move over Ahab...I have routinely moved with little more than a shrug of my
petitely slender shoulders. At my smallest adult moving physique, I was thirty plus years old (this one I'm 42) and could slip into the Mall Store called 3-5-7 and not have to squeeze one fat toe into the itsy bitsy folds of these outfits. My surrogate Mom Alstrom (miss you Suzie...Where ever you are, we will never stop loving you)...said a good stiff breeze would cart me away.
But truth is, I'd moved a lot BEFORE my years of single-parent hop skipping and jumping around began,
See I was married to a US Treasury Agent belonging to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms..
However I need to clarify something here. Our vagabond life began before my ex became a Federal Agent...it began back when he graduated on bended knee...(another story for a less circumspect recitation)...
from Penn State University at the State College, PA campus and entered in the
Pennsylvania Department of Justice working under cover as an arm of their narcotics division.
Most think AGENTS make tons of money...either that's a fallacy, or my ex wasn't in the same category of say
Richard Boone in his role of Paladin...although
Branded by Chuck Connors also comes to mind...hmmm let me regress...Branded concerned being stripped of his honor along with his authority...but that's a whole different ball of wax.
Survival is a strange entity. When you are first called upon to step up to the plate and present an unswerving barrier of strength against all odds, you have to hide the fact your
knees are clattering like calcium infused cymbals no matter what you do.
We married, my nemesis and I, on October 28, 1972 and moved right into the first home I had outside the childhood home I'd always known. (Let me tell you something. We all think how sweet it's going to be having our own home, no longer under another beings commands!
"BULL PUCKERS!" )
Undercover narcs are weird people to live with, or at least my ex was. Our next move took place six months later...a very pregnant me moving in with my parental unit, him moving into a flop house during the week while acting as SUPER DRUG AVENGER (who would delve into the product he was supposed to be building arrest cases against.) He never met a drug served up between comely thighs he cloud resist.
Competence does not grow on trees, and egos have no place in such work. He possessed both, in abundance.
After a year of his questionable approaches to being THE MAN, and the loopholes defense attorneys could liberally apply...(you're not supposed to have sex with your customers, or play Russian Roulette to make sales...that's just frowned upon.)..his arrests walked.
Unable to demote him, (He' hadn't committed murder although he came close a time or two during his hot-dogging acts,) they moved us to one of the hell-hole assignments in Pennsylvania.
There are those who carry badges who feel they are smarter than their SUPERIOR agents. He is one. How could he not be? Youth and ingenuity were on his side, while the old codgers, according to him, were over the hill and should be put out to pasture.
Alas being in Podunk sent him avidly applying to all government jobs. (He was too young to run for President, so had to content himself with applying to INS, FBI, and ATF...ATF, I personally think by default took him on.)
Another move, down to Hyattsville, MD, just outside of Washington. D.C.'s playground, and my ex's firm belief he now walked amongst the rarefied, and therefore should be accorded total honor and respect.
One year of his insufferable "I'm too perfect for my skin" behaviors had me pack my children and me into my car and travel north spending four out of every five weeks near my parents. What an idyllic time. However, once a screw up always a screw up. Washington, D.C. had it's own type of a Move event and of course he was right in the middle. (I was North during the event but it was a pretty heavy duty stand off...Anyone remember Waco? This was almost a duplicate dispaly of ATF skill.)
His transfer up from D.C. was not pleasant, but one more endurance of what one must endure.
We moved to a two story apartment...a beautiful place with parquet floors, a nice outdoor yard, and a brief walk to the grocery store and post office
In Doylestown, PA...about eight miles from my folks and maybe ten miles from
New Hope, PA.. I was happy there. Everything was close by. I knew where everybody worked, played, and lived. HOME!
There's no need to give you a blow-by-blow description why we moved from my happy PA home to an A shaped rancher in Willingboro, NJ less than a year later, but move we did.
For the first time we remained someplace for four years...until my marriage hit the fan and I learned my brilliant ex had not paid a mortgage payment for six months.
In short I Had to find the money to bring my mortgage current...(and trust me if you could see the improvements done by my ex...a jack of no trade and smasher of all the others, keeping that house would not have been a good idea, assuming I'd had a gazillion dollars to pour in to it...which I didn't...a fact the ex made certain of.
So now the children and I were on our own, renting twin rooms, floor space once or twice, or more, etc, until I could save enough from the three jobs I toiled at, to save for a security deposit and first and last months rent. It took awhile, but I learned a great deal about life an the reservoirs of courage and capabilities I didn't even know I had.
There were to be three more places to huddle against while the apartment we are in now became available.
As of August 2011 we have been here 21 years. That's the longest hunk of time I've been anywhere including my nineteen years with my parents.
Time marches on bringing us to this current move. This move is needed because I am not the thirty year old I was when my marriage ended. God willing, this will be my last move.
We're not taking everything we proudly amassed over the years...there'll be no need, since my cousin has loads of the things Kat and I accumulated during these 21 years. Ultimately they are JUST things.
The scariest part...next to actually doing it, is knowing how
traumatized out kitties will be during the process. We're softies were they are concerned.
When we had them spayed, Mama Bear went first. She came home whimpering and so lethargic I took thimbles filled with water and lift my wet finger to her lips so she could let her sleek tongue out just enough to wrap the water droplet onto her tongue. It made me weep.
Kat and I will do what needs to be done, but if any of you know movers reasonably priced who can take our stuff to Alabama while we do the more expedient part by flying with kitties with us, please let me know. (Too late for this....amended 5/8/12)
We are mailing our higher quality stuff, like computer towers, via insured snail mail but that still leaves us with the rest. (Might as well let USPS do some of the more valuable stuff for us.)
Anyone know about
PODS and how they work? I know
they'll drive your stuff to new destinations, but am not certain if we have to load the pods and
then they cart them away or they load the pods and then head on south. (They cost a MINT...so couldn't do this either....amended 5/8/12)
Now before I close this, I am five days behind getting this up here.
I wanna sue the creators of the flu vaccine. I get my shot religiously, and yet since last Friday I lost 12 pounds to the violent upchucking from the flu.
I feel like a dirty dishrag, so I'm going to go dunk me and see if I can get a tad more energy.
