Birmingham, AL: My New Place

A move-in party. Birmingham, Alabama. July 2020.

I moved into my new place.

I threw a modest party of one. 

Tucson, AZ: Goodbye: A Soft Close

My Louisiana coffee mug in my Tucson apartment. April 2019.

Yesterday was my last day in Tucson.


I expected an unexpected, unpleasant surprise on my move-out day.

Although there was an annoying location glitch in dropping off my internet provider's router, it was relatively mild, so it didn't rise to the unpleasant surprise level. After I accomplished that mission, I thought, wow, it looks like this will be a smooth exit!

But then, when I traversed a side street on my way out of Tucson, I didn't see a speed hump quickly enough to ratchet down my speed to prevent a clunk as I went over the hump. And I thought, oh, HERE is my move-out surprise! Vehicle damage!

But, no, Chez P(rius) incurred no damage, and I was on my way.

The move-out gods granted mercy this year.    

Rootless: Moving Days and Blind Spots

House moving, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. December 2011.

The last Friday in April was moving day in Tucson, out of Temporary Home #2, and into what is my permanent home for the year.


Have I finally learned there is almost always a move-out surprise? Hopefully, with this move-out, I did. But before I get to that surprise ...

I visit the ghosts of moves-out past

Leaving Ferguson 2018.

Leaving El Paso 2017.

Leaving Opelousas 2016.

Leaving Alamogordo 2013.

Leaving Caucasus Georgia 2012.


The present move-out

My move from the shared house to the apartment ALMOST went smooth as silk. But suddenly I heard one of my housemates calling my name repeatedly from downstairs. “Mzuri! Mzuri! MZURI!” I couldn’t imagine what the heck was going on, and selfishly, I felt a momentary irritation, as I was so near the finish line, with only a few tasks to complete before I left.

But I finally caught the urgency in my housemate's voice, and I skedaddled downstairs to see what was what. I imagined that one of our other housemates had collapsed and required emergency assistance.

Well, it did involve another housemate, but it seems he had gotten physical with his mate. I'll call him "Jack." In the course of my six-week stay in the shared household, I had already noticed some yellow flags about Jack's attitudes toward women in general and toward his mate, specifically.

Jack and his partner had gotten into an argument and she’d decided to leave. Jack had forcefully commandeered some personal items from her, which she needed to have in order to leave, and he refused to release the items to her.

A disturbing phone conversation with the absentee landlady, from whom the other housemate and I had requested an intervention, revealed the landlady's dismissive view of the physical and verbal intimidation that we witnessed.

In short order, Jack turned his ugly wrath onto me, dumping personal attacks on top of my head – which is his M.O. with his mate. In the moment, Jack’s diatribe rolled off my back because I knew his verbal vomit had nothing to do with me, and only had to do with Jack, but suddenly in the afternoon, after I’d got mostly unloaded into my new apartment, I felt shaken.


Blind spots


When people assault you with personally vicious words, it leaves stripes, and then when others - such as the landlady, in this instance - dismiss the verbal violence as just a passing storm, it inflames the wounds. I had several bad moments of  aftershocks throughout the weekend.

It's easier to blame the victim for such onslaughts, isn't it? Or cast doubt about the target's interpretation or veracity or levels of "sensitivity"? Or just pretend it didn't happen? If we can make any of these stick, then that lets us off the hook from having to ruffle the status quo in our family, job, faith community, volunteer organization, or social groups - wherever it is abusers swing their machetes. 

I've seen it happen to me and to others in my family, social, and professional circles. 

By letting ourselves off the hook from doing anything about the abusers in our midsts, we can:

1. Sustain the fiction that our group or organization is tight and strong; 
2. Avoid making ourselves a target; 
3. Sidestep the time, money, and energy to remove them from their position and secure a replacement; 
4. Spare ourselves from public embarrassment and scrutiny; and
5. Allow the abusers to continue doing the useful things they do for our group, so we don't have to step up to do them.

Heck, every day, we see our president dump slop onto the heads of anyone who disagrees with him, irrespective of their youth or their abilities to protect themselves from the onslaught emotionally, financially, socially, or professionally. Disgusting stuff. Ugly stuff.

When we turn a blind eye to such abuse, we can tolerate all kinds of awfulness. We find ways to justify our blindness.

Every day, for me, to see the headlines on the president's attack du jour is like watching the plane plow into the World Trade Center over and over and over and over again.

I can intellectualize my experience of such abuse on both the national scale and on the domestic scale, such as what happened on my moving-out day. I can practice detachment. This is useful, up to a point. It's like rubbing sunscreen into my skin: helpful, but some harmful rays still get through.

My spirit flags at times.

Thus was my most recent moving day.

Ferguson: Moving Day

Moving day, October 2018. Missouri.

Relocation #5

And so now I know.

There will always be an unpleasant surprise - or two - on moving day.

It´s just the way it is. The natural order of things, thus no reason to blame oneself.

The goal, then, in the future, is to do what one can to prevent the knowable mishaps and to accept there will be the unknowables.

The two mishaps on yesterday´s moving day were stupid but exasperating ones:

1. The gosh-darn cable would not unscrew from the modem! I´d already packed everything in the car, so no tools. After pulling away precious skin from my finger trying to wrench the cable end loose, I called the Spectrum customer service number, and they told me I could just cut the cable from the wall. Arghh! Where was I to find a knife or scisssors, already packed or loaded! I stomped downstairs, swearing in futile, childish rage to the universe, all three flights of stairs down to the garage, into the depths of my car, and back up three flights of stairs with a knife. I sawed at the cable until it halved. Now I was ready to take it to the Spectrum office. 
2. Which brings me to mishap #2. Google maps is great most of the time, but sometimes it is a spectacular fail. This was one of those sometimes. After circling an area like vulture looking for the road that Google insisted was right there, I again called Spectrum´s customer service. After a little more childish behavior on my part, I finallly settled down and the CSR helped get me to my destination. It was not one of my finer moments. 

