Arrival Anthem

What is the first thing you are going to do when you arrive home in NYC? This was something I was asked a lot. Too literally I would mentally answer “unpack, duh.” It is possible I also said it aloud minus the duh part but yet still implied. Whatever I pack up and drive to New York needs to be taken inside and then needs to be arranged. But that was not the essence of question, I suppose.

The image imprinted into my mind was of the two of us eating pizza on the bare wood floor after a long, grueling drive, possibly by candlelight (because for some reason in this fantasy we didn’t have electricity) with a handful of our items packed into five or six of the white boxes that reams of computer paper arrive in pushed back to the corner of the room.

I must have lifted the idea straight from Glee when Kurt and Rachel moved into their NYC loft and then configured the memory so that we never asked to have our electricity turned on or maybe we are just too poor to have it yet. My daydreaming likes good mood lighting. But the electricity had been requested; so it was just that, one of the many elaborate dramatic scenes that swirl around inside my imagination.

Waiting on moving day was a never-ending string of days. I felt like I was constantly lying about moving to New York City. Since it had not happened yet how do I know it actually will? The best intentions and plans could fall apart. There were obstacles to all of our planning. First, we had to get the roof repaired because of a hurricane which lasted an eternity because of insurance and boring adult stuff. Once completed we could talk about putting the house on the market. Coming to an agreement on our departure date was all over the calendar. Having an iPhone saved several bottles of whiteout.

Years ago I read that November was the best time to move because rent was at its cheapest. We still had our car leases until Thanksgiving/January 1st for each of us. It was the first time our leases were ever coming due at the same time. I was convinced if we got another car we would never go so sooner or later we would need to rip the bandaid if we were going to do it. For those reasons we set the mark for for the end of the year. Cohabiteur kept saying January or February 2019. I was relatively on board since I fancied the notion of having our last Thanksgiving and Christmas in our home so I campaigned for December or early January. I thought I would work into January, but little by little the date was adjusted and shaved away as more information came available. The day we finally set was December 16, 2018. Our apartment lease began the day before.

Once we went live with our listing to put the house on the market we blinked and were under contract six days later. Then time ticks down as you wait for closing, which was pushed back once due to more boring adult stuff. Then holy crap where are we going to live? We had to move before we moved since we needed the money from the sale to use toward getting the new apartment which meant finding a temporary residence. Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Sorry, that was Charlie Brown’s teacher interjecting. The moral of the story is if you really want to do something you find a way because if not you will definitely find an excuse.

Inside the house it was a continual state of purging or donating that finally became time for my favorite new pretend game show: Purge, Pack, or Donate. On a sad note, I took off the shirt I was sleeping in and threw it on the floor next to the bed which happened to be next to a donate pile. Hastily I must have gathered everything in the vicinity. Only after the items were donated did I realize what happened. It was crushing and I want my shirt back! I went online to see if I could buy it again but it is a total loss. Cuts me deep, man.

I honest to God think that I have put off writing the last four paragraphs for as long as I could and now I will let the memories evaporate. I let you go, I release you, please do not come back.

In a twist of luck, and perhaps fate, the offer we received was for the house furnished down to plates and sheets. This meant I would not have to scramble to sell it in a yard sale, in the newspaper, on Swip Swap, etc. I was ready for a clean break. The decor was tinted in various sea glass hues and was not the motif that my brainchild foresaw for a city flat. There was also a real chance that if I got a moving truck and took my bedroom set and couch that none of it would fit into a much smaller space. I was not going to try to take a three bedroom, two bathroom, a bonus room, two car garage home and try to squeeze it into a New York City sized one bedroom apartment.

In retrospect we probably left too much behind that was not necessary to leave. I am not aware of any items I wish I brought so it is safe to say I do not miss anything. I just did not want to dump unwanted stuff on the new owner. Cohabiteur became the literal one, insisting that if anything was removed that was not on our exclusions list we would be in trouble. I felt confident that our place had not been cased and cataloged with any great detail. Still, I was not in the mood to try to make argue that point. Thinking about buying a bunch of new stuff and designing what I wanted was as fun as a sparkle filter.

Oddly, when it came time to get the rental car (because we already rid ourselves of our personal vehicles) we wanted the largest option we could get at an affordable price. We were thinking of a Suburban or Tahoe type situation. We ended up with a van. A Chrysler Pacifica to be exact. But dang the seats folded down and left a flat, tidy surface to pack our junk up taller than the Grinch’s sleigh after he stole the Who’s Christmas. Mad props to those rocking a van because that was a sweet little setup filled with neat surprises at every reach of your fingertips in every direction.

We started out with a system ripe from years of playing Tetris that made us both adept at stacking and manipulating square and rectangle objects. Eventually the system dissolved into shoving stuff in any nook you can find down to backseat door cup holders for my glass face wash bottles and every cranny including under the seats for my prized box of markers and jewelry box.

