GLARGLE. Please send reinforcements or, failing that, a reliable wi-fi connection

So hey! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has changed. Well, Cormac’s lip healed, OK, there’s that. But everything else is dreadfully, awfully, the same. Our “new” house still smells like moldy old breath and we are still living with relatives. Owen likes to pass the time by asking me to describe his toys, which are all still boxed up in storage and many of which he hasn’t seen since June. As for myself, it’s been so long since I sewed anything that I’m afraid I will have forgotten how.

Rick Sebak documentaries on WQED have been nice for occupying our minds and hours, but it’s a weak condolence prize when my new house sits empty, bedraggled and unfinished for lack of time and childcare. We have yet to sand the hallway and third bedroom and then stain and seal those floors, plus then we need to replace the staircase (!), patch and prime and paint all interior rooms and wait for it to dry in this constant drizzle, and maybe THEN we’ll be ready to start bringing over truckloads of our cheap but beloved possessions from the storage unit. Oh hey, lovely story about the storage unit: APPARENTLY somehow, and I won’t speculate how this might have happened although I’d dearly love to do so, somehow a bottle of floor varnish (ironic! or whatever!) sprung a leak and leaked over a bunch of our stuff, coming to rest in a puddle under our brand-new Macy’s mattress that was the cause of so many marital tiffs over the last, oh, five years. I can’t get past the boxes to see the damage, but I’m afraid I might cry when I do.

Many small occurrences are making me question myself: Either this move to Pittsburgh is the smartest thing we’ve ever done for ourselves, or hands-down the worst. At this point I feel like it could go either way.

September 12, 2008 | Filed Under auto-categorized

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Comments

6 Responses to “GLARGLE. Please send reinforcements or, failing that, a reliable wi-fi connection”

LL#2 on September 13th, 2008 8:27 am

I’m sensing a need for a road trip to Ohio for a weekend…
Christina on September 13th, 2008 12:13 pm

My hubby applied for a job in pittsburgh…I’ll reinforce if I ever get there. You could just drop the babies off at my house. What’s 2 more, right!?
kim on September 14th, 2008 12:02 am

girlie girl, above all, don’t doubt yourself. everything you’re doing (moving, relocating, staying with in-laws, renovating) is crazy stressful. keep your chin up, darlin. wish i could be there to help.

i was just bragging about you the other day. someone was admiring ella’s tote bag.
Dani on September 14th, 2008 5:32 pm

It will end up being the smartest thing, don’t you worry about that. It will just take a little more time than planned to get things settled, that’s all.

I second LL’s idea. But you already know that.

Also? Watch that show you rented. I GUARANTEE it will put a smile on your face. If I’m wrong, I will eat Bertie Wooster’s hat (which is the next show you should look for — Jeeves & Wooster).
Chair on September 15th, 2008 10:53 am

I know how much it sucks to hear people say, “It could be worse!” but I have to share this with you (it may not be worse but at least maybe you’ll know you’re not alone in Unfortunate Storage Room Leakage) (Or maybe just make you laugh for a minute):

When I was living in an apt years ago, I had some tiger salamanders that I’d dug out of a pocket-gopher mound from my Mom’s acreage (back story is so important, no?) as pets. I had 3 of them in an old aquarium and they seemed happy enough -then one day 1 went missing. At that time, I had a cat and a roommate with 2 cats so we figured well, one of the THREE cats must have got the ‘mander. Oh well. I made a tighter lid and life went on.

About a year later, a friend who lived in the same building found something weird and biological in her storage unit so she called me to come look since, you know, I’m biological.

I could not believe it. Somehow that salamander made it through an apartment with 3 cats, squeezed (squozed?) under the door, found its way into the basement, buried itself under the piles of stuff in her storage room… and died.

Apparently salamanders are full of gross oily body goo and when they die? Well, that gross oily body goo oozes all over the sleeping bags and tent that happened to surround it. It was SO gross and I felt horrible but she didn’t think it was really my fault (which it wasn’t, really) so she didn’t expect me to replace the stuff (I offered).

I was tempted to keep the left-over leathery salamander skin, though. But I didn’t.

TRUE STORY.
Xdm on September 17th, 2008 2:56 pm

While you might not be sure where you are, you know where we are. Right here.
xox