Give It Up!

My last day at Target was on the 1^st. Always nice to end a job with holiday pay. Kinda makes the 8 ½ hour shift drift by a bit more smoothly. Then, the plan was to leave early morning on January 2^nd. Well, this was Beau’s plan, but I had my doubts. I’ve been through so many of these moves, that even with the best of intentions, leaving on time almost never happens.

So we got up somewhat early, I guess. We started packing the car. It’s a Honda Civic which is just what I like – small, reliable, good gas mileage. Of course, “small,” is fantastically unhelpful when you’re trying to stuff two individual’s entire mass of possessions within the walls and trunk of a diminutive car. But even I was surprised at just how fast our bags (enormous pieces of luggage we lugged to and from New Zealand) filled up the car. Looking in the living room where our remaining bags still stood, as well as the hastily-stuffed trash bags of those odds and ends you just can’t pack ‘til the last moment, I began to get a bit depressed. In the past 10 months, I have moved from New York to Missouri to New Zealand to Milwaukee and now getting ready for Montana. And of course, Beau was a part of the Missouri—New Zealand—Milwaukee—Montana moves. As I’ve previously mentioned, each time, in particular the Missouri to New Zealand move, we had to sell/give away/throw out copious amounts of personal possessions, including ALL furniture, almost anything that was bulky or heavy, boxes and boxes of books and bags and bags of clothes. It just sucks.

You go through these tiers – the first tier isn’t so bad – the dress you haven’t worn for a couple years, that book that’s been sitting on the shelf, untouched, that present you got that you never liked anyway. Each tier after that, it gets harder. You start separating your clothes into “like,” “really like,” and “have to keep” piles. You start looking at your large collection of t-shirts and wonder if they are ALL necessary (“but but but this one is from high school, and this one is from that great concert, and this one is from my trip to Sweden!”).

It’s about this time, the third tier, that things get really painful. You start making throw-out piles of things you really DO like. That great book you’ve never read, but always sincerely intended to. That beautiful dress you just love, but just haven’t had that many opportunities to wear. All your expensive camping gear that’s unrealistic to take with you. That awesome TV you splurged on. Those neat bags you brought back from Thailand. More piles of clothes, more boxes of books, more furniture. After this goes on and on, and you have a good cry or two, you shock yourself by still being “stuck” with about a dozen boxes of things like photographs, a minimal wardrobe, a few treasured books, cd’s, and dvd’s, and a group of mementos – things you’ve collected over the years from trips, loved ones, and various life experiences that you’re not willing to pitch.

And you know, I've done this now FOUR times (one being more minor than the rest) since March 2006 and I'm damn tired of it. I just don't want to throw ANYTHING away anymore.

Then comes the next painful part. Shipping. One blessing of the US Post Office is their “book/sheet music” rate which allows you to ship those back-breaking boxes of books at a much cheaper rate than the regular truck or sea rate. Of course, I have never failed to slightly manipulate that. I do honestly stuff a box with as many books as I can, but books, naturally not being all the same size, leave gaps in the box, and when you are trying to take as much shit with you as possible, you’re not going to just tape up that box and send it with all that free space floating in there! So, out comes all the little thingie-ma-bobs you can jam in between the books. Sure, technically they’re not BOOKS or SHEET MUSIC, but hey! Is it really SUCH a crime?

I did make one big mistake on our move to New Zealand though. Like many women, I’m a bit of a candle freak, particularly with lovely little candle holders which typically hold a tea light candle. Due to this, I’ve always got a fat bag of tea light candles in a drawer in my house (you can get like 200 from Walgreen’s for like 2 bucks!). Well, I had just packed a book box, and found the sides had these thin lines of empty space. What a perfect place to simply drop in those little tea lights! It was like playing Plink-O on The Price is Right. Then, I placed it in the back seat of my car, along with another box, each I planned to ship on one of my lunch hours when I had enough time and cash. Well, that was the Missouri summer, which is absolutely fucking miserable in its heat and humidity. What happened to those cute little tea lights in the box in the backseat? Of course, they melted, spreading slimy wax across the box. I still tried to send it – and the postal worker basically…went postal and gave me a big fat annoying lecture. Ordered me home to re-pack the box in a new box. FINE!

So, ANYWAY, back to the latest move – there we were that chilly Milwaukee morning, realizing pretty quickly that we weren’t going to be able to get it ALL in that car. So, you do what you have to do, you start jamming stuff into every crack and hole that’s left, and you decide what ELSE you can live without. Our Christmas tree, our cat’s crate, and other various odds and ends (including more clothes) went to the “whomever wants it can have it” pile, and my heart broke a little when we lugged a suitcase filled with photo albums and Beau’s beloved banjo up to the attic, to be once again pushed into a dark and dusty corner to be retrieved another day. I REALLY had wanted to leave my mother’s house totally clean, with not a single possession left in her cavernous attic that I would be reminded of every now and then. But oh well, you do what you have to do.

So, sometime around 2pm I shoved the frightened and furious cat under one arm, and slung the “stuff you need on the road” bag over the other, climbed into my very tight passenger seat (it had to be pushed forward to allow more room for stuff in the backseat), and we set out. With each mile, I felt my body get lighter and lighter. Living with my mother for about five weeks, working at Target, and just waiting for Beau had been incredibly stressful for me. And though I was embarking on this new phase of my life with some apprehension (no jobs, no house, not much money), I felt a kind of relief and happiness flow through me, as if I had been let out of a cage. Beau felt it too.

And so began our 3-day-ish journey to Montana. It gets a little bit more exciting from here on out. Kinda.