spinning through Monday, Tuesday

So many boxes to pack! Dust everywhere.

Why those deep sighs? You are picking up a habit of mine. I sigh all the time now.
It's the dust. Can't get enough clean air into my lungs. I feel I'm back to smoking three packs a day.

Working frantically to get as much done before morning movers come. These will be the Madison to Chicago movers. Local guys will come Thursday to help me fix some broken pieces of furniture and shift stuff over to the loft, still others will come Friday to move hundreds (it seems) of boxes into storage. At the same time that a garage sale will be (if I did this right) in progress.

I sent myself the lecture text to work on for Tuesday's classes. What a relief to get the mind focused on textbook problems of domestic relations law!

Most every good restaurant is closed for Labor Day.
Magnus? Harvest?
All closed. Delmonico's?
Never been there. [...] Oh, nice! Candles, they need candles and then it will be perfect.

I take photos. At home, I have lost the cord to the computer. No photos can appear here without the cord. The missing cord is driving me nuts. How could I misplace a cord? I am way too anxious over that cord. I think about it nonstop.

Beef Wellington. When was the last time we ordered Beef Wellington?
That's easy: September 3rd, 1977.

Twenty-eight years ago: a small group, seated around a long table in a wonderful French restaurant in Chicago (it has long gone out of business, but it was sweet). Beef Wellington and champagne. People ate beef without reservation then. No one thought to provide a vegetarian alternative. No one was a vegetarian and if they were, it would be regarded weird enough that you did not have to accommodate it.

At the loft now:

So nice, it is so nice here! Add the striped armchair! You'll love having it in this spot.
Yes, okay, I'll do that.

At home, evening rolls into night rolls into morning. Boxes, dust. Keeping order, making sure everything is marked well. So complicated: Chicago, loft, storage, garage sale, Goodwill. Separate piles, diverging destinations. I need to leave for class. Or, to take the car to the loft from where I'll walk to class. When I come back late in the afternoon, the house will still have debris, many boxes, dust, and a chunk of furniture, but it will be, for all intents and purposes, empty.

Dazed days

Strip the years of days where sickness, death and other forms of human tragedy made their way into our lives, take stock of what remains and pick the day, okay two days that you’d like to reward with the label of the hardest to get through and I’ll give you today and tomorrow

(Forgive me, but aren't you indulging yourself here with heavy doses of unnecessary drama?
Nope.)

For months I knew they were coming – the last day within, and the first day without.

Each morning I had been taking apart bits and pieces of the structure we created for ourselves for decades (house and not house related) and now I am left with just the core. And there is no pulling back – the core has to be dismantled.

(It takes more than a day to dismantle a core. You've been chipping away at it for years.
Thanks, you're too kind.)

There are people who have done this under similar circumstances and lived to tell stories, punctuating memories with a smile even. All I can say is that they are either tougher, angrier, or more indifferent than I am.

There are times when my grittiness pushes me forward with a steady pace while others around me topple. I am used to facing change, to switching gears, I am used to starting from the beginning, scrambling to find alternatives when current realities are unpalatable.

(I know, I know! Hearty Polish Peasant Stock!
Did I ever mention the Polish peasant from the village where I lived? You know, the one who started each morning with a pint of vodka, wound up in the ditch by noon and had to be force-fed because he seemed not capable of getting it enough together even to put food in his mouth? Just thought I'd mention how gloriously diversified that stock of peasants really is.)

But I am not used to being the one who has to take apart the final pieces of a life-long project and waking up the next day to find only a pile of debris, all semblance of the structure gone. Everything in a state of disarray.

So, hello Monday, hello Tuesday. I knew you’d get here soon enough. Puffy eyes complementing Slavic puffy cheeks, torn jeans, raggy t-shirt -- I feel like I ought to post a picture here, except there may be new students reading Ocean. One doesn't want to give the appearance of being too discombobulated at the beginning of the semester.

Dancing the night away

Blogger Ang slaps down the “one right person” myth in her post here.

