You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July, 2009.
It is absolutely unreal how long the packing process is taking.
I have undiluted raw envy for people who have a two day move: one to pack and one to physically move. These are people who are moving out of rentals, who hire packers, who are moving within an hour’s drive of their original location.
Our move five years ago was similar–we left a rental apartment. Though we packed ourselves (except for breakables), we basically threw everything into boxes without sorting. This is why, five years later, our bookshelves looked like they were guest starring on Sanford and Son.
This time we sorted. Our books and linens, winter clothes, dishes and kitchenware are long gone–they are actually supposed to arrive in Israel tomorrow. What’s making life so tricky is what remains. The furniture that no charity will take. The boxes of books that I couldn’t sell to Powell’s and didn’t leave via “The Tired Family Involuntary Potlatch–You Come, You Take.” The cabinets and fridge with open food. The clothes and random items we want to donate to Goodwill (but they won’t pick up). The huge contractor bag full of personal financial papers that we have to shred at Kinko’s. Hundreds of hangers in the closets.
It’s just endless.
There are all the other random things we have to do to prepare ourselves to uproot and resettle, none of which have just one step. Selling the cars? As much of a hassle as that was (advertising, showing, test driving, etc.), it’s done–but we were left with license plates to return, EZ Pass tags to return, car insurance to cancel. (Not that I can complain too much because we waited at the DMV for a grand total of 45 seconds. And not much more at the EZ Pass service center.)
We’ve had to gather our medical records, financial records, school records. Cancel things, change things, buy things. Pack suitcases full of clothes, which I tagged as “now” (nothing long sleeve) or “later” (won’t need them in the first two weeks after arrival). Do loads and loads of laundry, mostly linens and mattress pads for donation. Yes, I know it’s the 9 days, but Friday and Sunday we have too much else to do.
The Salvation Army and Project Machson could not pick up furniture until the end of August, so we’re going with Housing Works. 1-800-Got Junk is coming tomorrow for what they won’t take. We’re taking the shredding in this afternoon. Sold furniture moving out Saturday night. We just have to buck up and toss what remains. We really did manage to pass on a lot…but we had too much in the first place. I guess that’s the lesson, though I don’t know how much more downsizing we’ll be able to do before our next move.
Nothing like going into a huge life change completely spent, right?
This is a picture of Abba and Ema, who lost their minds and let me use the camera, at the playground, approximately eight minutes before I had a total meltdown because I was too small to do the monkey bars.
Note to self: Ema keeps telling me I’m not the same age as Miss M. How can this be possible? Must investigate.
And now I’m hungry again. Ema says, “Well, then, it must be a day that ends in ‘y.’”
But I have to grow. Some day I want to do everything by myself.
Apparently I can subscribe to The New Yorker digitally. It would arrive in my inbox on Monday, appear just like the printed magazine, and cost $40 a year.
“You should get it!” Taxman told me. “It will make you happy!”
But will it?
Part of the beauty of a physical magazine subscription is reading it on Shabbat or Yom Tov; toting it to read in the park while the kids play; letting it stack up while I read novels and then diving into the pile, searching for articles by my favorite staff writers and regular contributors: Gawande, Groopman, Sacks, Mead, McPhee, Angell.
So, yeah, silver lining. But I’m…undecided.
(and this is where my dining room table…used to be)
I’ve been so caught up in the move and all that entails (the bad, the ugly, the worse, the “do I have to take my children with me because they are behaving like rotten beasts?”), I haven’t blogged about my breasts in at least five minutes.
And this is not about breastfeeding, per se, so if I have any male readers besides my husband (do I?), feel free to turn away now. I mean, you don’t have to; it’s a free internet and you might learn something.
After complaining about my bra situation for many, many months, I finally took advantage of being child-free for whole hours at a time (thank you, camp!) and went to a fancy, schmancy bra store. I am normally the opposite of fancy, but this was necessary. Back in the day, when I was a B cup and my parents paid my bills, I used to shop at a certain mall store that hosts a primetime special on CBS. I never felt particularly sexy or womanly, and I never sprouted angel wings, which would have been SO COOL, but the bras seemed to fit and were all priced in the neighborhood of $30-$35.
Now I cannot shop there. Nursing has changed me, by which I mean I don’t have the volume I once did. This mall store does not seem to believe in the A cup; rather, they don’t seem to believe that anyone actually wants to BE an A cup, so absolutely everything in the store in “smaller” sizes is padded. I stopped looking there. I also couldn’t find anything at the Hanes-Bali-Playtex outlet.
So a friend pointed me to a place in Manhattan. Said friend grew up in Manhattan and just knows things. It’s on the Upper East Side, and I? Am so not that type. I wore sneakers today–this turned out to be the smartest thing ever–and frankly I don’t own strappy sandals OR nail polish of any kind. My husband cuts my hair. I could go on, but won’t. Every time I even visit the UES it feels like I am about to be shown the door. (The shabby chic of the Upper West Side is what I aspire to on my best day. A day during which I’ve showered and matched my top to my skirt AND my hat.)
First I had to find parking. Which I did, five blocks away. (Pretty miraculous.) It was only one hour parking. (This is all there was, because I did not have a prayer of finding parking on the numbered streets, especially because I had the minivan. I did not even try.) I didn’t even notice that the one hour was costing me $1.50 in quarters because I was so worried that an hour wasn’t going to be enough.
