Moving Day

Countdown to fall semester: six days

I was originally planning to write this post this afternoon, but I got sidetracked putting together furniture, vacuuming (with the small stick-vac that I have left after the breakup, nearly killing the damn thing) and rearranging basically the entire top floor of the house minus the former girlfriend's former room/office. That I will get to clean/rearrange later; for now, it's a place to toss empty boxes into and occasionally pull smaller pieces of leftover furniture out of.

Then, when I wanted to sit down and write this evening, I got so bogged down and back-achey from working all day that I just wanted to take a shower and go to sleep. I told my friends I was going to bed, took the shower to wash all the sweat off, and returned more awake and less tired in general than before. Call it insomnia, call it a "second wind," or whatever, but I'm in that weird space of mind and body where I'm too tired to do much of anything, yet not tired enough to sleep. So here I am, and here's the story of the day.

Today (as the title implies) was Moving Day. The former girlfriend picked up the 16-foot truck this morning from the rental place, brought it back up here, and over the course of about three hours, breaks included, we had everything she wanted stacked into the back of it -- layered and intricately sorted like Tetris pieces. By 1PM -- less than twelve hours ago -- she pulled the truck out of the driveway and I was, for the first time in my life, officially living alone.

I mentioned before that the original plan was to follow her to Wichita and help her unload the stuff again too, but that was before we saw exactly what was in the truck -- maybe ten pieces of large, unwieldy furniture (such as her desks, the futon/mattress, and her dresser), and then a bunch of assorted tubs and boxes. Oh, and her bike. As she had recruited some of our mutual friends to help her this afternoon at some point anyway, I wasn't needed -- so I didn't go. Instead, once she left, I spent my afternoon doing what I described above -- namely, cleaning and reorganizing the entire top floor of the house after what looked like a moving-related whirlwind had blown through it. About halfway through doing this, around 4:30-ish, she texted me to tell me that everything had been unloaded at the new place and that the truck had been returned.

"Wow, that was fast," I texted back.

The entire actual moving process had taken about eight hours, about an hour of which was spent on the interstate here and back to Wichita. Those huge rental trucks don't drive too quickly, you know.

By the time it had gotten dark, I had pieced together a working living room, including the building of the Ikea coffee table my friend Andrea had bought for me (which took way longer than it should have, and I was lucky to be able to find a pair of pliers downstairs to help). I was lucky in other ways, too -- due to its weight and the space constraints in her new place, she did leave me the old fold-out loveseat she had kept in her room/office, which now serves as the living room couch. We also had the foresight to move it out to the living room with the dolly while she was still here, as the thing quite literally is 200 pounds of wood and steel from the 1970s. It serves the purpose, though, and because I have that I won't have to purchase another futon or couch -- which definitely saves me a lot of money.

Last night, while she was getting furniture coasters (she has hardwood floors in the new apartment, which we had while living in Missouri and I haaaaated them) from Walmart, I tagged along and picked up the site-to-store cookware and cutting boards my lovely friend Becky had bought and shipped to me all the way from North Dakota. The cutting boards are probably the finest I've ever seen, and the stainless steel cookware is wonderful as well. I washed all of this stuff (along with the silverware my friend Brittany sent me, and the blender I got from my friend James), and put it away.

95% of the kitchen and living room are now set up properly. The most glaring difference in the living room is the fact that I no longer have a TV out there -- I gave her my old one, a 20-inch I'd had since I was living in Morgantown (so, 1996-97 or so), and she took her smaller 13-inch TV/DVD combo from the bedroom. I have but one television left in the house, and it's almost as old as mine was; her mother gave it to us years ago just to get it gone from the house. I could move that one to the living room if I wanted to, as it does have a converter box and antenna on it, but I've also got my Xbox and PSOne hooked up to it, and I'd really rather just leave it where it is.

There is at least one more thing that the former girlfriend will have to come back to get, and that is the lawnmower. She didn't take it today because she has no place for it in Wichita, and no lawn -- she won't need it until she goes back to the lake house sometime this fall, and will pick it up then to take with her down there. This means that if I need to, I can mow the grass at least once or twice more between now and then, and if I do I've been instructed to drain the mower's gas tank. She also still has the house key and the electric garage door opener clicker that I'll need to get back from her as well. I'm not really concerned about those items in a pressing fashion, as it's not like she's going to come up here and rob me.