As well she should. But I do want to put in a plug for one right frame of mind. Because really, relationships take off on their own momentum. Someone asks you to dance and you are in the mood for a tango lesson and you respond. You swell the first person with hope, elevating him or her to a higher level of infatuation and this back and forth propels each of you, in turn, to places others had never gone with you. You both want to be excited and are looking for signs that the other is as well and the validation of your feverish hope pushes you right into an ocean of good feeling.

All that is perhaps obvious. What is deserving of more thought is why relationships – those very same ones that hit new heights – why they falter and ultimately fail.

On the top of the list I have to place intentional or unintentional inattentiveness. It is impossible to sustain a tango if someone has stopped dancing, or is distracted and steps on your toes again and again. Imagine this:

Hey, you’re stepping on my toes!
huh? No I’m not. Quit complaining.
I’m only pointing out that blood is oozing from my pinky toe.
Hope it feels better soon!
Okay, I need to rest now. My toes can’t take it anymore.
Jesus, have I been stepping on your toes? I’m sorry! I’ve been trying to distract myself from the fact that your fingernails are digging into my skin. Hey, where are you anyway? Are you there? No? Hey!

It could be that the distracted one never intended to drift off. Maybe one person got stuck in a routinized set of steps and stopped paying attention, while the other wanted to add new configurations. But most likely, one of the dancers got lazy.

The hell with all this work! I’d rather read comic books. Leave me alone already!

Only they did not understand that being left alone would ultimately lead them to really be left alone.

Distraction, self-absorption, relational laziness – they are the killers of tango, or of any other dance. You go ask the ones who really are well into these movements: don’t they demand of themselves a higher concentration? Hard work, isn't it?

It is, indeed, impossible to sustain a dance if someone is not in step. (Love may endure, but it becomes a vacuous emotion without a base.) And once a dance is reversed, once the music starts slowing down, gradually the dancers feed off of each others’ apathy and distraction (in the same way that they once fed off of each others’ enthusiasm) until someone finally takes the bold (tired) step and says – okay, enough, we’re not dancing anymore, I’m ready to call it a night.

Can they pick themselves up and start dancing again? The cruel answer, I think, is this: most likely they can not. Because it is even harder the second time and here you're talking about people who didn't even have the energy to give it even a first successful go-round.

Hope, that essential ingredient, requires a suspension of fear. It once allowed you plunge ahead, even make a fool of yourself, because you believed in and more often than not, you did experience a completely gratifying response. How can you plunge anew if you now know better? If you know that this dance had an end, that you suffered disengagement? What devilish force would lead you to let go of your fears and anxieties all over again?

The biggest optimists, believers in fantastic relationships (I include myself here) ultimately become the world’s biggest pessimists when faced with the question of another dance. Prove me wrong, world, go ahead, prove me wrong!

colors

Red, the color of anger, passion, fear, heat. Blue, the color of sadness, vastness, peace, ice.

Which is your inclination? Which color flashes before you when you’re barraged with provocative actions and statements?

Red hot lover, blue velvet; spicy red tomatoes, mellow blueberries. Which one?


Madison Farmers' Market, September 3rd



Madison Farmers' Market, September 3rd

Someone asked me recently why the events of my recent weeks have not left me feeling angry. Why should they? I can feel anger at politicians and decision makers who affect the lives of others, but what grave harm has befallen me?

Everyone tries with their available resources to make a go of it. People around me are well-intentioned good souls who sometimes don’t quite connect the dots and so the result becomes strangely distorted.

It produces no anger in me at all. Just sadness that this is the way life has to play itself out, that in wanting goodness we so often fail at getting near it. So, blue. My color remains Ocean blue -- the color of sadness, peace, vast spaces.

it was twenty-eight years ago today

Twenty-eight years ago today I got married. It was a shockingly brief courtship. You might say I am a person who has sudden realizations about people and I realized within a handful of days that the person I had just one or two dates with should be my husband. I told him by the end of the week that we should get an apartment together asap. He took it in stride, hesitated not at all and by the end of the day we were engaged.

Oh, what a marriage! The love of my life, the friend I so needed.

