I know, I know! I’ve been gone quite a long time. Long enough I suppose to warrant an explanation. So here it comes. For the past “longer than I care to think about”, I’ve been trying to write a blog post about my move. You know of course, that I have moved. With every good intention, I have sat with my laptop on my knee, albeit while watching one of the many summer reality shows that are currently taking the place of the many fall reality shows soon to come, formulating sentences and even paragraphs so that I could share with you the experience of moving from the perspective of a shallow person. Alas, it has all been to no avail. Now I’m not going to tell you that my other posts have always come easy. That the words flow from my thoughts onto the screen like waves upon the sand. Sometimes they do and other times there’s a bit of a struggle, but nothing like this time. This time has been different. Because even when I thought I had it right, I didn’t. Why, I thought, was it so difficult for me to write a little piece about my move? And then it hit me. Having just gone through the whole thing I realized that there is nothing, and I mean nothing shallow, or funny for that matter, about moving. Absolutely nothing. It’s just one long, excruciating and painful experience. So I’m left with little to say but this.
Moving sucks! Trust me. I don’t use that kind of descriptive language very often. But it’s just as simple as that. The packing, the loading, the throwing out junk, the unloading, the unpacking, the realization that you didn’t throw out enough junk. There’s just not much about it that I can honestly, in all good faith, recommend. And now is not the time to remind me that I have just moved from one of the coldest parts of the country to arguably one of the most beautiful and temperate Islands this side of Hawaii. Let’s put that aside for a moment and focus on the act of moving because that’s really what we are here to talk about.
If you have been reading this blog for some time you will recall my tale about the sale of the house and how we suffered through the cleaning and purging related to that little episode, and then the cleaning and purging that followed as we attempted to rid ourselves of all our extraneous possessions. If you were to reread those posts (as I just did but you won’t) it may even have seemed that our commitment and diligence to the task would have resulted in our being left with only those things that were really important to us and, as such, worth loading onto the moving van. Of course, if that were the case, I certainly wouldn’t be trying to figure out what to do with the stuffed Pooh Bear that is staring up at me right now with it’s big, brown, glassy eyes. Or attempting to balance my evening cup of tea on what used to be a packing box but has now taken on the role of a coffee table since, apparently, while Pooh moved, the coffee tables did not. Explain to me how that happened! Given that I am just this side of a rant, I won’t even go into how, in all of the confusion on the day the van arrived, I mistakenly thought I had left my laptop at the local Starbucks never to be seen again (even in this laid back town there is only so much one can expect of strangers), only to discover that at some earlier point in the day I had decided to put it at the very back of my closet for safekeeping. Or how after spending copious amounts of time and money in preparing to take our cat on her first two day jaunt in the car (did we really need that extra can of “At Ease” pet spray?) she promptly disappeared only to be found several panicked hours later sleeping quite contently inside the box spring of our bed. No, those are events that are simply best forgotten at this point.
Ok, so things have started to settle down and, if we can make up our minds soon, it should only be another ten weeks or so until I will be able to once again place that tea of mine on an actual table. In the meantime, all of this has got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be much simpler if houses were sold “as is”? I mean if all you had to do was move some clothes and maybe a picture or two, life would be so much easier. So what if the couch wasn’t the exact shade of blue you were hoping for? Trust me, you’d get used to it. Or the coffee table was glass instead of walnut? It’s still going to do what a table is supposed to do. Or the dishes were a little chipped? You’re going to chip them eventually anyway. Think of it! No more boxes, or loading and unloading or packing and unpacking or sussing out that elusive piece of furniture that apparently exists only in your own mind’s eye. It just makes sense to me. But then, I might be just a tad more shallow than most of you.
I was reading an article the other day, well not so much “reading” as listening to someone who had read the article tell me about it. I suppose they thought I would be interested because the gist of it was how to live to be 100, which, as you can probably guess, I already know something about. But for those of you who are less familiar with this phenomenon, I suspect that right now you’re thinking there are likely some key factors that contribute to this quite remarkable extension of life. Like eating all the right stuff, exercising regularly, not smoking, and just to be sure, never playing on railroad tracks. You might even think, and you could probably find some research to say so, that a glass of wine or beer a day is the key to unlocking the door to longevity. And it is quite possible that you would be right but before you get too cocky I have to tell you, that in this case, it was none of these. Nope. What my compatriot proceeded to explain to me, despite my protestations because I, like you, am pretty confident that I have this one down pat, was the one thing you must do if you want to live to be 100 (and let me just add here that not all of us do) is easy. You have to be happy. That’s right. It’s as simple as that. Just be happy.
I had a dream. Not that kind of dream. The kind you have when you’re asleep. Actually I’ve had lots of dreams. Not sure why, but it just seems to be one of the things that I do. I suppose lots of people dream but, and this is just something I’ve been told, not everyone remembers their dreams. As a matter of fact, apparently some people never remember their dreams. But I do. And for those of you who do too, I’m guessing that like me, every once in a while you sit through a rerun. I believe they (and by “they” I mean those who spend their time studying this particular phenomenon) call this a “recurring dream”. And the funny thing is, these recurring dreams seem to recur not only in one mind but in many minds. Perhaps it’s that “collective consciousness” thing Dr. Jung goes on about, but for whatever the reason, whenever the topic of recurring dreams comes up in conversation, (and come up it does) dimes to dollars more than one person in the crowd has had the same one.
You’ve heard it before. You’re sitting around, chit chatting with a bunch of friends and before you know it the conversation turns to ghosts. Someone in the group has a story to tell about how their front door mysteriously opens and closes, once a year, at the exact same time as, coincidently, the previous owner “bit the dust”, as people are wont to say. Then there’s the guy who swears up and down that every morning when he comes down for breakfast he discovers that the front burner on the stove is on and there’s a faint smell of burnt toast lingering in the air, and he never eats toast so there has to be ghost in the house. And a hungry one, at that. This conversation continues on for some time, because who doesn’t have a story to tell about a ghost? But sure as the sun rises every morning, you know there’s gonna be one voice in the crowd, one Doubting Thomas who, before too long will emphatically declare “there’s no such thing as ghosts”. And while, in this particular case it’s entirely possible that the validity of this statement is open to debate, especially given all of the evidence you’ve just been privy to, I do believe there are circumstances when those who are so bold as to proclaim “there’s no such thing as” (and you can fill in the blank here) are, and I say this with the utmost respect, entirely wrong. Let me give you an example.
Things happen. Some good, some not so good. But just like the inevitability of death and taxes, every morning when you wake up you gotta know that sometime, somehow during that day, something is going to happen. It may not be something spectacular, or important, remarkable or even memorable. Truth be told, it might be something rather mundane. But come hell or high water, you can bet your bottom dollar that something, anything really, is going to happen during your day. As a shallow person I do my best not to dwell on most things that happen, particularly the “not so good” things. As a matter of fact, this past week I had one of “those” things happen and while I have been known to rant, on occasion complain and more than every once in a while worry, the one thing I tend not to do is whine. Which is why I will refrain from going into the details of that “thing that happened” here. What I will tell you is that it got me thinking. Mostly about the nature of “things” that happen. And here’s what I’ve come up with.
Shallow Be My Name 