(sunrise views from our new place) We moved.
Hauled ass and sundry across the desert and have finally settled in to our lovely new oasisy home. The last couple of months has been filled with the usual montage of packing, cursing the amount of stuff we own, packing some more, filling trucks, un-loading trucks, cursing again our addiction to material possessions and finally deciding that no, we're not quite evolved enough to go live like the monkeys do...though the never ending diet of bananas sounds pretty sweet...maybe zoo monkeys?
No, damn it, I like my stuff and have since made kissy face amends with the furniture I offended when hauling it downstairs, into a truck, out of a truck, into a house, muttering words the whole time my own Mother doesn't want to admit she taught me.
Me and the furniture are back in the honeymoon phase of co-existence, happily pushing and nudging and placing with care. I've been delighting in the feeling of
*shopping* amongst one's own possessions. Cackling at the rebelliousness that has me putting previously designated bedroom stuff in the living room, bathroom stuff in living room, craft room stuff in the..hey....now I see how come the living room feels so....cozy... Opened the front door, dumped all our belongings, added some decorative flowers and called it home sweet home...
Some how the monumentous and at times seemingly never ending mountain of tasks involved with moving are now in the past. Fogged over by the protective haze the brain washes over anything that involves too much sweating, too much fast food and what seems like a million Uhaul rentals. Great company by the by, I'm not knocking Uhaul, I just don't mind if it's a few zillion years before we have to chummy up with another of their trucks.
We've moved before. We're not novices when it comes to re-locating house and home.... But I've learned something this time around. Present self could kick past self's ass sideways and back with the awesomeness that is now self's packing skills. Actually, make that skillz, I earned it.
Proof? Yikes, you require proof?
How about.....using 95% of our clothing as packing material. We're not sporting Armani or
*insert fashionable clothing name brand here* around here so wrapping t-shirts and jeans and pajamas around our breakables for padding was okie dokie by us
AND the clothes. Plates became intimately acquainted with my skirts, electronics equipment met a whole host of colorful socks (think of them like giant soft packing peanuts) and the decorative bits and bobs that adorned our walls snuggled up just fine between my husband's shirts.
There were times as I rolled our bathroom towels around picture frames to stuff into boxes that I almost staggered under the weight of my own brilliance...I tell ya...
But there was more.
No dead space was left dead. I brought the dead spaces in
evvvvvvvvvverything to life... I made Dr.Frankenstein look like a corpse reviving dabbler. Our washer and dryer for example... I filled, to the point of questionable sanity and possible broken backs, with our stuff, duct taping the doors shut to assure nothing fell out. My clay oven I filled with craft supplies.
The microwave was filled with heating pads and whatever clothes escaped the breakables wrapping extravaganza.
The mini fridge I once dubbed Clara Belle held an odd assortment of cutting boards and a decorative container full of fire starting wood and pinecones my Mom once sent us but I couldn't bear to burn because the wood smelled too good.
Every teeny tiny space in our dresser drawers was filled with any and all assorted items I gathered from our living spaces and tucked between unmentionables and mentionables alike.
I was a dead space sniffing out queen. I took a dark and deliciously morbid delight into cramming items together and inside one another that had never been crammed together before. My art supplies storage dresser cringes when I come near it now.
Sometimes, for old time moving's sake, you know to relive those foggy, hazy days of a couple months ago, I jam some books and sneakers in the washing machine and stare at the miracle of space saving once again.
So we left one state and have arrived and un-packed in another. Trading the higher rents of Southern California for the lower and lovelier ones of Arizona.
I'm a home favorite-ister. I love where ever we are the most.
All those dead spaces I mentioned, brought to life as convenient and space maximizing storage transport here? They took a little longer to un-pack than you'd guess...turns out I can't stalk gorgeous wild quail, jack rabbits, turkey buzzards, chipmunks, pigeons and sunsets
AND un-pack at the same time.
I've become a jack-in-the box woman. Popping out the front door, the back door, the front door again. Jamming my face between the blinds in every room of the house so often I'm surprised they haven't already got permanently Tracey face sized kinks in them. The windows are smeared from my nose kisses as I drool over sunset after sunset after gorgeous mind blowing, smog clear sunset.
I've taken a million photos already.
I don't care who needs or even wants to see a million photos of acres of blue sky, puffy clouds, mountain ranges, desert plants that tickle my fancy, rocks and roads and critters alike. It's an obsession, the sweet reward after the grunt work, the sweaty task of moving. It's the imprinting of a new place on my brain. Soaking sunsets and sunrises into my soul.
Damn, gone poetic.
I'll stop before things start rhyming...
I might go see if my clay oven fits in our dryer now...cause that would be cool.
(Susie cat, Algar's nemesis stares with longing and hunger at the elf who got away...again....)
