Montgomery

Home again, home again, jiggety jig…

One thing that I have learned in the 35 years I’ve been moving is that it is never easy, it always sucks, and I will inevitably leave things till the last minute and end up scrambling.

Before I went to England, everything was falling into place and I thought, foolishly, that my perfect place to live would also fall into place just as soon as my foot took its first steps off the plane and back onto American airport-soil. Wrong.

Wrong wrong wrong. I have too many animals. I have animals that, save my cat, are over the weight limit. And do I want to live in an apartment if I could score a house with a fenced yard?

I have lots of people in my corner trying to help. I have lots of websites to go through offering “gated communities” and “tastefully appointed properties.” I’ve sent hundreds of emails and even called a few places on the phone (my family can put their eyeballs back in their heads, I do make cold calls to people I don’t know ON OCCASION). Nothing, save rejections for the above mentioned reasons.

So packing has been on the back burner, with the rationale being this: “Why bother wasting energy to pack when there’s nowhere to go?” That held water until today when I realized that if I follow my original time table I will be moving one week from today.

Not good.

I’m currently taking a break from packing the office. About half of the kitchen is packed. I have a closet and three dressers full of clothes that will be sorted and some discarded because I just don’t need all that stuff. And somehow I am supposed to be ready to head to Greenville EARLY on Wednesday with the dogs and the cat, to leave the cat at my vet to board and hopefully find someone that can watch my dogs (that won’t require me to drive to either Charlotte or Charleston…).

Enter panic, stage right.

For Susan, So She Knows I Have a Backbone…

Irritating Self Important Co-Worker starts talking to one of my deaf co-workers without waiting for me to be turned around to interpret. The following sassy ensued…

Me: I’m sorry, I missed that.
Irritating Self Important Co-Worker: I was talking to HER.
Me: I know that, and I can’t interpret what you said to her if I didn’t HEAR it. What did you say?
Irritating Self Important Co-Worker: (rolls eyes) Right.

She then repeated herself. GAH! Y’all, it’s not a complicated thing. Person A is deaf, Person B is not. Does Person B REALLY think that Person A is just going to magically be able to HEAR because Person B has something to say?

OY.

Tick tock, tick tock, y’all. 2 hours more and my vicarious trauma ends…at least here in Alabama, right? I’m still an interpreter after all…

Where I am now…

Have I been sleeping?
I’ve been so still
Afraid of crumbling
Have I been careless?
Dismissing all the distant rumblings
Take me where I am supposed to be
To comprehend the things that I can’t see

Cause I need to move
I need to wake up
I need to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now

And as a child
I danced like it was 1999
My dreams were wild
The promise of this new world
Would be mine
Now I am throwing off the carelessness of youth
To listen to an inconvenient truth

That I need to move
I need to wake up
I need to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now

I am not an island
I am not alone
I am my intentions
Trapped here in this flesh and bone

Oh I need to move
I need to wake up
I need to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now

I want to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Oh, Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now

-M. Etheridge

She’s Home and So Is My Heart

There was a huge hole in my heart when Profile died. He was such a big part of my life. I wanted to just curl up in my bed and never get up again. But something miraculous happened the first week of March that has given me back my Home and taped up the shattered bits of my heart. Two somethings actually.

Just in time. Thank you Daisy for filling the hole in my pack and my heart that Profile left gaping. I’m sure he would have loved playing with you. And Simon? Well, ta. Just ta.

Yo Toto, when did we move to Kansas??

6:00 am I am awakened to the storm siren going off. To those of you who live or have lived in the western half of our country that’s probably no cause for alarm. For me, who heard them last when a tornado ripped through my town just down the road from my house, it got my attention.

6:01 am My TV turns on (as a back up b/c I frequently ignore the alarm clock) and is already on the weather channel. Huh, they’re talking about Montgomery on the national weather channel. Turn up the volume. Doppler Radar…rotation…take cover in Montgomery County…

6:15 am Have gathered the animals and am in the bedroom, not yet going to the walk in closet because I can’t see the TV from there and they still haven’t said there’s a tornado on the ground.

6:20 am Storm sirens stop just as rain/wind/THUNDER picks up. I hear branches from my pine tree in the front yard smacking my storm windows.

6:21 am Thank GOD for storm windows.

6:35 am Finally see all clear on TV, get up to let the dogs out. Dogs won’t go out. Get in the shower. Hear thunder that rattles the house. Speed up shower.

