Today is Moving Day Part I. And while waiting for the movers (who are now two hours late) to put my worldly belongings in storage until the middle of June when our apartment is finally ready, I started digging through blog archives. I found this gem from four years ago this weekend, a story I hardly remember writing, but one that makes me smile. I can’t say I remember much about the day-to-day of having another family live with us, but I remember Mr. Lucas and his quietus.

There are two things that the Dork Lord and I will never agree on: Red Sox baseball* and bedtime.

Me, I like to be in bed by 10PM. Actually, if I’m going to show up to work on time (who keeps office hours that begin at 7:30AM? We do. It’s inhumane) I NEED to be in bed by 10. I know this makes me an old lady. I know it makes me a bummer. But I just can’t function on six or seven hours of sleep BECAUSE I AM NOT THE BIONIC WOMAN. There are things that go on while I sleep that take time – processes to keep me beautiful and witty and always ready with the ‘your mom’ jokes that make the workplace and our household the epicenters of intelligence that they are. Besides, next to hungry, I think tired is the most torturous of sensations. Tired makes me emotional. It makes me cranky. And, despite popular opinion, I don’t particularly like to be cranky. Because I am not House MD.

The Boy’s typical response to my snooze requirements includes harmless jabs and jokes about granny’s bedtime, even though sometimes I know it genuinely bothers him that I’m yawning on my bar stool at 9:30. So, now I opt to stay home a lot of nights — send him out with his friends so that he may enjoy the majesty of whatever occurs after 10:30 that is so life affirming. I’d make a off-color suggestion about free hand jobs from the bartenders but I’ve seen the bar keep at his favorite watering hole. Shudder.

Last night, though, the Dork Lord employed a new tactic: kidnapping. Early in the evening, we met his friend at a driving range to hit a bucket of balls. Side note:  Though I averaged about six swings per actual contact, when I did hit that ball, it sailed in a very neat, straight path every single time. I am most likely a natural and you will see me on tour next year. End side note. Then there were burgers and beers back at the friend’s house and of course, ohmygodwhydotheyhavetoplaysixtimesaweek, the Mavericks game. That’s when, toward the end of the fourth quarter, my beloved announced,

“It’s going to be a late night.”

Let’s watch the next game! And then LOST! Everyone else in the room (the night nurse and the recently unemployed) was in. Naturally. And then there was me. The wet rag.

“No, it’s not.”

Fortunately, I have a lot of practice being the wet rag. I used to be a Mormon. 

*My friend Lee tookme to Fenway eight years ago and my fate as a fan was sealed. The Boy?Eh, he hates ‘em. He has no reason to hate them (because what,the Texas Rangers are competition? Please) and so I can justlaugh off our difference of opinion. Mostly because I know I am right.

In college, I moved every year. Sometimes more than once. Come spring term, I’d cram all my junk into a few boxes, toss them into the back of someone’s truck and relocate, either to be closer to campus, or to find a better roommate situation (for a while, I had one of those Look at me! I’m amazing! Wait, why are you paying attention to HER when I’M in the room? kind of roommates. She made the scab picking finger licker of the previous semester seem suddenly dreamy by comparison). When I lived in Boston I moved a lot, too. It was the never-ending search for cheaper rent and more space that ended, naturally, in a 280-square-foot, sixteen-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment in New York City. Because that is what we call LOGICAL.

What’s unfathomable to me now is, I didn’t even mind it back then. I actually liked moving. And now, with the movers coming Saturday and my living room a dizzying mess of cardboard and assorted WTF Did I Buy This items, I kind of want to swallow my own tongue.

On Saturday, my mom and I spent the better part of the day cleaning, boxing, and priming walls. Mom did all the bending work (she does not eff around, people. My oven is so clean you could set it to low and keep your baby warm in there. Not that I’m encouraging you to bake your baby – it’s just that hygienic) and I inched my way through the apartment with my hand attached to a paint roller. Now, there are blisters. And parts of my body that do not work. I recognize that this is just what comes with getting old(er), but I swear, if today is the day they come around asking for volunteers to be in a Magnum P.I./MacGyver sandwich and I’m not able to raise my hand, I am going to be SO bent out of shape.

The part of this move I do like is the part of moving I have always liked. All the newness. New spaces to decorate, new closets to over stuff. I’ve also really enjoyed setting up my soon-to-graduate sister with all of my gently used extras. For instance, between the two of us, the Dork Lord and I have upwards of a DOZEN sets of white sheets. And as we’re not running a brothel or making any living room forts (yet. Though, frankly, is there any other reason to have children other than living room forts and lying about Santa Claus?), I figured, why not share the wealth. And what do you know, the whole giving thing is actually really affirming. You know, as in, it makes me feel like my massive credit card debt wasn’t accumulated in vain.  

I’m sorry to bother you, but is that the yellow curry? It smells fantastic.

The Boy and I were sitting down in a booth at a local hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant. And I wanted what she was having. So I asked. The older woman at the next table smiled and nodded.

“It is fantastic! But it’s not the yellow… it’s called ‘Gang Bang’ or something. Though, hmmm…. that doesn’t sound right.”

She was not making light. For the entire exchange, her face remained unchanged, totally placid, as though to say, “Gang bang is a perfectly natural name for a spicy curry dish.” I turned to my menu and quickly shot a raised-eyebrow WTF look at The Dork Lord who mouthed, “Gang bang?” before going back to his list of exotic beer. Giving the menu a one-over, I located the intoxicating smelling dish.

“I think you mean Gang Dang?”

“Yes, that’s it!”

The woman smiled again and went back to her food, and I turned back to our table thinking one, that I was glad I didn’t have to order a gang bang, because seriously, I wasn’t sure I had it in me. And two, old people these days.

When I walked into work on Thursday morning, Liesl sat back at her desk.

“I can see the GLANDS in your neck from HERE.”

She glands as though it were goiter or pulsating alien egg sac. I put a hand to my neck and grimaced.

“I know. I woke up this way. Last night, I couldn’t get off the couch.”

By mid-morning I went to see my BFFs at PrimaCare where the silver-haired doctor with the claymation face told me I had strep. And the flu. I wondered if there was going to be a bonus round. Scarlet Fever? When I told him my throat didn’t actually hurt, that I simply appeared to be farming extraterrestrial life forms, he smiled one of those smiles that said, oh, you poor silly thing.

“It will.” And then he wrote me a mouthful of prescriptions.

And boy howdy, he was right about the hurting. By evening I was a big dopey vicodin mess on the couch (I’d been a big dopey vicodin mess on the floor a few hours earlier in The Great Faint of Oh Nine, an important lesson about painkillers and stairs), while the Boy fetched popsicles and generally looked very sympathetic.

Pestilence and disease sorta killed my weekend – which was meant to be taken up by packing and cleaning my apartment. And instead, even after the throaty business had subsided I was still effing exhausted. I spent most of the last few days either lying down or leaning – on counters, walls, big dogs… really anything that would be still. Pathetic. And moreover, I did not get to go see The Fast and The Furious: The Sexy Reunion like I had intended. Which is the biggest tragedy of all.

There’s no pill for that kind of bitter disappointment.