This is going to be just like Smokey and the Bandit

These were Larry's lines to me, after he hopped off Megabus and into my overly-packed civic, while tucking his legs under a plant, a clothes basket and 2 19-inch computer monitors.

After 4 days of moving, at least 14 helpers and 14 bruises later, we are here! My arms are jelly! My eyes are droopy, but I am in Minnesota! I'll confess, it was hard. I got stressed and nervous and flustered. I forgot things that I meant to take care of, had to leave a few things behind, and drank too much at my goodbye party so I felt a bit hung over the next day. I guess 4 drinks is too many for me in 3 hours? Who'd have thought?

But I am reminded of the sincere power of friendship. I can't believe so many people came to help me while Dan was in Ankeny with his mom's neck surgery. It was definitely a controversial moment: Should Dan be with his mother or with me? Both had legitimate concerns, but Dan's an only child and his mom doesn't have siblings she can count on to help, nor does she have a husband. And since I have so many friends nearby to help and her surgery was not just an outpatient deal, Dan had to really be with her.

Larry and I drove the truck & car, and we discovered that leaving KC at 9 pm might require some red bull. We dashed through the store and found someone I knew. It was sort of a touching moment, giving someone a hug goodbye and telling them that it really was my last 20 minutes in the city. Then we drove away, after a few false starts and after stuffing our poor dog into the back and precariously arranging belongings around him.

When we landed here, Larry and I unpacked everything with 2 paid movers, named Hassan and Marco. Hassan hit on me excessively, commented on my strength, and said he would take me to Antigua with him. That's his home country. I hope he wasn't just flattering me for a better tip, because Damn, I want to go to Antigua!

Dan was finally able to squeeze away from the hospital to come up and help us eat a big serving of crab cakes de Larry. Jason and Sara, some old HS friends, decided to stay the night, too, so we had a full house of unpacked moving boxes and a big side of exhaustion.

But we made it, we're 89% unpacked and have already made our baptism trip to Ikea. We purchased nothing...but Ikea is only 5 minutes away should we decide to go back. If you're reading this and you helped me load stuff, I am in your debt.

Roger & me

I started working for Roger & the chapel part time in January of 2009. They had been sans bookkeeper for a month or two, so I had a lot of catching up to do. And coincidently, it was right at the time that I had to study for the series 7 &66, so I was a little overwhelmed. I think this was really when I started to kick myself into overdrive. To be truthful, it was a welcome escape. I had a silent office to go to after the noisy job, I had a place where people respected me and valued the work I was doing and I got to learn something new. It was often intimidating, having to learn an entirely new system with no one to teach me. I was in the chapel when I said goodbye to my grandma over the phone and I was at the chapel when our house was burglarized. Went there when we didn't have a place to go for Easter and spent many evenings over the last 18 months staring at giant portraits of Roger baptizing babies and marrying people.

The chapel has a variety of missions, to uplift Westport, to help plan neighborhood events for children, to plan weddings and baptisms and funerals for people. This year, they also had a memorial service for the unsolved murders and disappearances of people through out the last years in Kansas City. There are photos of people praying around an open grave and lighting candles for those who have been lost in the city to violence. I've really grown to respect the work they do & I feel lucky that I am somehow on the peripheries of people who work quietly and with dignity towards a peaceful purpose.

Sometimes I'll be at work there alone and a stranger will drop by and ask for money, something Roger will freely give if it's evident they're in need. Sometimes people will stop by and ask to go in the Chapel, since they were married there 15 years ago and just stopped by for a quick visit from out of town. I try to oblige them and in the process, I have, too, fallen in love with the location. This year, they are building a peace garden in the back and this year, I was going to be the Easter bunny. I am still tempted to come back and try it.

A few months ago, I was in the office for a moment looking for a file and saw something that made my jaw drop. I didn't believe it, it didn't make sense, it was strange and unusual. But I couldn't ask about it, it wasn't my place, it was an accident that I saw it, so I remained silent and wondered about it over the last few months.

But since I am leaving and since I was saying my final goodbyes, and since it was a quiet day then, I quietly brought up what I had found, prefacing it by saying that it wasn't my business, but I couldn't help but ask.

I had found an envelope indicating my boss was taking care of some business for a serial killer that lived nearby in the 80s. He has been caught and tried and jailed and died in the last 20 odd years. The story that unfolded was surprising, and he started it by saying "I had just come back from Ethiopia, and when I returned, I thought I could do anything...." He told me the story about hiding from the media frenzy, about visiting the prison, about the remorse and then downfall of the perp. It went on for 18 months, and he was there to pick up the pieces. He lost 20 pounds, he had phone calls from jail directly to his house. On and on and on it went, until the end. I sat in silence, trying to comprehend, and it was amazing. "I thought I could do anything, then I realized I was wrong...."

At the end of my tenure here, I mentioned having to move myself, since Dan was in MN already, and I had to pack up the mess. 2 days later, ROger messaged to let me know that instead of paying the maintenance employee to tend the chapel and garden that day, he would pay for him to help me load the moving van. It is sincerely one of the most gracious acts I've received. I hope everyone else can find some place as spiritual as this, for we all seek redemption in some way in our lives.

In case I forget....

6 years of marriage are coming up. I just found some recipe and cards from my wedding shower with advice on how to have a happy marriage.

