So anyway . . .

. . . back to the year of living dangerously.

Movers came on 28 June to move the big stuff, including that monster white elephant of a china cabinet I'm still trying to foist on someone.  On 30 June June Chris Wootten (choir director) came by to help pack.  He was wrapping and stuffing, and I was busy with other things and couldn't keep track, so I didn't know what he'd packed where, and I just ended up marking his boxes "Chris Pack".  Didn't finally get them figured out until this last August.  But at least it was all packed.

The problem was getting all the stuff moved.  I was supposed to be out on 1 July so they could start remodeling.  I started shoveling everything into the garage so it would be out of the house and I could stage it there and load it straight into the truck.  I had to beg 3D and Spurge for extra time in the garage, and they really nicked me for it, but I had no choice.  What do you expect from crapitalist scum?

But there was just too much stuff.  I pulled everything out of the main floor and put it in the basement so the carpeting and painting could start, and then I started moving everything to the garage, but at the end of 1 July I was still moving things out of the basement, and I'd been running with very little rest all month.

I'd been deferring a nervous breakdown for nearly a half-century (That's a story for another time.).  That night it insisted on taking the stage.  About 0100 I had to rest a bit and laid down on a quilt on the old bedroom floor.  I fell asleep and woke up two hours later, panicking because I'd lost those two hours.  While asleep, I'd dreamed a bunch of people had arrived to help me move.  When I awoke, my mind decided the dream was reality and the reality of my doing it all alone was a dream, so all day I behaved as if there were people helping, right down to coordinating efforts with "the team".  I finally snapped out of it at the end of the day when I got the last of it out of the house and into the garage and truck.  I spent the next two days emptying the garage, and on the 4th of July, after 11 years, I was independent of Toni Circle.  Spurge and 3D had the house back.

And promptly wrecked it.  Oh the interior remodel was nice enough and years overdue (3D kept my deposit because of the condition of carpets, blinds, and appliances she had every intention of replacing anyway, but I actually won that game, and one of these days, when the statute of limitations has run, I may discuss it.), but they moved another mob of trust fund ski bums in, so who knows what the condition is now.  Not that I care.  But the exterior.  They ripped out all the perennials I'd planted in front for pollinators and replaced them with black rock (Great way to control soil temperature, yeah!) and "restored" the abomination of a garden in back.  And they cut down that lovely apricot tree.  Fuckers.  They need taken out back and Ol' Yellered.

But I was out, and I was no longer under the gun of a deadline.  I allowed myself to collapse for a few days, then I loaded the truck, and on 12 July I headed back to Iowa.

And then came a new adventure.