Pulling Up Stakes

I’m moving.

 

For the next eight-to-ten weeks before I leave for Saba I’ll be living somewhere else.  Do you know how sometimes when you’re in a relationship and it’s not going well and all you can focus on in your partner is that One Thing that drives you nuts and leaves you unable to appreciate the good things about them?  Well, my house right now in my mind is nothing but a persnickety bathroom.  Nothing else.  Plumbing.  For several months things have been getting progressively more problematic to the point where, yes, I can flush, shower and do the dishes, but really only once a day and even then the shower has to be thisfast and the sink needs to drain so slowly that I have to insert a knife into the rim of the drain basket so hopefully—hopefully—it won’t back up into the shower.

 

Annoying.  Unsanitary.  Gross.

 

Fortunately, I happen to have an extra house at the moment.  You may have heard the economy fell over a cliff leaving me with an unsold house.  An unsold house with working plumbing.  (The italics are mine.)  So I figured what the heck, why not enjoy the 21^st-century luxury of an indoor functioning toilet until my departure.  (The house also has a dishwasher and a laundry room, which are two luxuries I’ve never gotten to experience.)

 

I’m moving over there in dribs and drabs until the internet is connected (I know—pathetic,) which will spare me a big, cathartic move.  There will be no Ma Joad moment where I toss my shiny earbobs into the Franklin stove along with that postcard of the hoochie dancer with the feathery skirt.  It’ll be more the case that the balance of my life shifts gradually from one house to the other until I simply discover I’m living in the new place.  I moved once before in this manner (from this house, in fact) and it’s really quite pleasant and atraumatic.  And as I mentioned earlier, I do love the other house a lot.  I considered moving into it myself when I was in the midst of working on it, so it’s kind of funny (funny/weird, not /ha-ha) that I should wind up there anyway.

 

I’ve been going over there sporadically to take this-and-that and I made a couple of runs over there this afternoon (it’s only about 13 minutes away from here) with kitchen-type things and pantry items and the stereo.  The stereo has always been the very first thing I set up whether it’s an actual move or the start of a renovation project.  Gotta have that music playing.  Can’t work without the “Love Theme from Spartacus” blasting through the house, can we?  Or Eydie Gormé singing in Spanish.

 

But I think today the scale shifted just a tad in favor of the new place.  I did something that—after the fact—I realized always signifies to me that the place I’m moving into is  General HQ.

 

I made a pot of coffee.

 

I set out the new Mr. Coffee on the counter and decided—what the heck--a little caffeine in the afternoon wouldn’t hurt me.  I was in the other room (connecting the speaker wires) when I heard the coffee maker gurgle to a finish.  (Surely that is one of the world’s happiest sounds.)  Even when I discovered I had forgotten the right cable to hook up my iPod.  Rats!  No Musical Theater Favorites Played on The Mighty Wurlitzer!  No Walter Brennan Christmas Album! No matter.

 

I had my coffee.  I was home.