I get to the store and ask for help. “Do you have an appointment?” Uhhhh, no. They tell me they can take me in 15 minutes. Mental calculation. I am invited to look at the merchandise, which includes some sale items of various bras, underpants, lingerie items. And some of these things cost more, on sale, than the worth of all of my shoes combined. So I get nervous.
I had to fill out a questionnaire before my bra fitting, explaining what I am looking for.
I snoop around looking at lingerie, wondering if there is anything I can possible imagine myself wearing or buying (gak! the prices!). I check my watch obsessively. Finally I say to a clerk stacking underpants that I am going to go feed my meter. She blinks, as if I’ve told her that the martians are coming to get me. (Perhaps “feed the meter” is code for “I cannot afford to shop here” and she’s authorized to lock me out.) “I’m coming right back! I promise!”
Note to stores on Madison Avenue: valet parking would be really, really helpful. I have never used valet parking at a store, but the parking situation on the Upper East Side is SO awful.
I dash to the car and back, buying myself an extra half hour and getting all sweaty in the process. Because who doesn’t want to try on bras when they’re feeling hot and uncomfortable?
But then I meet Stephanie. Stephanie turns out to be the heroine in this story. She asks if I’ve had a fitting before, where my bras are from. Ha!
Basically, in a nutshell: The Target dog is my bra fitter. I wear nursing tanks almost exclusively (although sometimes C9 sports bras!) because any bra that I’ve owned in the past 10 years does not fit me.
I get a spiel about how they don’t use tape measures, they just assess by looking. Fine, whatever. Stephanie is apparently expecting me to be a little more shy, but really, as has been established in the past, I will flash just about anybody. (Although there was not a nursling in sight, so I should have been more careful. I suppose.)
“I’ll bring you some 32s,” Stephanie says, “and if those don’t work we have 30s.”
“They make 30s?” I’m floored, really. How could I be a petite and not know that?
Suddenly things start to go right. Bras fit. They feel good. Stephanie brings me a camisole to try over one, and I have a silhouette. It’s petite, but wow, I feel like a person. Not like a hag, not like I’ve been up most nights this month until 2 in the morning (true!), but like a real woman with real breasts, nicely proportioned for ME and my size.
(Oh, if I could go grab my 16 year old self for five minutes and shake her out of those huge sweatshirts and put her in a real bra and make her stand up straight it would make me so happy. Sigh. /digression)
I spent a lot of money in this place, but I think it’s all for the best. I found a brand that fits me perfectly that I didn’t know existed. I feel like I finally am giving my breasts their due. They’ve done a lot for me and my family these past five years and deserve some respect. The Target dog can go back to the dollar spot; Stephanie is my bra fitter now.
AND? I ran like a bat out of hell when I was finished and made it to my car with three minutes to spare. Because spending an extra $60 on this day? Would have been even harder to explain than the American Express bill.
I’ve started the long process of saying goodbye to my life in the States. I’m not yet really excited about going to Israel–stressed and freaked and so tired of the process already is more like it. I have started a mental list of things that I won’t miss. Most of them involve parking a minivan in various too-small, overcrowded, busy parking lots with weird angles.
Last night was my final book club meeting. Actually, I am in two book clubs, but this was the first one that I joined, back in 2005.
It saved my life, a little.
In July of 2005, my La Leche group had its annual summer picnic. We veered slightly out of the neighborhood, to the home of a member who had a backyard and a wading pool. At the end of the picnic, my hostess was bemoaning the leftover food, but said, “Oh, it’s ok, I’ll bring it to my book club tonight.” To which I said, “Book club? Can I join?” Very out of character for me, the wallflower, but Julia was very friendly (read: Canadian).
The next month I did. I loved it. Most of its members were neighbors to each other (and my La Leche friend) and genuinely liked each other. Some also connected through gardening, through their jobs, through their neighborhood association. People came and went through the years, but there were at least a dozen mainstays of various ages, from people in their late 30s to retirees in their 70s. I was the “baby” of the group, which, honestly, I loved. Here were people who had once had small kids and had lived through it and were intact and could still talk about books and be intellectual. Many of them were teachers–ranging from preschool to college–or librarians. There were four couples, three straight and one gay, who came singly and in pairs.
I loved that monthly disconnect from my kids. (Although AM did attend two or three meetings with me when he was tiny.) Two whole hours when I was totally free to be myself again, the person who could talk about characters and symbols and use three syllable words and be sarcastic and laugh loud and tease the sweet curmudgeon who always wanted to read Plato and Freud instead of contemporary fiction.
I loved being forced back into the adult world, to shake myself free of board books and What To Expect and even my beloved Ask Moxie. I spent part of every Shabbat reading my own book. In front of my kids. I would read to them, of course, but then I would say, “Now Ema is going to read her book and drink her tea.” And I did. Frankly, I think I set a good example, because now they do the same. They love to be read to, but are equally likely to dump a clump of books on the floor, sit in the middle of them, and page through them in silence.
I drove there in the rain, the snow, the light of June evenings. Usually skipped March, because Taxman was working ’til midnight. But, really, what a find.
I will miss it.
