Moving Days

I keep saying that helping anyone move is on my reverse bucket list – something I’ll never do again before I die. And then there keeps being one more time. This time I think it’s really it. My kid, who has been stuck with us since graduating just before the pandemic started, got a job in their field and is moving out, and even has the luxury of moving out over a period of time, instead of over one panicked weekend, so that part is great. There were some items that just required a van to move properly (we do not wish to contribute to the phenomenon of Highway Mattress Disasters), so I said great: I will rent the van, and you kids can do all the work, I’ll just drive. And that worked out just fine, but then of course I started lifting things and carrying things. And of course my kid, like all kids in my experience, is moving to the third floor.

But it was fine. My knees have had a lifelong tendency to twinge, and my memory of the last move, getting them out of Worcester on a cold December day when my knees were not cooperating (with the help of a passel of frat brothers, mercifully) and then having to make a panicked overnight run to avoid threatened highway closures (a ban on commercial traffic, to be precise) for a storm that never came, may have colored my feelings about this little move.

Moving is not undisruptive on a house, especially a small house, and while all this is going on it seems beyond ridiculous to try to put up Christmas decorations or anything of the like, because we simply do not have room for a tree at the moment. Tempting to go with the approach we pioneered when we first moved here of putting the tree on the porch (something a neighbor has since adopted), but we’ll see. Our newish neighbor, directly adjacent, put up lights on her porch, so we’re feeling a little bit shamed; lights at least may be a necessity.

Despite the extensive driving and moving of yesterday (the kid is moving about 40 minutes away, and the U-Haul location is in yet a third location), I decided I was doing open mic last night. I’m at the point where I feel like reps matter more than anything else, and so despite not really knowing what I was going to perform and having fairly low energy for singing, I grabbed a sheaf of likely lead sheets and ran over to Chaplin’s, where despite my exhaustion, it went fairly well. Had to change my singing register partway through a chestnut I’ve sung hundreds of times, and that worked out just fine. Then to challenge myself I did a song that I basically learned yesterday, in amongst the moving (I do not even remember how I fit it in, but I know I printed out the lead sheet on Saturday night as I was going to bed). And it went just fine. And because I get three songs there, I closed with a holiday lament, “Christmas Is Interesting” by Jonathan Coulton, which is my new favorite Christmas song to perform.

Good god is there a lot to do this week . . . better get to it.