the many family “mottos” when I was growing up was “don’t throw that away, it will be worth money some day!” It should have been stitched on a pillow. I don't save things for potential future monetary value. It's usually the emotional attachment to the person or place associated with its purchase or receipt. 

Then there is the inability to see the future. How can I know if I will need something or not in a different house in a different town and with a potentially different lifestyle? Exactly. I don’t. And I hate re-buying things I already owned, partly due to the repeated expense.

As if the uncertainties of the future and the task of today aren't enough, tonight, my wrist is feeling all sorts of aggravated. The tendon that rubs on the plate repairing the break is not happy and feels a little like it’s on fire. Not a big bonfire, more like a match flame, but still, this is a new, cuss-worthy development. The pinky finger side of the wrist where the too tiny to be dealt with bone chip resides is swollen. Super happy fun time. But I’ll get through it. There aren’t many other options. 

Kiki continues to become more relaxed, despite the disarray of the house. Each night lately, she has splayed herself on the rug as if to say “look at me, human!” And I do. There is no cussing with that. 

random thoughts – Day 1,904 – (Tuesday) – hot mess

This morning while dressing, I suddenly couldn’t find my shirt, which I had just removed from the drawer. Before work, while taping boxes and wrapping breakables, I lost the tape several times. The same for box lids. And my cup of coffee. 

While attempting to tidy up the house (which currently looks like a tornado blew through it), there were several instances of having something in my hand to put it elsewhere and minutes later, having no idea where it went. 

While working, pens disappeared while I sat at my desk, and even a computer program. The first task of the morning required logging into a program. It went successfully, but then the program disappeared from the screen. I tried logging in again and got an error message that I already had an active session going and to open a new one, I needed to close the other session. Ok, but I couldn’t find it and it wasn't open on my screen like it had been seconds earlier.

In several years of working with that program, the multiple open sessions problem is a new one. Closing browsers and logging in several more times had the same error result. I finally called our Help Desk, some tech guru magic was performed, and in a few minutes I was back in business.

Mid-afternoon, my cell phone wasn’t at my desk or anywhere in sight. Panicked, I looked around the neighboring kitchen, then the bathroom, then the dining room. It was finally found in the living room. I have no idea how or when it landed there, because it's needed to log into certain programs at work. It was about the millionth time I've misplaced it already this week.

When I prepared to leave for dance, first there was a round of “where are my keys?” While trying to exit the neighborhood, it was discovered that Beaver Street, the easiest and most direct way out and which had been closed for years for bridge repairs, was closed again today. During the longer route to the gas station, my bag fell off the passenger seat and spilled, forcing me to hunt for my wallet on the floor and under the seat.

I had filled my water bottle to take to dance, and before leaving the gas station, I reached for a sip of water. There was no bottle in the drink holder or my dance bag.

The drive to dance featured heavy volume that crept along route 495, as X2 liked to say, “as slow as pond scum.” It was not my favorite drive, but the return trip made up for it with low volume and clear roadways. My bottle of chilled water was waiting on the counter and Kiki was meowing from the dining room when I arrived back home, and everything felt calm again. Well, except for the house which needs to be photo ready on Thursday and is in total disarray with packing paper and bubble wrap and boxes and stuff everywhere. Emptying the spare room basically wrecked the rest of the house. Wednesday night is going to be busy.

random thoughts – Day 1,903 – (Monday) – old notes and mowing

The rain and intermittent sunshine have produced a lush backyard lawn and the third mow of the season took place tonight. Psychologically, it felt better that it didn’t occur in May. In terms of homeowner workload and mowing, I greatly prefer the drought periods and fewer mows.

After work and before the mowing, there was another round of life-sized Jenga. More packed items and boxes were slipped into in the spaces between already placed boxes so they didn’t require any extra room. A solution was found for the smaller of the matted and framed photos when I spotted the stiff bubble pack bags the frozen items came in with the pandemic grocery deliveries. They smallest of the large photos fit into the largest of the padded bags and the corners could fold over for extra protection. The finished package is slim enough to fit in between the various totes that tend to have a wider top and slightly tapered bottom.

Boxes are still being gone through and the discoveries are fun. Exciting, even. One box opened on Saturday was full of microcassettes with interviews I did with story subjects and background sources while working at the weekly newspaper in Tennessee. There were also several years of tarot and psychic readings done for me by a friend in Tennessee. The cassette recorder wasn’t in the box with the tapes, but today, the recorder was found in another box. Now I feel compelled to set them aside and carve out some time on the weekend to have a listen.

The former car music collection.

A Market Basket shopping bag held all the CDs and cassettes that used to live in my beloved Honda CRV. There was a pull out drawer under the passenger seat that was stuffed with music, plus storage slots in the dashboard for CDs and tapes. The CD player held multiple CDs which were rotated at whim. I really miss the six-CD player and cassette deck and my ability to listen at will to Canadian bands, local bands I had seen and liked, and even music by friends. 

Another box held checkbook registers from accounts going back to my first checking account in college and then with a series of banks that no longer exist. I was diligent with notations of expenses and thought (knew?) I would someday find it fascinating to read the details of my early financial life. That won’t be possible now, because I chucked them into the trash.

