Tag: moving

Home, I guess

Three and a half weeks ago, I moved the last of my belongings into my new housing location… tonight, I am spending my first official night here.

‘Why?’ you ask.

Because first, there was suddenly no hot water (first two weeks); then, it was fixed, but I was in the middle of my final papers and didn’t want to mess with moving myself during that (slash to a place with no internet during that) (one week); and then, I just got nervous about staying here, because it had been so long of not being here and of being in a place where I was emotionally comfortable (at my mom’s, spending lots of time with her) (this past weekend).

What’s funnier, is that I was supposed to move in here another three weeks before I did, but it was pushed back, due to a huge crack in the ceiling from the foundation repairs over the summer.

So really, it’s taken 47 days to move from one place to another, only a few neighborhoods over. šŸ˜›

Totally nuts, huh?

And then tonight, while showering, I find that the hot and cold are switched on the shower – I was genuinely concerned at first, since no hot water was arriving, but it worked out (phew!) – and then, when I gently turn the shower-head so that it isn’t pointing really far to the side, water starts shooting everywhere.

I quickly turned the water back to the tub faucet, and worked to remedy the sudden spewing situation on the shower-head, by tightening it back into place… only to find the shower-head suddenly in my hand – apparently it was waiting to break off.

I actually laughed at the absurdity of it, it was kind of like the straw that broke the camel’s bag of laughter – I was in no way stressed, but merely finding the total humor of it all.

It was a clean break, and so I set the shower-head on the floor and turned the water back to the shower function, using just the metal tubing to which the actual sprayer of the shower-head had been attached… it isn’t as efficient, for my shower or the planet, but it works, and it’ll do for now.

Oh, the delights of life… all of this on top of the fact that I’m home super late tonight, but have to be up early tomorrow, and I started feeling the symptoms of my body fighting infection this afternoon (super sore muscles in my upper back and all the way around of my neck).

God, thank you for these blessings I have received – please, help me to be happy, healthy, holy through them all.

Post-a-day 2018

Fortunately, Not Quite Like Poe

It was a dark and stormy night…. I mean, it is a dark and stormy night, and it just so happens to be my first night in a new place…, which just so happens to be an old house that is very talkative in this wind tonight…

I feel so oddly exposed, though I am two floors up, because I am the only one here – no one is below to verify my safety, to verify that these sounds I hear are benign or, at least, fully outside and down the street…

However, life couldn’t have made it more clear that this is exactly the place for me to be right now, whatever the hardships that come with it.

So I’ll aim for rest, and possibly get it on this dark and stormy night.

Post-a-day 2018

Moving

I’ll pack the bulk of it, and then do the million-gillion trips to the car and house, if you do the packing off all the miscellaneous items…

My brain just can’t handle it… simultaneously packing the last things in a hurry and arranging them in the most efficient positions… it just makes me go nuts whenever I have to do it, and I almost always take longer doing that than I spent on all the rest of the packing combined… packing the miscellaneous is just too stressy on my brain, because the logic of hurry does not win over the logic of pack efficiently.

It just doesn’t in my head. šŸ˜›

Suffice it to say that I am utterly drained, but still surviving due to the help offered by two glorious friends tonight from about nine to eleven… they were a Godsend, no doubt, and I would have suffered intensely in the head and body without them.

Still more to do to finish everything up, but those are just baby touches compared to what we accomplished tonight.

I thank you all, who blessed me today šŸ™‚

Post-a-day 2018

Moving

I am moving again, and I have even less of an official deadline this time as I did last time… and that’s making it difficult to pack up and actually move.

I’m also ever so slightly terrified at living all alone (mostly because of the neighborhood, and the fact that, on the odd occasion, something goes wrong in it, but also a bit because I like the feeling of someone being in the house with me, and knowing that we can help to take care of one another).

But I deep cleaned the carpet today, and so can move in furniture Monday (Ah! So soon!), and even some more boxes tomorrow (to the wooden floors part).

I guess I am scared…, and I’m doing it anyway, because this is my next step forward on this path I’m pursuing… and I’m delighted about that.

Post-a-day 2018

Sniffingly a homemaker

Walking through Target tonight, I found myself moving in a sort of comfortable, meditative state… It was late, and I was rather tired from the day… I took several times over the usual time it takes me to obtain an equal number and variety of items at the store… and I somehow didn’t mind it…  I guess this just supports my theory that I secretly – read ‘subconsciously’ – want to be a homemaker-housewife.  When I first moved into my own apartment several years ago, and then again in Japan (when I had to start from, basically, scratch), I felt a certain flow of mental chemicals that delighted me through and through, in a comfortable, this is where I belong sort of way whenever I was shopping for apartment-related items, house items.  And it isn’t to say that I belong only as a homemaker or anything, but simply that it is somewhere of many somewheres where I do belong.