To replace the television, I put a "wanted items" ad thing out on Newton's Freecycle group, and I've already gotten several replies. I was looking for a TV with a built-in digital tuner (to avoid having to get another converter box), but I'm more than likely not going to find one of those. Instead, I got a reply from a lady with a 19-inch TV that's analog, asking if I wanted that. If she's available tomorrow, I'll go pick it up while I'm out shopping and running errands. Ironically, I got my new flat antenna (with "superior reception" capabilities) this afternoon in the mail with Andrea's coffee table, and if I do pick up this TV tomorrow I'll see if I can find a converter box at Walmart as well...if they even still carry them.

There's a lot of bigger stuff I need to get at Walmart tomorrow anyhow; I should probably pick up a real vacuum, I need to get cat food and litter (I swear, those little fuzzy bastards are hogs with the food as of late) and a bunch of other little household items and foodstuffs to replace the ones she took, or stuff I ran out of. I'm hoping to get up early in the morning and do this before the afternoon, so that I can pick up that TV if I can and hit up the post office for mailing thank-you packages and getting stamps. As if that wasn't enough stuff to buy, I also need to put gas in the car tomorrow as well before I start making trips to Wichita for school again.

As you saw above, there are but six days before school starts, but tomorrow is really my last day of summer vacation. This is because, as you know, Thursday and Friday are our orientation days, days where we have to be there by 9 (which means I'll be leaving the house around 7 to get a good parking spot). Thursday will be short, only 9-12; Friday is 9-4:30 for the long haul, after which I will basically be leaping back into the Monte Carlo to get home in time to watch preseason football -- remember, I do still have the one TV.

"You mean to tell me," the former girlfriend told me last night while we were packing and moving things, "that on Friday -- the last day of orientation, after we'll have met all of the new people, and nobody has to get up early on Saturday morning, that you're going to leave campus as soon as you can, not go out drinking and socializing with everyone else, and come home to watch football? Not even regular football, but preseason football, and Chiefs preseason football at that?"

Yes, that's exactly what I was telling her. And it's exactly what I'm telling you folks.

Look -- most, if not all of you who read this blog know me. I am not big on the "bar scene," in Wichita or anywhere else. Even the former girlfriend knows that when we went out, I usually only did so for her benefit because most of the time, being around drunk people -- even classmates and friends -- bores and irritates me unless I'm absolutely plastered myself. Not only that, but I'd have to drive that landboat behemoth of an 18mpg Monte Carlo home afterwards, at night, with a passenger-side high beam that's out. I'm not doing that. I have no interest in doing that -- I'd much rather return home to my humble abode after doing my orientation duties and enter full hermitude for the weekend, to not only mentally prepare for my classes, but to actually get some last vestiges of relaxation time. Truthfully, if I'm going to drink, I'll do it alone. Some would say that's a sign of alcoholism. I would say that it's a sign of independence.

Regardless, it's not like I won't have stuff to do anyhow. My online activities and socializing via AIM, Facebook, and Twitter are going to drop drastically over the course of the next week or so, as not only do I need to be working on school stuff, but this weekend I've tried to clear my metaphorical plate enough to completely finish and "lock" the book to put it on immediate sale. I still also must complete putting the house back in order (I haven't touched the downstairs yet), and pay the bills -- several of which are coming due soon, including the rent and my updated-with-my-name cable bill. Not to mention write the former girlfriend a check for the deposit on this place. There's a good chance that around $1500 of my newly-acquired loan money will be spent on obligations like that in just a matter of days, and no, that's not a small chunk of change.

So, as tomorrow is my last day of summer "vacation" proper, what have I accomplished over the course of the past three months?

1. Purchased/insured/registered/tagged a car, all with my own money
2. Completely dismantled this blog and reinvented it (insert your own "phoenix rising from the ashes" reference here)
3. Wrote/compiled a book that will be on sale by next week
4. Became single for the first time in over six years, surviving what could have been a devastating breakup/move-out process with the former girlfriend, but thankfully wasn't
5. Calculated a summer budget that worked much better than I was expecting it to
6. Submitted my poetry to at least six or seven different magazines and journals
7. And, finally, fully reorganized and restyled this house into a bachelor pad, this afternoon.

While the Casa del Brandon (or, as it is colloquially known, the Brancave) isn't completely finished being set up, what is done is quite livable and sustainable, and over the next few weeks it will become better and better -- especially once I get more of those necessary items around the house to make it feel like "home."

Plans for tomorrow, though? Shopping, errands, picking up a TV, and then coming home to cook meat and drink beer for dinner. Things aren't perfect, but they're certainly looking up.