We traveled everywhere together and I mean that in the broadest sense. He went along on my wild rides to distant places until the internal brakes set him to remain more and more focused on meeting family needs.

I learned most everything about adult life with him by my side. I went from being a twenty-three year old ninny* to a fifty-two year old ninny and not a day passed where I did not measure something about my life with him in my mind’s eye to guide me to a better (or at least different!) resolution.

His address is in Chicago now and mine is in Madison, but we are connected forever in the most profound way. I am as sure today as I was twenty-eight years ago that I am destined always to be his friend and ally and that our care and concern for each other will endure, transcending daily issues and worthless petty details of daily life.

To you, ILYAFA, from me.

* a student nickname, acquired during a not too sober card game

Warning: …”with the abandonment of a dervish”

I am entering a spin of all spins as the next week promises a rapid fire movement through classes, as well as the official move into my new loft. I am not accountable for the type of posts that will follow. They will not be sane because the week will not be sane.

And perhaps I should include last night in this period of insanity because truly, I have only the haziest of ideas about it, or, for that matter, about the entire day.
I do want to issue several thank yous:

First, to the kind stranger who paid for my dinner at the Hot Tomatoes – thank you. I am sorry I talked without making sense, truly I am. I was spinning even before a single pink drink crossed my path. Exceptional circumstances, I promise!



dinner at New Haven's Hot Tomatoes


Second, to Tonya who told me categorically that I should not feel responsible for getting the house packed for the big move/storage bonanza next week. She advised me to find packers if I am in the position of having not enough packing help. Valid. Absolutely correct. A load has been lifted. Expensive? Perhaps, but what can you do: it is indeed inconceivable that I could manage packing thirty years’ worth of stuff on my own in three days.

Third, to the passenger who sat next to me this morning on the 6am flight, for not complaining about my bedraggled state. I am not positive that I have perfect recall of the events of last evening but I do know that one of the many things that slipped my mind was the setting of an alarm clock. Or finding a bed to sleep in. No, no, I was not in the gutter! Just not exactly set for a night of good repose.

Fourth, to my new landlord for promising to promptly take care of the falling beam slivers, brick dust and tar flecks. It is a relief that I can count on them not winding up in my soup bowl the day I cook my first pot of soup at the loft.

Fifth, to all good people who indeed are such good people – thanks for all your good words and kind thoughts.

(from New England, unfortunately) it pays to carry around a spare set of underwear.

Wouldn’t you take me on board your plane, even if it was over-booked and I was, through a tremendous set of errors (whose my mistakes? – mostly my own) not on the list of passengers scheduled to take off?

Of course you would! I travel light, I did not eat lunch, I am a safe bet.

So why am I sitting at the world’s smallest airport thinking that the pilot will issue a big fat no any minute and my planned return to Madison tonight will not happen? Why do I think that?

Because they’re sensing that I am a pushover and if it’s me or some needy needy passenger, I’ll probably not make a fuss, because I hate fusses and I’ll surrender and not fight and go back to town with the tail down and tears swelling and there you have it – a nice beginning to the month, don’t you think?

LATER: Bingo! My predictions were right. I first got put on the flight, then dragged off out of my rear seat, like some kind of high-risk suspect or at the very least someone caught stashing drugs in her suitcase.

And I didn’t even get reimbursed for my cab fare.

Ah, Polish grit! One needs to regroup and consider the options.

First step: go back to Starbucks and blog your troubles right onto the screen.

Second step: go for a walk to get that caffeine out of your system.

Third step: find a daughter and beg for floor space. Or something.

Fourth step: there’s always crying over spilt beer, especially since this situation begs for beers, to be drunk alone in huge amounts. (Can no longer justify Cosmos given the nice way dollars are just flying from my pocket today.)

(from New England) fresh and honest

September 1st. Moving on to new places, new ways of doing things.