For weeks leading up to packing this car Cohabiteur was nervous it wouldn’t all fit and I always assured him that it will be fine, I am strategic, and I can handle it. There is a face, hand motion and head nod that accompanies that. Insert Ugly Betty chanting, “I am an attractive, intelligent, confident businesswoman.” It was a combination of knowing I can fly by the seat of my pants and also just saying it with certain repetition hoping it would be true. It worked but there was no room for either of us to recline. Poor Miss Dog had a small space left vacant for her and Kit Kat was left to be the overlord on top of all of our crap. To be fair I installed her cat window seat but she only sat in it once. She actually sat on my lap for quite a while. She really was the champion of independence and making it work.

The drive was going to take about sixteen hours. I had the deepest sense of dread that it would be the longest, most miserable drive of my lifetime. Thinking about it the days leading up to it made me want to take a nap, that is how much I wanted to avoid it. During the drive I amused myself by making stupid live video updates on social media including singing songs from Hamilton and taking requests. You have to do what you have to do. And I always do.

Maybe it was all made better that as we pulled away from town that I thought of all the things I would not miss. A grudge is armor one can wear on the inside. A now I will spill some old, bitter tea for you.

• Boob sweat while Christmas shopping
• Boob sweat year-round
• I think I just started sweating by thinking about walking outside in Florida
• Mosquitoes biting you while putting up Christmas lights
• Homeowners Associations cropping up everywhere
• The destruction of my town. Please tear down more trees to make another Dollar Store. We really need it.
• Yard work. Brown thumb. No time. No skill. No patience.
• The city requiring trees in your yard but hurricanes…
• Traffic and driving and parking and car dings
• Idiot drivers that do not care about their lives or yours. That Sup? text is urgent.
• The city barring me from using the property I owned the way I wanted aka Airbnb
• Lack of food delivery options
• Red state
• Perpetual summer
• I-4
• Construction on every single road ever in existence happening all at once.
• Florida Man
• Florida Woman
• Walmart
• Gas stations. I would run my car on fumes before I wanted to stop.
• Alligators, snakes, and any other possible hazardous thing that can thrive in a tropical climate
• People trying to remove the roosters from Flagler Avenue. This is a current issue, but screw you.
• Free beach parking turning into paid beach parking
• Do not even try to come for beach driving, I swear to God.
• A high concentration of serial killers in the state of Florida. At least according to all of the crime TV I have watched.
• If you swim in the ocean things want to hurt, eat, or kill you. Sharks, Man-O-War, Jellyfish, Algae bloom, bacteria levels and for freshwater I will add in brain-eating amoebas. OMG Florida is basically the Australia of the United States.
• I think I am whipping myself into a frenzy. It really isn’t that bad, just go with me here and agree with this list. Nod and smile. Nod. And. Smile.

We are fortunate to have some marvelous people in our lives come to help us bring our junk into our apartment once we arrived. It started sleeting, which is basically snow to the untrained eye, on top of an already frigid night. Our Realtor met us with our keys and got into a classic New York shouting match with someone who was also trying to temporarily park in the fire lane. She also dragged our new mattress box into the living room so it wasn’t left unattended in the entryway since I ordered it from Amazon to ensure we would have something to sleep on. Cohabiteur said he plus driving in Manhattan are never getting back together. Like ever.

Instead of a few quaint boxes strewn about the floor it looked like a hoarder had left all of their things behind. Do I have too much stuff? I thought I left it all behind. I still have to order all of the major furniture. This is concerning. How am I going to get it looking tidy and organized in the space I have and why is it so hot? I crawled across the floor to the radiator to experiment with shutting the heat off. I am a genius. I am so good at living up north already. My cheeks were flush in the same way they are in the Florida heat. Am I never going to get away from being hot my whole life? If I am suffering from heat now what is going to happen during menopause? The clutter drug my mind away from the nagging, lingering thoughts. So what is a girl to do? Order pizza.

We did not end up eating sitting on the wood floor upstairs. It was too distracting being surrounded by the unsavory disorder and the still too warm temperature. We ended up downstairs in the less picturesque grayed basement level tile floor of the bedroom. We opened our dungeon door (you just have to see it understand) to let the winter air in to cool my cheeks and soothe us now that we could finally relax. I scarfed down Famous Original Ray’s Pizza like I hadn’t eaten in days. I wasn’t sure what was good or what was even in our neighborhood so I just took a chance when I was searching Seamless for delivery. Even the worst pizza here is better than most pizza anywhere else. It was thick, large, cheesy and did not disappoint.  It was not the meal setting I had romanticized but real life is just that, real. We finally made it to New York City and now I am not the liar I feared I would be because it really happened.