Moving Day

I actually wrote this blog a couple of weeks ago.  No broadband has forced me to wait until today to post it.  I have some new things to write about soon as well, so stay tuned!

I had the best weekend.  It was such a delightful time!  I spent the weekend watching my boys play together and chatting with friends and enjoying the beautiful weather and also moving!  It seems so funny to declare a moving weekend completely delightful but it certainly was--from start to finish.  Oh well, minus the cat pee incident, but I’ll get to that shortly.  

We thankfully had a bit of relocation money socked away unspent.  So we hired a ‘removal company.’  They came and packed everything Thursday.  Extremely efficient and polite.  We used Casey’s Removals--in case you’ll be ‘moving house’ in the Kent/Croydon area any time soon.  I cleaned and directed and picked up keys to the new house and then freaked out about cat pee.  Oh man.  

We have the cutest new little house, but the previous tenants had cats.  Nice enough cats.  We met them.  But goodness me, those suckers can really get their stink on.  Specifically on the carpets and curtains.  So we came over Thursday night to check out the new digs and I had a hissy fit about pee stains.  ‘Wasn’t the carpet supposed to be cleaned?  Maybe it was and it didn’t come out!  What gets cat smell out of carpets. Probably nothing.  Maybe it’ll never come out!  Maybe we’re destined to be in toilet-smell land for the rest of our lives!    Call the management company right now.  What do you mean they’re closed?!?  In the morning then!  Wait, the movers will be to our house before they open!  Oh no!  The movers come tomorrow to load in all of our furniture and there’s nothing to be done.  It’s hopeless.  All is lost!  Someone shoot me!  Just shoot me now and put me out of my stinking misery!”  The words ‘blithering idiot’ come to mind.  Oh dear.  Scott just sort of looked at me with that half-cocked grin that can SOMETIMES be so charming and politely mentioned that I may have lost my mind.  I think the implication was that I was being a little high-maintenance.  I think that everything else was going so smoothly with the move that I was grasping for something to freak out about.  That’s what one does when one is moving, right?  Oh well and...it really stank. 

Anyway the efficient, polite movers came Friday morning and moved everything in.  The management company said the carpets were cleaned and suggested Febreeze.  I politely declined to mention it smells like ass and gives my youngest son croup.  I don’t want the smell covered up!  I want it GONE!  But on to the pleasant, delightful part.

The weather Friday morning was absolutely gorgeous.  Bright, sun-shiney, warm.  I wished my flops weren’t packed.  The boys ran like wild men in and out of the empty house, around and around the back garden and the front driveway.  They decided the movers were bad gangsters and they were Batman and Robin faithfully defending Gotham.  Sunshine does something to people--especially when one is deprived of it for so much of the time.  Those stodgy, reserved English men played along!  The four of them had just a ball.  My favorite moment of the day though was leaning out the windows I was cleaning to see Bridger and Caid sitting in the sun on the back patio.  Each with a sandwich in hand, Bridger reading Caid a magazine.  So sweet!  

One of the huge blessings of the weekend was the friends that helped out.  That can be one of the best parts of a move.  The sort of ‘barn-raising’ atmosphere.  Folks around packing, loading, unloading, unpacking, cleaning, patching walls, and eating pizza together at the end of the day.  Our move over here lacked all of that.  Movers one day to bring everything to Montana for storage.  A week later another set to bring everything to England.  Us alone with the boys in an empty house wondering when and if we’d ever see our stuff again and what in the world we’d gotten ourselves into.    Then living in an empty house (that we moved into sight-unseen) for almost 3 months.  Learning to live without and wondering why in the world we’d shipped so much stuff when it did finally arrive.  It was all very lonely and surreal.  

This weekend was so different though!  My friend Victoria picked the boys up at lunch time Friday and they had a blast playing at her house all day long.  We finished up the day eating dinner with her and her hubby at their flat around 10:30 pm.  It was such a great night!  Then Saturday afternoon John and Paul showed up and helped put shelves together, and put things up on walls and unpack and play light-saber fights with the boys.  We finished the evening with beers and yummy dinner and a great time talking.  By the end of the day Sunday we had all but 1 box unpacked.  Unheard of!   

Somehow it feels like we’ve finally moved here.  We spent six obligatory months in moving purgatory and we’ve finally paid our penance and can get out.  Last week our house in Denver finally went under contract, we leased the condo for the next 12 months, and we moved to England.  It feels like our life here is finally beginning.  Now if I can just get the cat smell out of the carpets...