I left Cambridge this morning. My image of Boston remains that of a city under construction. Oh sure, there’s this, at the border of the North End:




But even more so, I see it as a city that remains weirdly symbolic for me of changes in my attitude toward my surroundings (see post below), a city that forces me to examine my own behaviors as a result. It’s odd how cities can do that – how they can be places where you reach some new understanding of how you are as a person. Some people hit high peaks in the Rockies, or even better – the Himalayan Mountains, hoping against hope to get to some greater level of self-awareness. Me, I walk along Newbury Street and hit a gallery and there you have it – I am ready to make all necessary adjustments.

Or maybe it’s being around Cambridge that drives one to sift and sort constantly, repeatedly, until one gets it right (or at least closer to some honest rendition of your given reality). It’s a town that takes itself seriously. Step aside, New Haven, this is Cambridge – it asserts in its bullish ways. We are brainy, we are edgy, we are demanding!


(Harvard Square)

Ah, New Haven. My work in Cambridge is complete. My Boston interlude is behind me, I am moving forward. Hi New Haven! I’ve missed you.

(from the East Coast) please come to Boston

In the course of my New York childhood, my parents never took me to Boston. They were crazy about roadtrips and we took many, across the country, in a Chevy with vinyl seats, often during the hottest days of summer.

But no Boston.

My first trip here was when I was a nanny to a New York family at the end of my college days. The family decided on a week-end in Boston. My charge, being totally into her nanny, was excited the entire drive up. We were given our own room at the Ritz-Carleton, overlooking the Public Gardens. Her mom, though, always wanting me to branch out and meet real American kids my own age, suggested that they take their little one to their room and I go visit (and stay with) my charge’s older sister who was living in Sommerville.

My charge sobbed long and hard in deep protest. I was torn – should I please my employer, the mom, or please the little girl? I chose the former. It was the first time that I recall having deliberately disappointed a little child.

My second trip to Boston came when I just graduated from college and my friend, also a recent graduate, moved into her own apartment in the North End. She made me a dinner of chicken and peach halves. I remember nothing else about the visit.

My third and all subsequent trips came when I was already a mother, with children either with me or waiting for me. Most often we’d stay in Cambridge and take the Red Line into town, venturing out on long walks through parks, along twisty streets, trying to understand the heart of the city as best as we could in the few days we would give it during any single visit.

So today I returned to Boston proper. It was a trip that was destined to pull things together for me. Not surprisingly, I started with the North End, the Ritz being just one of those sad memories that’s best forgotten (so I told myself).

To me, New York’s Little Italy loses big time to Boston’s North End. It’s understandable. The exodus hasn’t happened here and you see evidence aplenty of the old community that my college friend said frowned on outsiders as it sought to protect its own.

The streets looked vaguely familiar, though honestly, I was most drawn to the foods and the cafés.


marzipan



lemon and chocolate cream filled



the best cappuccino this side of the ocean

I could have spent more hours there, but I was on a mission. I wanted that Boston heart to finally come forward and make itself evident. And so I walked – down the hill, through the Public Gardens, taking it all in, as the rain doused the vast green spaces and people took shelter anywhere they could.


ducklings and others



a child with hope, and a bird


I ended up on a commercial street and I walked into a gallery. With paintings. I was interested.
I had done a lot of picture hanging this past week and I have even more ahead of me. Picture hanging is sort of symbolic. It’s the last thing you do when you move into a new place.

So too, this gallery was a kind of ending. Literally – it came at the end of my walk, on this last day of August. And figuratively, as I thought there about the way I had disappointed people, ever since that first trip to Boston and all the way through to now, and how often that happens in spite of our best intentions.

(from the East Coast) gotta get on board now, oh yeah!

You’re done with the nuts and blots of the New Haven move-in. You’ve got your return ticket home, but it’s not for a couple of days yet. What do you do? Get on that Metro Line and head south to NY, or on the Amtrak line and head north to Providence or Boston. There are trains. They'll take you places. Yesss!

Don’t know anyone in Providence. Do know someone who is currently in dire straights in Boston –moving in and overwhelmed. So easy to hop on a train and do a spin up to where the seafood is legal.


at dinner: all seafood, all legal

I am setting up a company upon my return to Madison: Moving Madness. CEO/CFO/CeverythingO NLC. You yelp, I help.