Tonight was no exception.  I moved into a new home and with a new person yesterday, you see.  She has most everything that goes in a house, and I have very little of that sort of stuff, so the match-up is rather good on that front (not to mention that we actually get along really well in the first place, because that isn’t the point).  However, my whole OCD compulsions have me need my own cleaning supplies. —You see, it isn’t enough just to have cleaning supplies.  They must also be nice to the planet, nice to the nose and eyes, and themselves clean (their containers), while kept in a clean space.  Show me a bottle of cleaner that has been under a cabinet and has a thin layer of dust on it, and I won’t even touch it until you have cleaned the bottle.  I probably also with have slight inner daytime terrors of the fact that the bottle is dirty.  Anyway, back to the main point of this all… —-  So, I was at Target, seeking out these cleaning supplies for me for my new home.

I walked calmly, despite the inward thought of how late it must be.  I felt confidence every time I set down the basket and gave a once-over to a certain type of product.  I gracefully selected bottles whose scents I wanted to test, and euphorically sampled their natural essential oil-filled smells.  I smiled at each, and even mmm-ed a few, closing my eyes to embrace the scent.  I usually take my time with scents – I even stop to smell flowers much more often than is common, just to smell them and to indulge myself.  It’s alway sa bit of a bummer whenever I find flower bunches at stores that don’t even smell (or don’t smell good).  Whole Foods is one of those stores.

Anyway, so I take my time with (good) smells, enjoying them, allowing my brain to do any work it feels appropriate whenever it crosses a familiar scent.  I was told when I was quite young that scent was the strongest sense for recalling memory, and I’ve always kept that in mind for some reason, delighting in the silly scents that bring back memories.  (Like how the hand soap in this one bathroom in the house where I once nannied smelled like my grandmother on my dad’s side.  She hadn’t been alive for years at that point, and yet I had no doubt that it was the same smell that was usually on her, though I never seemed consciously to have noticed her having a specific scent before that moment.)

So, I was smelling slowly and comfortably, and enjoying all the familiar and new scents.  One in particular, though I definitely didn’t want it as a cleaning supply, was the replication of some regular smell from some point in my childhood.  I took a picture and sent it to my mom, telling her to go find one and to sniff it, so she could help me figure out why the scent is so specifically familiar.  It was labeled as being scented “radish”, however it was not merely the scent of radishes that was familiar – it was that specific combination.  Perhaps my mother had used that cleaning supply brand and scent at some point.  Though, I’m not too sure of that being very likely, because it seems to be a newer scent from this brand, and because it relates to a specific summer-type memory for me, as opposed to just lots of childhood cleaning days.  I’m looking forward to figuring out that one.  It might take me a little while, a few months’ even, but I am confident that, as with others in the past, I will figure it out.

Post-a-day 2018

 

I promise, weā€™re adults

I guess it is because people once had little kids living in this house, that my bedroom door has the lock on the outside, but that doesn’t change the fact that my friend and I got locked in my room this evening while moving my furniture and stuff out of my mom’s house. šŸ˜›

So much for feeling like grown-ups after our brief scheduling chit-chat in my room. šŸ™‚

Post-a-day 2018

Stepping up

Dear ——, is this still your number?  Hannah ——- here.  I wanted you to know that I am very interested in renting out your apartment.  However, I have three concerns.  1) I’d like to see it to be certain.  2) I would prefer to move in in June instead of May.  Would that be possible?  3) If something were to come up where I receive a job offer abroad, would it work for me to move out sooner than anticipated (even if that means I find a sub-letter, etc.)?

……………………………………………..

A series of text messages I am considering sending tomorrow (as the person prefers messages to calls, and it is too late to do it tonight).

Post-a-day 2018

Breakdown & Breakthrough: All in a day’s work

Today’s stuff was intense and deep and wonderful.  Rather than explain and describe everything, I turn to selections from the Facebook Messenger conversation I had with my cousin.  As a note that you can understand afterward, I have seven large trash bags crammed in my trunk right now, ready to be donated tomorrow, plus a bag of specifics for my cousin.  I went through two bags of trash – and no, I genuinely do not understand what trash is in the bags for the most part, nor from where it all came, seeing as how I was going through clothing only today…  Anyway, there was hesitation and uncertainty at the start, then paralyzing panic, followed by red-eyed determination, and then finally comfortable relaxation and ease.