Leaving on a jet plane...

So as I drove down University today with a Grande-Decaf-Triple Shot-Soy-Pumpkin Spice Latte-no whip on my right, the mountains on my left, wearing a down vest with 3/4 length sweatshirt and alternating between country music and KBCO on the radio I felt...well...truthfully a little disoriented. It's like that feeling when you wake up in the middle of the night and cannot figure out for the life of you where you are. You flounder around a little. Take some deep breaths and ward off panic. It feels a little like that.
I barely payed attention as I drove to my dentist appointment. My body and mind on autopilot I shifted the gears of my dad's Jeep. I turned down this way and that, every once in a while noticing a new building is going up or one has been torn down. Other than that I noticed barely anything. I even spoke to Meggs on my cell phone on the way. While driving! It was that easy to just drive around.
People are nice at the stores. A few days ago, while having breakfast before leaving the Holiday Inn Express they must have asked me 10 times if I had everything I needed. I'm not going to lie to you. It kind of freaked me out.
I went to Target and could buy everything on my very diverse list. There were a dozen choices of booster seats alone. I ran to Park Meadows and there was every size and every flavor of every item I might ever need or want from hardware to fine wine to furniture to outdoor gear right there at my fingertips. For dinner I chose between 20 or some odd restaraunts within a one mile radius of the house. The seven burritos I ordered for my family at Chipotle were all customized down to the tiniest ingredient and no request was scoffed at or considered absurd. I didn't even attempt Costco. God help me.
Yeah, it's disorienting. It all feels familiar, but distant. Like it's on the other side of a veil. A veil I crossed over somewhere above Greenland on August 24th, 2008. Reverse culture shock is a bitch! Still, it seems somehow like more than just that.
I went by the house yesterday. The house that is 10 minutes from Target and Park Meadows and within a one mile radius of 20 some odd restaurants. It felt like I'd never left. Like I still lived there, but was just visiting somewhere else for a bit. I've driven by houses I lived in before. They always felt like 'places I'd lived before.' We'd drive by and there would be story telling and memories retrieved and told and shared again and again. That house didn't feel that way. It still felt like 'the house.' Bridger said, "It's good to be back!" I answered with a forced, "Yeah, but we don't really live here anymore. It's not really our house." "Oh yeah! It's Conrad's [our realtor] house now!" "Well no, B." I said. "We still own it, but we're trying to sell it. We live in England now." "Yeah, but it sure is good to see it again!"
He swung on the playset. He ran around the playroom with an exclamation of "look at our HUGE old playroom!" He thrilled at seeing his old bunk beds and his own room. He sat in the chair and read one of his old Pirate books and was so excited to see an "England flag! That ship must be from London!" I went up stairs at his request to "look at your room with me, Mom!" I found him snuggled up on the bed that's still there for staging. I could barely watch it. Talk about disorienting. As we went downstairs to leave he said, "see ya house!" But it was what he said as we pulled were pulling out of the driveway that really nailed me. "Well, bye house! Sorry we held on to you for so long! It's time for you to get new owners now!"
Out of the mouths of babes.
No wonder I feel disoriented. No wonder I wake up and can't figure out whre I am. I never left. Colorado, that house--they've been the ace up my sleeve. The safety net to fall back on. The somethin somethin to run to if England tanked. So there was no driving by an old place filled with old memories. It was a current place. A place I somehow still inhabited. Physically gone, but spiritually still present there. Sigh...and I can't figure out why I'm having trouble settling in England.
I get on a plane tomorrow. To go back home. To Scott. In England. I don't know that I will have sorted all of this out quite yet, and I'm going to be kind to myself about that. I do want to leave though. For real this time. I'd like to come back to Colorado as one of those 'favorite places.' Those places you visit. You drive by all the old haunts. You shop at your favorite old stores and eat at your favorite old restaurants. You drive by the old house and you tell stories about all the great memories you had there. But you don't live there anymore. You've left and moved on to new adventures and new dreams. New houses and new haunts and new stores and restaurants (even if there are fewer choices and the customer service sucks).
So..."Bye house! Bye Colorado! Sorry I held on to you for so long! It's time for you to find some new owners now!" I'm gone. I'm off to make my way in the big wide world. I'll be back to visit, but I don't live here anymore.