Stormy day for packing. Closets are all cleared out. Kitchen cabinets are half empty. Back patio is desolate and abandoned. Half of my life in this place is in the back of a pick-up truck on it’s way to the big city dumpsters across town. The rest of it is in boxes along the wall, and now today the very last of it is being folded into suitcases and zipped tight for the road.

After tonight, the house will be empty. Keys left on the counter, change of address left in the mailbox. We’ll camp out at my moms for a couple days until it’s time. Spend some time with friends, get our maps and travel gear in check, tie up loose ends, take a deep breath, point the Jeep toward the belly of Nevada and,  well, cross our fingers.

Reno? I’ve got 99 hours left in me for you. Let’s make it count.

Posted by tee in wandering
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Camp + Picnic phase is when you’ve sold, given away or ditched all your major furnishings just slightly too far in advance of your move date, and are left with nothing to sit on, sleep on or eat over. So you camp on the floor with sleeping bags and blankets and you picnic in your dining room on spread-out sheets and paper plates.

Post-move, this is immediately followed by the Chic Poverty phase: the period of time between unpacking and furnishing, when you tip over a big sturdy box for your dining room table and four smaller boxes for your chairs, and buy a cheap mattress to put on the floor until you have time to shop around for an appropriate dining set and bed frame.

Throughout the full process of moving, of course, there’s the omni-present 2×6 board-and-brick bookshelves that somehow always manage to survive and transcend each phase, camouflaging itself into the surrounding landscape so as not to be mercilessly singled out and sacrificed to the gods of transition.

Posted by tee in favorites, wandering
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Ryan’s class needs brownies for a party tomorrow, and he volunteered me to make them. Thanks. Since when did brownies start coming with frosting?

Lately, as all these days rust over and dissolve away, I’m feeling less and less like I’m leaving anything real and substantial behind. Like anything I could be missing by going I’ve either already experienced, or, for better or worse, wasn’t meant to. Anything that manages to lie outside those two answers must have been too foggy or ambiguous to grasp, and gets to linger in the air here above whatever residue of me sticks to the surface after I’m gone.

Off to make my brownies in the dark.

Posted by tee in de la vida
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A late night walk together through snow falling in Santa Fe, under dim street lamps and along sidewalks lined with luminarias that have become just a glow in the blustery white air, to the little Mexican diner on the corner for a couple of their famous burritos, slipping in just before they close. Bring the bags home where we brush the flakes off and spread blankets and pillows all out on the saltillo tile floors in front of the warm kiva. Lay around lazy in firelight til after midnight, sharing burritos, drinking homemade beer and margaritas and falling asleep to Utada Hikaru.

Posted by tee in de la vida, sense of place
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A dill pickle after a glass of orange juice can snap you out of just about anything.

Posted by tee in de la vida
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