At one point, after probably five (of the eventual 8) bags had been moved to the trunk, I opened up my guitar.  I had to cut off the plastic ties that were still around the case from having brought it here on the airplane.  I tuned it up from the extremely loose state in which the strings had been for months, played a song, and then just played around for a few minutes.  All-in-all, it wasn’t even 15 minutes spent with the guitar, but it was blissful, and I was filled with delight by the end of it.  It may seem like little, but having done this specifically speaks volumes about how effective today was – I hadn’t even considered pulling out the guitar until today.  The guitar is enjoyment and relaxation and fun.  Those haven’t really been an option in my life lately.

Anyway, find the selections here, below, and have a wonderful day.  šŸ™‚

………………………………………………………..

Hannah Any chance you read my weblog from last night?
I feel stuck
Cousin i have not
Hannah And Iā€™d like your opinion
Cousin I will add that to my list of goals for today
Hannah I guess, essentially, I have planned to do my clothes today, KonMari style
But I feel like I canā€™t relate to joy sparking feeling
Itā€™s like, because I have so much stuff, it all just stresses me out a little bit
And I feel kind of guilty at having it all in the first place
Maybe not guilt, but something… almost like shame
Cousin I went ahead and read the what you wrote
I hear you. I feel that way every time I move. Which is a lot of times.
Hannah Ha
Cousin I wonder what that ‘shame’ feeling is attached to. Is it a ‘supposed to’?
I’m not ‘supposed to’ have this much stuff?
Hannah Perhaps
I think so
Like that I was wasteful in getting things I donā€™t love in the first place
Cousin that was a different kind of joy at the time though
Hannah Itā€™s currently just a big sense of stress
No specifics to it
Cousin specifically talking about the clothes right now. it sounds like you’re not being able to relate to confront them on a one on one level because you’re dealing with them as a whole emotionally.
Hannah Like I mentioned, my main issue right now is that I canā€™t get that spark joy feeling
Yeah, I think so
Cousin And you know there is no benefit to bringing the baggage of what you “should or should not” have done with any of these things.
That baggage is just more clutter
Even if the purchases you made turned out not to bring a usefulness and sustaining joy, there was at least a small amount of freedom and joy in obtaining them when you did. Otherwise you wouldn’t have done it.
That is all past now. You have grown. You have learned. You did good. Gold starts all around.
Now we get the excitement of meeting this new phase in your life. You get to make all these creative choices again with things you already own.
Like editing the draft of a novel.
And you don’t have to worry about making the wrong decision. Because your life si so abundant.
You may never find those plates from college. That sucks.
But. You didn’t know those plates would bring you joy before you found them.
ANd that may happen again with new plates.
Hannah Yeah
M– has always said that ā€˜If it isnā€™t a definite YES!, then itā€™s definitely a noā€™
[…]
Cousin The ‘definite yes’ thing can be useful, but it can also be a lot of pressure to put on yourself
[…]
Cousin especially because of where you are in your life.
It’s easier to know ‘definite yes’ when you’ve been living with the same stuff in the same place for several years
it’s harder when you’re in flux
there is an episode of gilmore girls actually that deals with that in the last season.
Hannah Ha
Hannah Remember that time I got rid of the multiple black trash bags of clothes?
At the two-Story apartment
Cousin yes
Hannah I did this activity then
It was just the clothes I had at that apartment, but still
It worked great
And I was so happy with it all
Now I finally have everything in one place
I want to do the activity again
I think Iā€™m getting overwhelmed with the fact that thereā€™s just so much sh*t everywhere in my room, in the house, and in my life
And Iā€™m somewhat scared of what life will be when I let go of it all
Slash terrified
Cousin well, I know what you need then
some Tina Turner
Your montage moment is waiting for you whenever you are ready to have it
(and it’s okay not to be ready yet. You can also be scared of it and choose to be a cat instead until you’re ready.)

……………………………………………….