7:00 am See on local news that storm with rotation has headed for Tuskegee. Thank GOD again that I didn’t have to sit in my walk in closet with five animals. Feed dogs.

7:15 am Sit down with hazelnut hot choc and the internet.

Quote of the Day: “When you’re a meteorologist and you step outside to go to work and it’s 70 degrees at 4am on January 5th, you know it’s going to be an interesting day…”

Where’s Waldo? errr…Nancy…

I’m still here, though I admit I’m finding few things to write about for Brave Lettuce these days. I guess I’m finally seeing the benefits to keeping some bits of my life personal, and learning that not everyone wants to know each time I break a fingernail or how often my Profile takes to spinning like a top in the living room.

I would like to say that in the two months I’ve lived here I’ve settled into life in Montgomery, but that isn’t true. The longer I’m here, the more I long for a life that is settled and permanent…the kind of life that I thought I’d be living when I thought about my future back in the day, when I was in my 20s. I guess no one’s life turns out like they plan it, and everyone has static now and then.

But lest you think that I’m sinking back down off that proverbial plateau again, there are some quite positive things happening in my life. I have a meeting (via telephone) on Friday of this week with Scott and a lawyer, so finally we can get this divorce thing on the docket and moving toward resolution. I don’t quite know what to think about it really. I’m not sad, as in I’d like to remain married to Scott, I’m sort of in disbelief I suppose. I’m having some of the same feelings as before when we first decided on divorce…this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me and I’m going to be a divorced woman and all that. But really…it’s almost more unreal because it doesn’t seem necessary. Scott and I have lived apart far longer than the mere year we’ve physically lived apart, so in a way it feels as though we’re already over and done with everything. I don’t know…I suppose we’ll see what happens on Friday.

The other good thing is that I’ve gained a very wonderful friend. Although I haven’t yet met him in person, he comes very highly recommended by a dear friend of mine and from his emails and our phone calls she was spot on in her description. The only snag is that he lives around 3,000 miles away from me in the UK…but that hardly matters these days, does it? The world is a much smaller place than it used to be, and all I really care about is how I am currently sporting a silly grin and can’t seem to speak about him without my face lighting up like a Christmas tree (or so I’m told). He’s a charming, wonderful, amazing man, and he thinks that I’m special as well. We’ll see…I’m a guarded hopeful at this point.

Off to continue cleaning the house and finishing laundry. “Mah Sistahs” are coming to visit this coming Friday and I can’t wait. The world is a smaller place, to be sure, but sometimes even the gap between me and them in NC or me and my family in GA seems insurmountable. I am trying to learn some patience and acceptance. Trying. We’ll see how that works out…

I think the score is tied.

Must be the end of an inning…three up and three down…or is that a sergeant?

Okay, maybe I’m the only one that saw Good Morning, Vietnam?

Anyway…Moving to Montgomery has been a series of ups and downs, as are all moves I’m sure…but I wish that we could have several ups in a row before another down hits! Lately I have come to understand that if something goes right for me here it means without fail something is going to go wrong. Some examples, for those of you that might have insomnia or just be horribly bored at the moment…

I got here on time to get my keys the day I moved in and got my water turned on literally at the eleventh hour counterbalanced with my air conditioner not working and the cable techs not being able to get my internet turned on.

I got the air conditioner fixed and had cold air counterbalanced with the realty company not telling me that I had a gas water heater resulting in almost a week of cold showers.

I got the gas company to come out so I could have hot showers counterbalanced with the cable company’s inability to just get the right person on the phone to turn on my internet (literally, that’s what the VERY apologetic tech told me when he got the thing up and running!!) for TWO WEEKS.

And now, now that I have cable and internet and hot water and cold AC and even a TiVo…my stove, which apparently is hard-wired into the wall rather than connects using a plug/outlet, was NOT connected when it was delivered. There is no plug. There is no outlet. There are some very complex directions concering BARE WIRES and lots of tools. Um…no thanks.

Thank goodness for my microwave.

I’m taking a very special trip this weekend, and I hope that will cheer me up. Pictures WILL be forthcoming for sure. So far I’m quite lonely most of the time and am afraid that I’m a bit of a downer when I’m with the few people I know.

Maybe I just need a Strongbow…or a trip back to London…or a break. Or need it to be November so that my Sistahs will be coming to visit me…or March for Sandy Paws…or just a break. We’ll see how I feel after this weekend.