The thing about paying attention to others and their moving issues is that it takes the mind off of one’s own. So that if I can boss around another with instructions on where to pound nails for the various wall hanging projects, then I do not have to remember that I have INSURMOUNTABLE picture hanging issues awaiting me back in Madison [as in: how do you even begin to mount pictures on a thirty foot wall? In steps? Gradations? Several layers? One layer? How?].

Okay, yesterday I was giving a critical assessment of my little one’s living space. Today was all about the Cambridge acclimatization of another. Tomorrow? Tomorrow I say ah, you’re all doing well in your new places. They are fantastically beautiful. You did a splendid job! My plan is to now head out and do some serious town-browsing. I've missed that.

(from the East Coast) when the “to do” list is so long that it doesn’t fit on a single page...

What then? Get up early and get to it.

I worked my tail off yesterday. No, really, we both did. On a hot, steamy (yes steamy, damn it, as in full of steam and humidity) day, we built, carried, purchased, shuffled and generally did everything necessary to bring this move-in project to a completion.

And it’s almost done. So much so, that I am about to retreat and let her finish it on her own. She (my little one) has already basically taken ownership of the project. Independence is a good thing.

HOWEVER:

On the road to success there are many tripping (if not tipping) points.

I’ll give just one example.

Those beautiful Matisse prints that I had agreed to ship to New Haven, why did they have to come wrapped in one thousand Styrofoam bubbles? Why, when I opened the box, did they all have to spill out on the sidewalk and street, leaving me vulnerable and likely to be arrested for defacing public spaces?

The village green was sprinkled with a fine layer of Styrofoam snow and I was left with a choice of either staying behind and waging a futile war with the dancing debris, or running in the other direction, with the prints carried high over my head like some kind of a sail of a thief who couldn’t quite handle the mast lines.

BUT THEN:

At some point, the two of us threw up our hands and said let’s Roomba!




You had to be there. Roomba is arguably New Haven’s best eatery (this in a town of dozens of fine eateries). It’s special: sleek, casual (no tablecloths, simple settings) and totally creative Latin cuisine.

Even though Roomba doesn’t require it, people treat going there as a big culinary deal. They take care with their appearance.

My little one and I went from unpacking boxes and building furniture to wiping grease and dirt as best we could so that we could present ourselves in this place of all places without causing a stir.

The food – ahhh the food. I’d never been there before. Somehow I saw it as belonging to the category of places you go to when you have both a birthday, an anniversary and a letter announcing your biggest promotion ever, all coming together on the same day. So it is fitting that we went there on the day when we simply needed a break from building a living space for the year.

talapia with the works

(from the East Coast) reflections

I’m typing at the desk in the hotel room and, as is often the case in these places, I am staring right into a large mirror, positioned directly in front of me.

I look up and I see waxed eyebrows (first waxing: March 05) and a toned and moisturized face (first concerted effort to look after it: August 05). Plus a few other interesting changes that I wont mention here.

As of last night, I am caught up with the New Yorkers. (First subscription to the New Yorker: August 74; first time caught up with the New Yorkers: August 05.) True, I have mounting pressures back home – a move, the beginning of a new semester, important personal issues to resolve – yet I could allow myself an evening of reading New Yorkers.

I am wondering why suddenly I am alerted to the pleasure of reading late and moisturizing early. Why it never struck me that this was a possibility, that indeed, many around me wax, moisturize, read New Yorkers, do pedicures and manicures (I have never had either), go for massages, listen to lectures on esoteric topics.

I had a vague idea that I should take care of my skin and I could read endless stories in magazines, but (apart from work and family obligations that everyone, of course, also has to worry about – some to a far greater extent than I) I was so busy chasing down projects and conniving how next to get the family over to Europe, that this other stuff just passed me by.

Small indulgence of self. It still seems sinful somehow, be it of mind or body. I remember being shocked when my man Jason told me five years ago that 87% of women my age color their hair. (He’s a persuasive fellow and so I broke down under his steady gaze). Really?

