CROATOAN, or, I was trapped in a box-packing Rubik’s Cube of my own devising.
Oops. I went a week without updating.
I’ve been BUSY, okay? I discovered episodes of Daria on YouTube, and in less than an hour I will be leaving my rented rooms forever, taking a bus to the CalTrain station, taking CalTrain to Santa Clara, and then taking another bus to the San Jose “International” Airport.*
Last night I shipped most of my stuff to my parents’ house in Missouri and my storage unit in Boston. The FedEx Kinko’s on California is open 24 hours, and at 9:30 the employees are starting to get a little punchy. I was greeted with, “You must have spent some time in BOLIVIA. …You know, when you spend time in Bolivia, you come back colorful?”
When I came out here, I shipped five big plastic tubs of stuff. One of the tubs got pretty banged up in transit, so I didn’t ship it back. In addition to my four remaining tubs, I shipped a liquor box (full of books), a standard-sized paper box, the box my full-size memory foam mattress pad came in, and, uh… five 20″x20″x20″ FedEx boxes. One of them weighed 50 pounds.**
Where does all this crap COME from, a person might wonder. I mean, there were some things I bought here that I probably should have just shipped from home, since work was paying: a backrest pillow, hangers, that mattress pad, a crockpot, some dishes… On the other hand, hangers are bulky to ship and cheap to buy. And I’m shipping all that stuff on to Boston, so I’ll be using it again.
And there were Christmas presents. God, were there Christmas presents. I made one last run into the city with Katherine on Saturday, and picked up a few things I’d been meaning to get. I also visited an H&M for the first time. They put one in Madison right when I left for California, and if they had them in Tokyo, I didn’t know about it–on a related note, for like the first six months I lived in Tokyo, I thought Tower Records was a Japanese chain, because I’d never seen one before. Now they are going out of business, and they sell DVDs and books as well as CDs, so I encourage you to seek out your local store, if you’ve got one, for some discounted loot. And you can marvel at how 40% off $18.99 is kind of like a reasonable price for a CD. No wonder they’re going out of business. Anyway.
Still. My ability to accumulate stuff–oh, there were also those two Palo Alto public library sales I attended–is kind of ridiculous. The thought of what I could do in a semester in Boston with an entire apartment to fill is a bit daunting. I bet they have H&M there, too. Oh, for the first couple of weeks, with the memory of having to clear out this place AND my Madison apartment still fresh in my mind, I’ll be cautious. I’ll avoid garage sales.*** But as the weeks wear on, and I forget about the horrors of packing and moving…
Of course, I’ll have my cats. They’re bound to destroy a few things. God, I miss the little fuckers. Homeward!
One last picture of the yard for my rented rooms:
You may note that my landlady did, in fact, get rid of that toilet. No one is more surprised than I. Well, possibly Katherine.
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*It is the dinkiest little airport you can imagine. It’s like if Madison’s airport was “international.” Apparently they have flights to Mexico.
**Katherine, who very kindly drove me to the Kinko’s for all this, had to wait for me to come back out of the house with the next box to load that one into the car.
“I can’t lift that one.”
“Oh. Hold my purse.”
“Sure, I’ll hold your PURSE while you lift HUGE MASSES OF WEIGHT…”
***Which reminds me, I am leaving a nightstand for the landlady to deal with, because it was $2 at a yard sale my first week here and it is made out of particle ROCK or something; it weighs a ton. I definitely wasn’t shipping it.
November 21st, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Can hardly wait to see you tonight. Welcome home, Cab!
November 21st, 2006 at 6:15 pm
You only think the San Jose International Airport is the dinkiest little airport imaginable because you have never been to the (recently departed) Harrisburg International Airport. They’ve recently built a new (*slightly* larger) airport, but the one i was familiar with when i lived in PA was even smaller than Madison’s. Yet “international” because it had (daily, i think!) flights to Canada.
November 21st, 2006 at 9:14 pm
A liquor box “full of books”. Sure. :p
It’s a good thing she moved that toilet, now she has somewhere to put your nightstand.
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:53 am
I also cannot wait to see you! Hurry up and get here already!
November 22nd, 2006 at 10:52 am
This would be the nightstand that gave you a strain in the forearm.
When I was living in student flats, I accumulated masses of stuff too. I don’t know how some people manage to avoid it! (I don’t think we are ever going to move again, given that some of our boxes are still not unpacked after five months in this house. Maybe we need a Life Laundry.)