Hannah I just put the second item into the give-away bag, and Iā€™ve started deep crying
Itā€™s like I can see whatā€™s going on for me, but I canā€™t seem to do anything about it
Because it isnā€™t just letting go – it is intentionally clearing the space
So much of what I have is out of necessity
Thatā€™s why I got a lot of it
Also, not really knowing who I want to be right now makes this tough
My current lifestyle leans toward making me feel useless in life
Cousin That’s why I was serious about my last suggestions. You’ve done your logic homework. This is body primal stuff.
Hannah Itā€™s terrifying to let go of the safety that Iā€™ve known
A lot of my clothes are representative of the safety Iā€™ve had in my life
Mostly financially, but also mentally and all
Cousin Absolutely. This actually reminds me a little bit of when you shaved your head
Hannah Really?
I had no struggle with making that move
Haha
Cousin Conversations we had after the fact I mean
About how you had to find different ways to express your femininity
Hannah About having to deal with people seeing me so differently, and having to examine how I wanted to present myself?
Yeah
Cousin Exactly
Hannah Itā€™s like Iā€™m scared to show a grown-up, feminine me here
In Japan, I was okay with it
Cousin New slate, new rules
Hannah There were multiple occasions where I just stared st myself, ā€˜cause I envied the woman I was in that moment and outfit and everything
And here, I feel like Iā€™m allowed to be a kid and/or tomboy
Only
Cousin Another identity to contend with
Hannah
Cousin Grl, YES
This is very much an Artist’s Way date
Hannah Haha
[…]

Hannah With quick folding, most of it went into my dresser, and the rest in one laundry basket!
Hannah I also started noticing differences in feelings as I was folding them up. It were as though, now that I have so much less, I could see suddenly all these individual emotions that were difficult to see before. Before, it was a simple ā€˜good feelingā€™ versus ā€˜not good feelingā€™ with each item. Now that all the ā€˜not good feelingā€™ items are out of the picture, Iā€™m seeing what the different subcategories, if you will, of ā€˜good feelingā€™ are.

…………………………………………………………………………..

P.S.  Sonntag means Sunday.  It’s German.  šŸ˜‰

Post-a-day 2018

::Sigh…

Sometimes I wonder if it wouldnā€™t just be better to get a high-paying job in an office, and start saving up.  Then, after a couple or few years, start the process for adoption.  The only work so far that I have loved doing, without almost any question ever, is doing things with other peopleā€™s kids (nannying).  Maybe having a somewhat terrible corporate job in suits is worth it for having a kid…

I just donā€™t see myself happy each morning and each bedtime in a job like that, and that means bad sleep each night and a tough start to the day each morning.

I donā€™t know… sometimes I get depressive, and then desperate, and start calculating what ā€˜makes senseā€™ for life, as opposed to ā€˜listening to my heartā€™.  Come to think of it, Iā€™m not sure Iā€™ve even asked my heart what I/it want/wants to do with my life and time…

Now is as good a time as ever, I suppose.  šŸ™‚

 

P.S.  I’ve noticed that, whenever I get upset in the depressed, my life is going nowhere experience, I have an almost panicked desire to move to Europe, and it is most often France.  It’s not like I have any idea whatsoever what I would do there, or how that would solve any of my current issues.  Plus, it would create the issue of being away from almost everyone I know and love and who loves me, since most of them are in the US.  However, there’s just this feeling that arises that living in Europe somehow would just make everything okay, and in a good way (not just tolerable okay, but good okay).  Anyway, just something I noticed tonight.

Post-a-day 2018

Unpacking & Unboxing

Three and a half thoughts:

1. Ā I spent my afternoon today opening and sorting boxes from Japan. Ā I finally have the much-needed winter clothing Iā€™ve been wanting the past month and a half. Ā Good thing it was almost warm today.

2. Ā I was happily surprised that almost everything I brought back was totally practical and useful and something I really like. Ā I was worried that I wouldnā€™t like loads of it all.

3. Ā Itā€™s interesting to me how Japan no longer feels like a sort of adventure. Ā It actually surprises me when people have big reactions to the fact that I was there, living there. Ā It feels the same as saying that I buy vegetables at the grocery store – itā€™s just something simple and everyday. Ā I lived in Japan… and so do millions of other people. Ā I know that it isnā€™t the regular deal for people around here; Iā€™m clear on that. Ā I just mean that it feels so not special to me specifically. Ā It almost feels more unique that I floss my teeth every day (sometimes more than once a day), than that I lived in Japan. Ā I guess itā€™s just old news for me now. So does that mean I need some new news, then, if only for myself?

1/2. Ā Wait until you see the tubs of kimono that I have…! Ā (Doesn’t that sound like ice cream or something?) Ā šŸ˜›

Post-a-day 2018