Sidebar: This is the same company that entered my first name (a common one, with only one spelling, not only in English, but in a multidude of languages) with two letters interposed AND entered my surname with the name of my street! When I contacted the company with the error, the helpful CSR informed me that I would have to go to a Spectrum office with PROOF of my legal name!!!!! 

Sheesh. Instead, I just lived with the wrong name on my account and paid with a credit card with my real name. They didn´t care. 

Anyway, in due time, I was on my way, with the paper receipt that proved a woman with a misspelled first name and her street name as her surname had properly returned the modem.

All was OK.

El Paso: Last Day

Texas rest area ladies' restroom, Interstate 10, between El Paso and Van Horn. August 2017.

Last day of August, 2017. My last day in El Paso.

My last day was not without drama.

But by the time I took this photo of one of Texas' artful rest area facilities, said drama was behind me.

It included:

1. An unethical, downright crummy, pissant surprise from my landlords;
2. A mostly flat tire that necessitated a call to AAA and a trip to a local auto shop, with my car filled to the gills with all of my worldly goods; and
3. Meeting who would have been my new next-door neighbor - a very interesting academic from Australia - what a  bummer that I wouldn't learn some cool stuff from him! 

Some other last days:

• 2016: Opelousas, Louisiana
• 2014: Lafayette, Louisiana
• 2013: Alamogordo, New Mexico
• 2012: Caucasus Georgia here and here
• 2011: Ethiopia here and here
• 2010: Leaving my rooted home

Louisiana: Departure Day: Don't Do What I Did

Pathetic. Just pathetic.

When I moved out of my Opelousas apartment, I broke all of the rules of efficient, effective, low-stress packing up and leaving.

Well, most of the rules.

Here's what I got right

• As per my lease language, I gave my landlord my 30-day notice of leaving in writing. In this notice, I gave my landlord a time range of two or three hours for when he could inspect my apartment.
• As a CYA in the event an issue cropped up with the return of my security deposit, I took photos of my apartment after I'd emptied and cleaned it, prior to the inspection, including the insides of the oven, refrigerator, tub, etc. (I had also taken photos when I moved in.)
• I sold my bulky stuff a few weeks before move-out day. I priced my stuff in accordance with my priority to sell quickly, out of respect for the time and stress I was willing to invest in the process.
• I delivered various items to second-hand stores in the days before my move. 
• I tried to weigh these variables in deciding what to pack or not: Replacement cost versus amount of space the item takes up in my car.

Here's what I got wrong

Complacency - the enemy of efficiency and effectiveness!

When I sold my beloved - but wildly bulky - chairbed, I had a fairy-tale calculation of how much extra space its absence freed up in my car, with this cascade effect: 

1. I miscalculated how much stuff I could take with me to the next home base;
2. I kept more stuff than I would have otherwise;
3. Didn't give as much thought to careful organization and packing as I might have otherwise;
4. I ended up with more stuff than could fit into available space; and
5. Had to ditch some things at the worst possible time - in the midst of packing my car for departure. 

In my la-la thinking mode in the last couple of weeks, I spent time with last dance and other hurrahs instead of the dull mundanity of packing the little things in advance. Boring tasks such as organizing office supplies and papers and such, corraling them into tidy spaces, ready to be put in their right places into the car. Consequently, I found myself - on the moving day! - of stashing this shit every which place I could because the other thing I did wrong was:

Somehow forget just how long it takes to pack stuff. The process of sorting and packing stacks minutes into quarter-hours into half- hours into hours of tedium. My self-congratulatory glow over selling the big things quickly and early was so bright, it obscured the necessity to knuckle down in the days before the move.

Fortunately, a buddy came over and helped me out a bit, and I sure appreciate that.

Other than that blessing, my move-out day was fraught with frustration, stress, anxiety, and moments of despair. Every tiny bit of it a result of my own poor planning and execution. Damn it.

Once I was on the road, I had to work hard to give myself a break and let it go. Had to remind myself that, hell, I accomplished my mission, not as neatly and expertly as I would have liked, but I accomplished it. Put the damn experience in perspective and enjoy the day on the road.

Just ... don't do what I did.

Rootless Relocation: What I Left With

Here were all my worldly goods when I prepared to pack my car to leave Alamogordo on September 26:

Another view:

The white full-view mirror didn't make it into the car, and a neighbor harvested it for his use.The frame of the white storage drawer unit also didn't make it, but its drawers did. Other casualties included: bucket, broom/dustpan, mop, and plastic storage containers that I used as bowls.

The red item? It's a super fantastic fold-out chair-bed. And it fit into my car! Thank you to R. and M. for giving this to me.

That rectangular folding table propped against the wall - I'm so happy it still fit into my car for my next relo. I bought this for a dollar from friend J. when she moved from Jefferson City to Nashville. To say I bought it is really a sin - let's just say she gave it to me. I mean, really.

That green suitcase is carry-on size and it's been with me to Ethiopia, Caucasus Georgia, Turkey, New Mexico, and now on to Louisiana. The black and orange weekender - has been to all of the above plus Mexico, Chicago, and several road trips.

Goodbye, sweet apartment. A soothing space.
   

 

The future of my stuff

My current plan is to be outside the U.S. in January 2015. Thus, I'm thinking the year in Louisiana will be the year I enjoy my car for the last time, as I will likely sell it instead of storing it like I did when I was in Caucasus Georgia.

There are a couple of other items that I've held on to for various reasons, but I think it's time to let some go in the coming months.