On Transition

Oh Blog, How I Have Missed You!

We're here, in Boulder, in one piece. We finally got internet yesterday. And for the record, I'd like to amend something I stated in an earlier post. I talked about moving being sudden, no matter how long the build up; in fact, I likened it to childbirth, where one day you are pregnant and the next you have a child (one day you live here, the next, there). But of course, both have a transition (in childbirth, part of it is literally called "transition"), and in the case of this move, everything has been very, very gradual. First of all, because we have yet to sell our house in Brooklyn, we actually have two homes right now, and both have some of our things. We have phone numbers--land lines, no less--in both places. We have plants to water here and there.

Uploading my pictures from the past week made me realize what a strange, complex thing this move has been. First off, I forgot that Clio had pneumonia our last week in Brooklyn until I saw this picture of her nebulizing herself


(welcome back--again--Mr. Nebulizer.) I forgot--already--what an intense, busy time those last few days were. We had a buyer we were waiting to hear from on the house, and we finally got word that they were not ready to buy in the middle of Monday night. Dave's uncle Ray was already in town to help with the packing and, ultimately, the driving. They were planning to leave Wednesday, though Ray thought we were cutting it too close (the truck had to be here, ideally, by Friday afternoon so the girls and I had a place to sleep upon arrival by air.) So we moved up the truck pick up and tried to move up the movers, leaving me one day to figure out what furniture stayed to stage the house and what came with us. When they didn't hear from the movers, Dave and Ray started packing the truck Tuesday, and we continued packing boxes until 3 in the morning; they went ahead and finished loading the truck BY THEMSELVES, and got on the road at 9 (just after the movers called to find out what time we needed them); my aunt Missy arrived around noon to head to Ikea for the home-staging lightning round. By Wednesday night we had the house mostly put together.


But in the in-between, I had to figure out how to feed a 3- and 1- year old with no furniture. It looks something like this:

Thursday I borrowed my friend Emily's car and returned library books, took 5 huge bags and random furniture to Salvation Army, returned a few odds and ends to Ikea, went to Target for the bedskirt that matched the bedding in the master bedroom, went BACK to the same complex for a standing lamp I saw at Marshall's, etc. Thank goodness for our wonderful neighbors, who picked up Clio from day care and fed the lot of us, thereby minimizing the time allotment for the girls to break all things Ikea.

Friday I returned the car, walked home a dozen blocks, installed a decal mural in Clio's room,


got a call from a realtor wanting to show the house THAT AFTERNOON (it happened, by the way, while I was on the plane and Elsie's mom Agnes let them in), which meant everything had to be "showroom perfect," packed our bags, cleaned up the garden, watered the plants, took out the garbage (7 contractor bags), picked up the girls from day care for the VERY LAST TIME, squeezed in a tearful good-bye (although, Dave would later ask "who else was tearful" and truth be told, just me.)


got the girls home, kept them from breaking all things ikea, called a car service, and got off to the airport.

Things look similar on this side of our landing: sleeping on the floor Friday night for lack of mattresses (they stayed in Brooklyn), hitting iHop at 6am when we realized we did not even have milk for the baby, realizing after waiting for an hour on Saturday that the movers were coming SUNDAY, locking our keys in the car at Target and having to get a cab to take us home to get keys and back to get the car, and so on and so forth.

But you know what? Clio and Eleri like the new house.


Clio talks about liking Boulder (although she would like to go to Elsie's house, even though she know understands that this would involve a plane and planes are expensive. Here's their last, Thursday night playdate:


And my parents arrived today to help watch the kids while we continue the slow process of unpacking and learning new patterns for living in our new house. And we'll buy a second-hand burley to hitch to the bikes so we can all ride together. And we'll go to the farmer's market and Boulder festival and hike in Chautauqua and be tourists while we have visitors.

I always get a little flummoxed when I've been away from blogging for a while, because there tends to be so much to catch up on, and sometimes I don't know how to parse it all out, and this has never been more true than now. When will I write about the strange lack of ethnicities here (and my surprise that the movers were not Russian, the cab driver was not Middle Eastern, and the Starbucks Barristas were not African American)? About Clio's school picnic and the fact that I chose this moment to stand firm on discipline, meaning she didn't get to have ice cream at the ice cream social? About the fact that Eleri is walking?

None of this is sudden; it is all a continuum.

More to come.