The story of one woman, her husband, and their guinea pigs, as they figure out what to take with them and what to leave behind.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Two Thoughts

Right now Husband is moving between the basement and the garage as he hauls up boxes. He is cursing occasionally and wearing an old page-boy hat and a scarf wrapped around his mouth as he battles the likely mold, dust, and giant earwigs.

I only go in our basement (this house is a hundred years old with a leaky foundation and crooked floors) in extreme cases, like when our guinea pigs run out of hay, so I am up here at my desk trying not to laugh at his costume because I don't want to get dirty and put up with the five-foot-tall ceiling.

He cough-shouts at me from the kitchen: whoa... that was intense. And then, devastated, we lost some of the big boxes. Ten large and ten medium. A sad, sad day, he says. He is mostly serious. After multiple moves, the boxes become something like real possessions. He hits the showers.

***

Earlier today I assembled four boxes, packed one with books (fifteen small boxes later, the books are finished), and took all the art off the wall in our living and dining rooms, and a little off the wall in the spare room (the room where we keep everything that doesn't go in the other rooms--spare books, instruments, the filing cabinet, Husband's soccer gear, college posters). In some places there is a light shadow, the ghost impression of a few of our frames. I pulled twenty-four nails or tacks from the walls. My house looks naked. In terms of packing, house-nudity must be a victory.

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