Transition

Yeah. The original plan was that I would move yesterday, September 1st. Which makes sense, it being the new month and all. But then I got the call that the new landlords wanted me to move in the Saturday before instead, because they were going out of town Sunday through Wednesday. Um, yeah.

So the Pink Padded Mallet continues to whack away, and I continue to roll with it as best I can. It's not a heart seizing panic. It's not Grit Your Teeth From The Pain either. It's a resigned Squaring Of The Shoulders and trudging through.

Trudging through picking up a U-Haul on the busiest day of the month (thank God I have no problem being at the U-Haul place at 7am.) Also the day the Station Fires started, making the day beastly hot and hard to breathe, and that was after I already dove into a dusty, rat droppings filled garage to lug boxes of my stuff out.

Trudging through driving the truck back up to the new place, trudging through getting all the stuff unloaded. I have the best friends in the world, let me me tell you, and they don't take advantage of me enough, considering what they had to do in loading and unloading all my stuff with the truck (though I did have a relatively easy unloading, since the garage is mere steps from my door.)

Trudging my way through boxes in the tiny new space. Bolstering myself up by saying at least it's MY tiny new space. "A new place small and all to yourself," Nadine said as she handed me box after box of my stuff into the attic. (YES! I have an attic!)

It's probably bigger than I think. I have a huge problem with spatial measurements, which is why Stella and Wella came by yesterday to shepherd me through Ikea, and plot out my room's measurements. If I was doing this by myself, I would've taken two steps in, gotten overwhelmed, grabbed the nearest cheapest LACK Table, and high tailed it to the Swedish Meatballs. Stella made a very persuasive argument about how there's a reason that table's only $8, look at it: the thing's gonna break in a year, and you said from the beginning that you couldn't buy anything unless it had storage in it, so pony up for this decent table with oodles of storage, Missy. (I didn't get to the Swedish Meatballs, though. Next time!)

We came out of Ikea with a coffee table with storage, and a kitchen counter with storage. No sofa yet (I have one picked out with...storage!), but I have a blue beach chair to sit in, which is where I watched the season finale of Rescue Me last night, after burning my first batch of popcorn in the microwave that came with the place.

And yes, despite being three inches off the floor and surrounded by boxes (the age old dilemma of I can't move the boxes until there's somewhere to put them vs. I can't find places to put them until the boxes are out of the way!) , it was nice to watch something in my own place, without random roommates walking through and muttering their own unsolicited commentary.

I have carted more of my stuff to the Goodwill than would be seem humanly possible. I have thrown out more drafts of old projects around town, to where various recycle workers must think that Amy The Writer is the Worst Writer In The World, since so many scripts written by her are in the trash.

My Mother The Phone Harpy loves to save stuff. So did Roomie Jekyll. I had prided myself on not being like them at ALL, and then I had to move, and realized that I had saved my class notebooks from Film School. I'm sure there's a good reason....NOT.

No, I know what it is. It's me proving my existence to myself. How can I know where I've been unless I have evidence, in the form of cable bills from the first place I ever lived?

For every useless thing that I chucked in the trash (plastic silverware from college dorm days, Burger King Gulp Cups) I found something that WAS useful (a Christmas present from my boss's wife, two dish towels wrapped in flowery soap. I need dishtowels. I HAVE THEM NOW.)

Here are my new landlords. Should we call them Perdy and Pongo? Is that too obvious? Let's try Pembleton and Pepe, see how long that lasts.








That's Pepe in the window. They like to check in on me, they're just next door, dontcha know.

And though I still haven't felt a distinct presence of God, not even when I look at my view (and yes, I'm well aware it's spectacular, and will probably hit me later when I'm not exhausted and when the smoke from the fires clear. I just point the camera and take the picture. I will be overwhelmed later.) I know that this was without a doubt all His doing.

And how He's continuing to provide for me in crafty crafty ways, like swinging me a temp gig at the last minute for today, because we received word this afternoon that Unnamed Studio would be closed on Friday, which is when my next assignment was. I would've lost a day of work. But now I didn't.

That's pretty sneaky, God. Which is pretty awesome, too.

This place is small, but it is all to myself, and the boxes will gradually disappear, and things will find their places. Including me.