I had wondered if my inattentiveness here was the result of my being raised in post-war Poland. I don’t think so though. I am sure that every one of my women friends back in Warsaw moisturizes twice as much and as often as my friends here. People in Poland worry about their skin. And they read magazines (of the literary-cultural-political type) obsessively.

It’s me. I’m diffused and dilettantish and focused on a hundred different things in any given hour. If I indulge anything, it’s my inability to sit still. Taking care of skin and catching up on your subscriptions requires one to sit still.

It’s a wonder that I keep a blog – arguably the greatest of self-indulgences. Of course, blog birth: January 04. A recent addition to my daily routines. Right up there with very soft skin. God, does my skin look and feel soft and toned!

(from the East Coast) compensation

In the course of one of the many ascents of this moving project, I stopped to catch my breath. Looking out the stairwell window, I was reminded that there is a distinct beauty to this place.



At dusk, a table outside offered still another reminder that New Haven is indeed a cosmopolitan town.

(from the East Coast) notes and observations

Two college friends run into each other after a summer away: each on his and her cell phone, they don’t pause in their respective conversations. They embrace with their free arm, give wide grins, mouth “how have you been?” then “fine,” all the while continuing their cell chats, point apologetically to their phones, wave and move on.

~~~~~

Conversation in cosmetics store:
I only need body lotion… forgot mine at home…
Ah. Grapefruit – go with the grapefruit one. But wait until you see what it does to your skin if you put it on after exfoliating.
I love all those products, but I always forget to use them. They wind up drying out in their dust-covered containers.
Well, at least for your face: exfoliate, tone, seal. Three steps. Surely you take them?
No, not really…
Here, let me show you (pretending the hand is just like a face, she begins to exfoliate, then tone then seal). Where are you from, btw?
Wisconsin. I’m supposed to do this how often?
Three times a week. Daily, you just use your cleanser, right?
I don’t really use a cleanser...
What?? How do you clean your face?
With water. [Guilt and panic set in as imagination conjures up weeks, nay months of accumulated environmental pollutants.]
Oh! You are so cute! With water! That’s so charming!
You think I should use special cleanser, don’t you?
(Two women in store nod heads vigorously.)
You know, one’s skin changes over the years. I prefer being happy with those changes than throwing products at them.
You color your hair, don't you?
My man Jason simply brings it to its natural shade and pristine glow, sort of what it was like at its peak -- at age 6.
(no comment necessary)
Okay, okay, tonight: after I finish lifting a couple more boxes up and down flights of stairs, I'll exfoliate, tone and seal already.
(smiles all around)

~~~~~

At Staples: Three rolls of carpet. We need three rolls. Can we borrow the cart to wheel them to their destination? We do not have a car.
Yes, leave a photo ID.
You know, we could use this cart for the rest of the day to move around other things.
How will it look to push around a Staples cart all over New Haven? It will look like we stole it. (weigh usefulness of cart against dorkiness of using it all day)
Okay, back it goes.

~~~~~

This year’s look: sexiness continues to follow a downward direction as exposed lower torsos still catch the eye.

~~~~~


New haven, CT

(from the East coast) movin’ on up

(or: how to help a little one move into her college space given that I do not have the Arms of Arnold nor the stamina of a camel; I do have one thing though: HPPS* and mule-like stubborness, driving me to Get Things Done)

Four flights up, recover stored boxes, four flights down, three different flights up, place boxes in room.

Four flights up, recover stored boxes, four flights down, three different flights up, place boxes in room.

My hands are killing me. Not my arms, not my bicycled legs. My hands cannot hold another heavy box and clumsily, awkwardly, help lift it up another flight of stairs.

Four flights up, recover stored boxes, four flights down, three different flights up, place boxes in room.

A quick run to Ikea. Nearby, but not walking distance. Yet another chatty cabbie. I PAY for good cheer. They're rakin' it in from me today.

A lamp, two lamps. [I wonder if they have a shower curtain I could take back home with me to Madison? Seriously, does anyone know where I can get an interesting shower curtain back home? Don’t say Linens ‘n Things. Not interesting. Wait, we're takin' about a different move. Back to this one:]

Four flights up, recover stored boxes, four flights down, three different flights up, place boxes in room.

