Year: 2015

5 October 1992

Twenty-three years ago today, while the President and his wife were presumably on their honeymoon, I started my new life in San Francisco. The whole cross-country road trip has been on my mind more than usual this year because the days of the week line up (5 October was a Monday in 1992 as well) and because my mind works that way. I woke up that morning in Winnemucca, stopped in Vallejo on the way in to call my soon-to-be roomies, and met them at the Market Street Safeway around sundown. I started work two days later.

Interestingly enough, this year also marked my first return visit to Nashville since that trip and my first return trip to San Francisco since 2010. I do not anticipate visiting Kansas City, Denver, nor Winnemucca this year, but one should never rule out things like this.

Other fifth days of October in my past:

 

Wednesday. Maybe.

It’s looking like we may actually be able to close on the house on Wednesday, which means I will be free of the place at last. That’s about a month later than the original planned closing, and let me make it clear that it has been a month of pure suck.

It has also pretty much eliminated the possibility of my annual Thanksgiving trip to Toronto the first week in October.

Am I bitter? Yes. Yes, I am.

Will no longer owning the house that’s been making my life hell for the past few months help me deal with that bitterness? Yes. Yes, it will.

Honestly, I’m just too damned exhausted and too damned done with it to spend any time getting sentimental…which is likely a good thing. And I’m liking my childhood home a lot better now that I have a much higher proportion of my own furniture in it. Either way, it will be nice having a weekend where I don’t have to move furniture or load boxes into my car. Except for the vacuum cleaner and two lamps, everything is out. I may go somewhere. I may park my ass on the couch and watch movies while eating bon-bons. The possibilities are limitless…

Order amid the chaos

image

Being optimistic that I may actually close on the house I’m selling this week, I finally moved everything out on Thursday. There are a couple of boxes of odds and ends, and a couple of things for the junkman to pick up — things that Goodwill and Habitat would not take — but generally, it’s pretty much empty. If there were any chance of this turning into something emotional, they were basically negated by all the stress that’s been involved with the repairs and the oil tank.

Since I’ve pretty much been living in my “new” house for two years, I think I underestimated (or was in denial about) how much stuff was still in the “old” one. I’m a little overwhelmed by the influx of stuff. It’s mostly a storage issue, and when I get all my shelving set up I should be fine. There’s also an issue of excessive furniture, but I’m working on that with the consignment shop and with Habitat for Humanity.

So I spent today getting the place habitable. I can’t live with chaos for any length of time and even if I really need to be doing something else, minimizing the chaos is always going to be the first priority. I have to have one living space that’s completely normal, and I have to be able to at least walk through every room. I did manage to get to that point by this afternoon.

And then I made the mistake of driving over to Winston to pick up a few odds and ends. Shouldn’t have done that. I tripped on the curb while carrying a box, and did awful things to my knee. I’ll spare you the picture, but I have a feeling it’s really going to hurt tomorrow. The most fun part of the whole thing was that I didn’t even have anything to dress the wound with, since I’ve already cleared out the house. I had to run to Target with my bloody knee fully exposed and…um…bleeding. That was attractive.

It’ll all be over soon, right?