Packing

Old bears--and a destuffed duck--packed in an old valise,
ready to move to the new apartment tomorrow.

 
Today will be my last 24-hours at this house. When I moved in, September 2019, life was much as it'd always been.
Six months later, Covid came...
Nine months after I moved in, the police murdered George Floyd a couple miles away.
And after that came the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Etc.

I am not the same. The world is not the same.

This morning I'm blogging at my little orange table on the porch, squeezed next to boxes I packed yesterday, looking out on the rainy morning.
I will miss this porch, but come cold weather, I couldn't use it and there's nowhere else I have privacy here but my room.

Below: The rest of my stuff is strewn about my room,
but Penny Cooper & Frankcolumbo, project managing from the windowill, say I am on track for moving tomorrow--the first of three friends with a car comes at 8 a.m.

(The best thing I did for this house was to knock the plywood covering off the piano windows in this room--looking out into the porch.)

 I don't own a lot, by American standards, and I feel overwhelmed. How do people move an entire house?
Of course we usually have more time to prepare--this all happened so fast!
I'm moving in less than one week since I saw the For Rent sign this past Saturday.

Last night HouseMate and I had an honest talk over Bloody Marys.*
I never wanted to harp about it on the blog, but I haven't felt at home during these three years. For a moment, I felt I could have lived here with her if we'd had more talks like that, but,  no:
All the things we discussed kindly were basically permanent.

I told her, for instance, that I felt I was living with the ghost of her abusive ex-husband, who was a Dementor from Azkahban**. She was so shaped by that marriage, it's like he's still hanging around.

I can be difficult too. (Never Dementor-level though!)
I've loosened up over the years, but basically I'm Thomas Carlyle in raccoon form [by Duluth Kenspeckle Letterpress]:

"Let me have my own way exactly in everything,
and a sunnier and pleasanter creature does not exist."
  --Thomas Carlyle

This is me at work, too--I can be (sometimes) the sunniest, pleasantest person at work because I run my own department.
I don't want to tell anyone else what to do either.

I feel a little sick (physically) from the fast turn-around, but I'm ecstatic about moving into my own little place.
Lucky, lucky, lucky!

On we go!

__________________________
* Bloody Marys--HouseMate and I first made these during Covid following Wisconsin comedian Charlie Berens Quarantine Kitchen recipe ("put in whachever ya got in the fridge").
This was a purely fun thing we did together as housemates.

**Dementor, from The Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Magic:

"Dementors are dark creatures that consume human happiness, creating an ambiance of coldness, darkness, misery and despair.
Because of their power to drain happiness and hope from humans, they have been set the duty of being guards at Azkaban, where they prevent the prisoners from having the will or ability to escape."