Uuuuuggggghhhhh.
Yesterday, the day this all started at 9am with an innocent phone call from our attorney's paralegal and ended with Dan and I sucking back Miller Lights to dull the disappointment of it all, I had such a mishmash of emotions that by the time I went to bed I was just numb. I had been on the phone and email most of the day, communicating back and forth with our agent, who was wonderful, our attorney, who was less wonderful, and the paralegal, who was trying to keep up with it all. I was tired of feeling disappointed, tired of the letdown, tired of figuring out our new game plan, anxious about how we would live for another week in the chaos, worried about not finding a mover who could accommodate us, and angry- very, very angry- that this was all happening because of someone else's decisions and inability to be ready to move when they had agreed to move. Tell me someone in your family died. Tell me your whole house flooded and you have to clean it before you can vacate the house. Tell me something other than "I won't do it because I'm not ready" when I have been busting my hump for the last three weeks with two kids and an infant to get the house packed up. And I was ready.
I was so ready that last night I had to unpack boxes of plates and cups and glasses. I had to go grocery shopping because my plan of paying the girls quarters for finishing boxes of snacks (total pull: Jenna- 75 cents, Michaela- $1) worked so well that I had no food left in the house. Everything had been planned out on my nice, neat Timeline that was posted on the fridge of who had to be where and when. We had to unpack some clothes and wardrobe boxes so we had room to move around in our bedroom. I made a few desperate-sounding phone calls to the movers I had gotten estimates from, and one of them actually laughed at me when I asked about their availability next week. Yeah, thanks... that's helpful.
Dan asked me a few logistical questions right before we went to bed last night and I finally told him that I couldn't think or talk about it anymore.
But, as with everything, there are a few silver linings: I will now be able to attend Michaela's last soccer game. School will be over by the time we move so I don't have to drive Michaela back and forth to her old school. The girls have three birthday parties over the weekend and now I can bring them to the parties and not be crazed. We can celebrate Father's Day this weekend instead of spending the day unpacking. We have a little more time to tie up loose ends.
We have a few more days in this house, my house, our house, and in a way I feel weirdly like it's a stay of execution. The end is now not as near as I thought. I've now got a few more mornings of waking up in our room. A few more days to see our neighbors. A few more days to look up at our maple trees in the front yard. A few more evenings outside on our deck. A few more days of the familiar, the comfortable, the known.
Michaela has been upset a few nights before collapsing, exhausted, into bed. She cries about leaving this house, leaving her school and moving into a house she's never seen. Though she has seen video of the house, driven by it many times, and heard us explain as much as we can to her, she is still upset about this change. I comforted her as best I could, and told her that I, too, have cried many times to Daddy and to her grandparents, wondering if moving is the right thing to do. I prayed about it and asked for guidance, and came to realize that I don't think God really cares where we live... and that if something was wrong for our family, He'd put up roadblocks. I told Michaela that her dad and I would never do anything that we thought wouldn't be the absolute best thing for her and our family. "You just have to trust me, Michaela," I told her, and she nodded, those huge brown eyes full of tears. Just rip my heart out now: it'd be less gut- wrenching.
Jenna made a beautiful craft at preschool: it's a kite with tissue paper glued on it that looks like stained glass, and a long, pretty ribbon tail with foam bows attached. For some reason, I am very attached to this craft, I think because it signifies something very primal for me: feeling carefree. Feeling grounded. Feeling like my babies and the things they do are the most important thing in my life. The last days and weeks and months have been plagued by worry and crying and anxiety and anger and the unknown and oh-so-much distraction, even though we have had, really, a very smooth process of finding a house and doing all the work to buy it and move into it. I am longing for the day this summer that we are in the new house, settled in, comfortable, feeling like our biggest decision of the day is where to go play together or where to go to grab some ice cream cones.
So last night we moved some more of the boxes into the garage to help alleviate the feeling of suffocation and claustrophobia we had just by being in a dining room and living room filled 3/4 of the way up to the ceiling in boxes. Each room has a pathway, hoarder-style, that winds around the boxes and gets you to the door and the closet, and if you're lucky, the couch or the bed or the sink. That made us feel better. I heard this morning from a moving company who can move us on Wednesday of next week and deliver us to the new house on Saturday. That made us feel better.
It's all getting better; it's all going to be fine.
In the grand scheme of things, this will be a small blip in the process.
Dan and I hatched a plan that on the Saturday we move in, we're going sit on our back upstairs deck that night after we've tucked the kids into their new beds in their new-and separate- rooms, and suck down as many Sam Adams Summer Ales as we want, watching the fireflies and feeling like kings of all we see.
And feeling blessed beyond measure.
We'll be home.
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