We need to stop. Hi, Dean of College. How come this year’s reception is for class of ’09 parents only? Aren’t class of ’07 parent(s) good enough? I could have used those catered snacks. I haven’t eaten since yesterday, having declined an invitation to eat pizza and drink wine at 10:30 am.

Four flights up, recover stored boxes, four flights down, three different flights up, place boxes in room.

Oh thank you, storage area for closing at 10! Thank you so much.

We are ahead of schedule (when in the last three months have you heard me say that?) We are tired but happy (ditto). We make faces in the mirror across from our table at Cosi, order salads and toast marshmallows and graham crackers over a little burner. Heavy work, light heart.
* you can't be an Ocean reader and not know this: Hearty Polish Peasant Stock

(from the East Coast) oh hi! oh hi! oh.

…or, more accurately, waiting to get there. In Cincinnati. At an airport that feels colder than Poland on a mid-January morning (the type of morning without much sunlight and with a prickly drizzle of ice falling on your nose, adding to the discomfort).

This is the first time I am flying into New Haven (not there yet!) as it is the first year that Delta decided to branch out and include Connecticut on its East Coast circuit. Yay Delta. All previous trips have been via New York or Hartford.

I cannot emphasize how On The Map it makes me feel, with both Madison (my home) and New Haven (the most frequently visited by me destination) linked in this way.

I am traveling with one of a very small handful of people who are, for me, the easiest to move around with – people who are ready to find pleasure in everything, including a sign that reads “Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky airport,” and who allow me to lean my head on their shoulder when I attempt to take a nap. Maybe these are not your criteria, but they most certainly are mine. Taking the arm in camaraderie and affection is also up there, but it is not as important as the first two items listed herein. Besides, this little one obliges me with the arm as well.

Perhaps I ought to work on my reputation though. At the airport, she coaxes me to take her to Moe’s – a pub where you can pretend that the pizza you’re eating crosses over nicely from breakfast to lunch. I’m reluctant. It’s only 10:30 Madison time. Oh please, she says – look! You can get a glass of wine!

Let it be known here that I never drink wine for breakfast. Never. Okay, fine, champagne brunch, but that’s different.

Just to prove my point, I drank water and ate nothing.

More later…

Late (for my take off)

...but ever reliable in keeing Ocean afloat.

If departures were easy, too many people would leave and there would be no one left at the home base to mind the ship.

My next post will be less nautical in nature. It will, however, be late, very late and from New Haven.

Have I got everything? Am I ready to go?

(ha! you thought I would miss a day of posting, didn't you? fools!)

Is it gonna be wild, is it gonna be the best time
Or am I just a-saying so?Am I ready to go?
What do I hear when I say I hear the call of the road?

Why wouldn’t I quote lyrics when they are apt (especially since they happen to be on the only available decent tape to listen to in the car, as we spin, my daughters and I, for one last time through the neighborhood where they grew up)?

Posting is moving into difficult mode.

No no no, I am NOT having a mental crisis here, I am off tomorrow to the East Coast for the better part of the week. My littlest one is starting her next to last year of college and , like each Fall, I get to be the mover-facillitator. Posting will have to be on the sly, done in quick trips to erratically functional cafés, on the pretence that I have to dash down to check out the latest free trade blends.

Am I too old for this? (Not the posting, the moving in of daughters.)

I did it for the first time six years ago, when my oldest was first going off to college (same town, same college; the only thing that’s changed is the emergence of the BLOG!). I was 46 then. I remember going up to the Dean of the college and saying to her something like: “hey, look, miss. I am glad you got a good operation going here. But I am getting too old to be carrying boxes and building furniture for my kid.”

What do I say now, at 52? (Probably: so how come you ran out of the good snacks at this year's reception? You know, we take all the free food we can, giving that your college has sucked out every last penny from us in the past years.)

The residential college dean has never warmed up to me since, even though I have been going back regularly.

