Hey, kids! Remember that fun time back - oh, it feels like forever ago, but it was really only a matter of weeks?
Yeah, that's it - the last time I nearly had a complete and total nervous breakdown. Well, batten the hatches.
Yes, after weeks of pretending it would never happen, this week I got... The Call. The one I've been dreading, but that in my heart of hearts I knew would come. Her name was Lucie, and in her lilting Caribbean accent, she gave me the bad news:
Our stuff from the Sandlands is here. And they want to deliver it. Soon.
Three tons of it.
Why, you think, how nice for them. They'll get to see their dishes and their books and their clothes and all the relentlessly ethnic tchotchkes one picks up in a dozen or so years flitting about the globe... No. That's not what I'm thinking, not at all. What I'm thinking is: [after the inarticulate screaming stops] Where the hell is it all going to go? What on earth are we to do with it all? We've just in the last week or so finished dealing with the deluge of oddities that came out of storage, and while the walls are bare, the place is looking adequately homey - tiny, and already cluttered, but not unmanageable.
And here it comes: the piano and the sideboard and the boxes and boxes and boxes of books. The two-dozen water goblets and the Bambara masks and the Busby Berkeley DVDs. The same old winter coat I've had since 1998 and the little black lacquer étagère from that shop back behind the synagogue in Alexandria. Oh, God.
Well, there's one ray of light, and that was the chipper assurance from dear Lucie that her very enlightened firm will be happy to deliver the things, unpack as many as we like, and then - O blessed day! - return and take away as much as we like to be put into their capacious and doubtless thoroughly secured storage. For a monthly fee, admittedly, only a very little more than I once upon a time paid for my first apartment in Philadelphia, but still worth every penny if it will free up a square foot or two of floor space.
So if things seem even more than usually fraught in these parts, you'll know why. At least, unlike the poor lady above, we're spared child care. Although at times those damn dogs come awfully close...
Three tons! Oh, Pisher! Sweetie "the company" moved 21,000 pounds of our crap over the Alleghanies, included in which were 400 boxes things, books, pictures, etc. and so on. And thats not counting the Oldsmobile. My home office looks like a utility closet. And I still haven't found where I'm going to hide any of it.
ReplyDeleteSo like me, you are either going to have to buy a bigger place -or- store it -or- have a sale.
But you have my sympathy. In spades.
DeleteHave you seen Hoarders? Lovely show.
ReplyDeleteYou speak of Alexandria and are referring to Egypt. I speak of Paris and refer to not even Texas, but Pennsylvania or New York. So it goes.
ReplyDeletePossessions are like children. Enjoy them for a time and then send them off to new homes. Our warehouse manager just got his first apartment. Loaning him the security deposit felt good. Unloading my parents' first dinette set, some old bed linens and towels, various floor and table lamps, a sofa, and two nightstands on him felt great!
I've tried! Sadly, I've not succeeded in unloading my Victoriana and worse onto the next generation of Muscati. I'm not quite to the point of walking up to total strangers and asking something along the lines of "You know what you need? You need a nile-green silver-lustre luncheon set!" But I'm close.
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