From Mary Agnes:
Never go to bed mad
Make & keep lots of mutual friends
treat each other with love and respect
talk about any big problems and decisions
worship together, vacation together
work for a common goal
stay close to family


Sally:
Do unto others (husband) as you would have him do unto you
Be the first to say you're sorry
say plenty of times "I love you."
Do special things just for him.

My dad:
1) Be born to a great father
2) Head his advice on life
3) choose your husband well

My mom:
Tell Dan, "whatever you say, dear."
Cheer for the cyclones
Buy a big screen TV.

My aunt Deb:
When he asks how he can help you clean, say "Clean the bathroom."

Metropolis

Our friend, Mike, made me aware of this film's existence several years ago. Then the reprint was discovered and restored. By virtue of good fortune, it's been held over at the Tivoli tonight, so I now have plans to see it. Should be a great way to spend my Friday night alone. At first, I thought it would be a bit boring, but one of those things you should watch for a wholly cultural experience.

I am quite sure it will prove me wrong.

On a side note, there might be another copy in Chile that also holds much of their original print. People with the foresight to predict demise deliberately mislabeled the copy in Chile during the revolution. Makes you think about the value of revolution when the uprising must bring about damage to the global art. Makes you wonder what other weird treasures are hiding in basements, in boxes, in places that no one plans to open.

Oh, Salvador Allende, was it cowardly for you to kill yourself before the mob got to you?

Boo~

Just found out that I have to UNpack everything up in Minneapolis alone, too. Except for Larry, who has vowed to assist me. Boo. Boo.

Dan's mom is having a bone graft and steel rod surgically implanted in her neck due to some ruptured discs and he has to be there for her surgery. Regrettably, her surgery is at the exact same time as our move. Luckily I've been bulking up and getting ready to lift lots of stuff.

Paying someone to do this for me is starting to sound much better!

Moving up & moving on?

I'm writing while sitting on the hardwood floor in the place where my couch used to be. It left behind a whole bunch of dog fur and the cash we got for selling it. I was so excited to buy it and also excited to say goodbye and on to another contemporary set, but perhaps a bit softer and a bit more conducive to the weekend night cuddling sessions on the couch.

Packing the rest of the house is hard. Some things you need, some things you don't, but you want to be sure you don't need it. And you don't know what to do with the barbie set you had since you were little and you don't know if you should really keep the scrapbooking stuff, because you're probably never going to do it again, right?

But the hardest part goes back to the theme I keep repeating, the painful year we finished in 2009. I think I concentrated so hard on being ok after everything happened that I didn't really let myself do the grieving I had to do. So it's hard to pack up the wedding photos and see that 5 people from our rehearsal dinner are dead. It's hard to see photos of my grandparents, because half of them are now dead, and it's hard to see pictures of my parents, because they're divorced. And it's hard to see pictures of Dan's parents, because of his dad. I hid most of our family photos last summer because the reminders were too painful and I'm finding it's still the case while packing everything up.

Yet, it is all ok, because we're so much stronger than we knew. And because I really dont think I'll mind being in an apartment again and because I really want to go shopping for a fun new couch. I am not sure what it means to be stronger now, but I guess it means that a great deal of shit would have to fly my way before I break down. And it means that when things actually go well (See future entry about Roger & me) I'm joyous.

Jessica and Scott are married now and their wedding was great. He wore flipflops, she wore red pumps. He wore a suit, her dress was made on Etsy. They had a potluck dinner, which was 100X better than any other wedding food I've had, mostly because of the hundreds of vegetarian options and mostly because people make their best dishes for it. WIne! It flowed freely, and 4 glasses flowed into my belly. And I wasn't even drunk, which is a shame, because by the end of the night, it was really hard to be the only sober person. I danced alone to the song "Stuck here in the middle with you." I rather enjoy that song, just because I love Reservoir Dogs.

Their wedding was a play instead of a formality where people walk down the aisle with their families and all wear matching dresses. The people that stood up with them explained the story of how they grew up, how they met and how they got engaged. It was a big deal for Jess to get married and a big deal for her to get engaged, and if she ever has children, all of us will be shocked and paint ourselves purple. Doesn't seem that long ago when Jess was dating that bad, bad boy or when she was girlishly waiting for the phone call from the hottie in class. Then there came Scott....

Now I go back to packing. I think tonight it's going to be some of the pillows and blankets and laundry. Here's hoping we have enough boxes!

Jess & Scott

This is the part where I cry happy tears when two sexy people leave the single world and marry each other. WIll post photos.

NPR's short fiction contest

NPR is having a short fiction contest right now. In fact, it's too late to enter, but I kinda want to do my own experiment with it. University of Iowa creative writing grad students are the judges.

The contest must start with this:
"Some people said the house was haunted..."
and end with
"Things would never be the same."

Entries must be 2-3 minutes long and read on the radio. I guess over 5K people have submitted thus far, and UIowa grad students having a great time with the entries. I'm digging it, I'm wishing that I was one of their students, emailing submissions back and forth, and laughing.

Writing is hard work. I have to block out some serious time to develop anything better than these lame blog entries. :)

TS Eliot

I post this poem every year around Christmas on my blog, where it's housed on mulitple formats. My blogging style has changed so very little in the past years. This is mostly pathetic. This year, my TS Eliot poem comes a lot sooner. It seems mostly fitting in the first few stanzas.

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.