Six years later: I am still about to move boxes and furniture, painting walls as needed, pounding nails into walls that are too sensitive for that sort of thing.

But right now, I am in the midst of our last evening as a family in the home that is in every way our family home. You know, the one I pushed to put on the market. You know, the one I signed away today. I’m sure I am popular. Actually, it’s not about me. This night belongs to the daughters. And their childhoods here.

P.S. I feel like such a failure as a parent. They have no idea what Wonderama is.

pause for a station identification

Remember those words from your childhood? Because these days, I don't hear them much. Pause. Exhale. It's time to identify your station. WQXR (ding! guess what that was? c'mon New Yorkers of my generation, what kind of a station was it?), for example.

It's a chance to reflect on what you're listening to and where you are in life.

My recounts of events of this week-of-high-drama (the title of the next popular reality show!) have irked some wise and some foolish people. When I went back with the tail more or less between my legs and asked still others if indeed I had been so annoying as to be insufferable and vile, they were baffled.

But truth is, it takes one wise person to discover that the earth is round. So I must go with the sage and leave the rest rubbing their chins in puzzlement.

I apologize.

To those who thought I was coming down hard against them: I am sorry. [Caveat: I am not sorry for coming down hard against those who in their lives do not treat their past, present or future loved ones with kindness and compassion.]

To those who thought I was batty at the least and about to jump into an abyss of neuro-psychotic illness (is it a disease? it sounds scary, hence the choice of words): I am sorry.

To those who hated the choice of instrument of torture for the home buyer ( a cannonball) --and there were many of you! --I am sorry.

Most of all, to the buyers who came back with a reasonable counter offer just five minutes ago, leading us to contemplate small sums of money instead of big cataclysmic outcomes: I am so so sorry. I know you love the house. Your letter is eloquent and genuine. May you have as many happy memories in this place as I did.

P.S. Yo, you home buyers: did you or did you not read this blog? fess up!

UPDATE: Coincidentally, today a friend sent me this image of an instrument of torture (had it been in my files earlier, I may have bypassed the cannonball idea):

And people are just too much for me to face…

And therefore, placing a particular house-purchasing family in a cannonball and firing it skywards seems just about perfect! [And I do not care if they are reading this. Go ahead, write your lower offer based on an exaggerated defect because, dudes, I am not going to accept it! Think you are so smart – reading my blog perhaps? I am fed up, I no longer want to sell you the house, I even take back my kind offer of the New York Times from this morning. My personal crises notwithstanding, I am not going to be drawn into this nightmare sale by house-buying transactional stubborness!]

…I climb up on the top of the stairs And all my cares Just drift right into space

Like hell they do. Type in correction: none of my cares are drifting into space. They are piling on rapidly and my plate was already full before this week even started. Prognosis: no relief in sight.

On the roof is peaceful as can be And there the world below can’t bother me…

Oh it bothers me plenty. Plenty. Thanks a lot world, for sucking it to me again and again. Thanks for last night as well (sorry, friend, for standing you up for drinks last night; I was quite incapacitated).

When I come home feeling tired and beat I go up where the air is fresh and sweet…

Where would that be? The fresh and sweet air I mean? In the crawlspace that the engineer came to inspect this morning? Is that it? Seemed fine up there. This is a forty year old house, damn it! You want a new property – here I’ll show you some houses farther west. Add a couple hundred thou and you can have all the brand new roof tiles you want!

Oh, did I hear that you registered your child for the local elementary school already? Well forget it! Tell junior mommy and daddy were forced out of the house by VERY ANGRY SELLER! I have no patience, no remorse, no oomph, no stamina left! Go pick on someone else, buttheads.

No more mr. nice-guy from me, ever. I tell you, it doesn’t pay! It DOES NOT PAY!

UPDATE: In case the buyers do not understand blogs, I am compelled to remind all that Ocean is a blog that believes in looking at tense moments with humor. I did modify the text a teeny tiny bit so as to not appear totally wacky. Which I am not.

* lyrics: my commenter was right. Peter belts it out, but Carole King wrote it