If only I could muster that level of strength regarding the box of date books, planners, and journals. In my 20s, I was convinced I had the most boring teen years of all earthlings, but when I flipped through my little Hallmark date books, obtained annually from Baron’s card shop in Fitchburg, I was amazed at all the things I did in high school. According to those little date books, I was always doing something – ballet, work, babysitting, shopping, going to dances. From a distance, it looked more exciting than when I was living it and feeling bored and restless. It will be fun revisiting those little books again, but this isn’t the time. There is still a lot of work to be done.

random thoughts – Day 1,902 – (Sunday) – photos, dancing, packing

In the life and schedule shakeup and stretch of unusual events, this morning the belly dance troupe had a photo shoot at our usual practice space. There were lights and cameras and all sorts of group configurations and individual photos in two different costumes. It was quick and efficient. 

After the photo session, we had our dress rehearsal for a showcase we are performing in on Friday. We were already in full costume and after a troupe update we hit the floor for run-throughs of our dances. Two of our members can’t make the Friday show, so some reconfigurations of the lineup were needed in a couple places, but we’ve got it covered.

Preparing for a
new journey.

After the photos and the dancing it was straight back to The BungaLowell for the day’s exciting session of life-sized Jenga in the moving unit. The foundation set yesterday was very well thought out, thanks to my friends, and my memories of the move nine years ago. Today I was able to fill in some gaps with small boxes and space bags of winter sweaters and vintage clothes. 

The spare room is, for the first time in nine years, almost empty. There is a desk, chair, and lots of 14" x 18" and 16" x 20" frames with photos. One of the biggest mysteries of the past couple days is how I packed the many framed photos for the move from Tennessee. There is zero recall of how they were wrapped and packed for the shipping cube from Tennessee to Mass, or how I loaded them into the moving pod from Fitchburg to Lowell three years later. They survived the journeys, so it’s puzzling that I can’t remember how I prepared them and set them in the moving unit.  

A sturdy Amazon pantry box was called into service for some kitchen items, even though that wasn’t part of the initial objective. The cast iron fry pan, flat pancake pan, and muffin pan were set in it, along with cake pans, bakery bags, and other things that I decide I won’t need soon. Easter and Valentine’s Day cookie cutters, single serve Bundt pans, and other new in the box items that have occupied drawer space for the entire time here and never once been used or even considered for use were gathered. They were boxed for the growing donation pickup scheduled for Monday.

Roses are blooming.

While filling a glass of water and staring out the kitchen window, I noticed the lawn is shaggy again, and in need of mow number three for the season. There was time to mow before dark, but no energy for it. That will be a Monday evening chore, weather permitting. 

The roses have begun to bloom in the front yard, flanked by the irises. Unlike everyone else's long blooming roses elsewhere on the street, mine never bloom for very long, so I need to notice them before it's all done. 

random thoughts – Day 1,901 – (Saturday) – dancing and schlepping

The day began with some box organizing/packing and then duet dance practice in my kitchen. The dancing helped work out some of the muscle soreness from yesterday’s stairclimbing and picking things up and putting them down.

There was a short break and then a couple friends arrived to help me clear the spare room. Close to nine years ago, we were emptying a moving cube and storing boxes in that same room.

My friends kicked ass. We got the upstairs shelving unit into the storage pod. Unlike the shelving unit that was in the basement that needed total disassembly to get up the stairs, the unit upstairs only needed the top three shelves removed and the top half of the corner supports unscrewed and then the bottom half fit down the stairs.

Much of the stuff in the spare room made it into the cube and was methodically and logically placed on the shelving units. The three space bags that the air was sucked out of with the vacuum yesterday were fully puffy with air today, which was disappointing, but the return of the air to the bags provided the appropriate bulk to fill the space between the two units.

Veggie burrito.

The reward for the hard work was dinner at Tijuana Grill on Market Street. The three of us enjoyed two orders of vegetarian burritos and a chicken burrito. We followed it with fried ice cream and then we were stuffed. 

As we walked to the car, it was pointed out that there was a tear in the right backside section of my camo cargo pants. I have no idea when this happened and these are my favorite banging around warmer weather pants, so it’s a bummer. I kidded about needing an iron-patch or maybe a nice zig zag stitch from my sewing machine. The machine stitch will have to wait, however, as the sewing machine was loaded into the cube this afternoon. Egads. Might be time to lay off the ice cream. 

Fried ice cream.

Tonight, I discovered another box of supplies for stained glass. This box has bevels of all shapes and sizes and like the others before it, weighs a ton. That makes four boxes of glass supplies – one of sheet glass, one of smaller pieces and scrap, one of bevels, and one with most of a spool of lead came. I thought the original spool was 50 pounds, but now I think it must have been 15. I’ve moved that spool myself several times and I don’t think I could pick it up and move it, even in my top physical condition beast mode derby days. Whichever, it’s most of a full spool and it’s damn heavy.

I can’t wait to be reintroduced to all my old art things and the idea of a craft room or art shed is really taking root. There are some glass patterns drawn and rolled in a cabinet, fabric whispering to me, and jewelry sketches tucked everywhere.