I'd been gearing up for this moment for weeks, months even. Boxes had been routinely gleaned from work. My closet had been thinned and bags upon bags taken to Goodwill, with still more bags left to be taken. Movers had been scheduled and confirmed(repeatedly), storage paid for, troups rallied, and now sleeping on makeshift beds all over my de-assembled apartment all ready for the final push.
I woke up early Saturday morning, March 15 with the realization that I wanted nothing more than to lay in bed all day nursing my sore throat and chills. But, staying home when "home" is is a fluid concept, is not an option, so I hauled myself out of bed just before dawn and into a hot shower hoping to steam whatver bug had hold of me to death. The movers where scheduled to be there at 9:30 to move the furniture so I figured that left me a few hours to collect myself, pack some final things, and start cleaning. As the rest of the troups (for troupers they were) started waking up and went out in search of coffee and pastries, I dissasembled my bed. At some point I became slightly nervous-I hadn't heard from the movers as of yet, and since my phone refused to charge, I was in danger of losing my window of "communication time" before the battery ran out. At 9:50 I called and was assured that they would be there in 20-30 minutes. Perfect! We chorused! Ever the bunch of optimists. This gives us time to get things MORE organized, to start to clean, to get a better handle on things before there's a team of burly men stomping around. Then...as another hour ticked by, we again became worried. I tried more phone calls, but suddenly my oh so reliable mover team couldn't be reached. Also not to be reached, was my roommate, who's car, significanly larger than mine I covetously glanced at in it's parking space as I left Meredith and Ryan in charge of the apartment and set off in my stuffed little Jetta for my storage unit. I'd spent severa hours at my storage unit the afternoon and evening before and had been somewhat surprised to discover that the hallways after a certain hour fill up with the homeless population of Pasadena seeking shelter from the elements. Everyone that I interacted with was friendly and polite, but it is still somewhat disconcerting to run into someone brushing their teeth in the night when you think you're in a deserted coridor. But I digress. By the time I had offloaded my stuff and depositied it in my storage unit Meredith was calling asking if she should try looking on craigslist for new movers. When I got home, they'd found a mover advertising last minute moving, bonded (no idea what thata meant, and frankly it made me a little nervous), insured, and trustworthy!!!! Also unavailable, as we discovered when we called. Throughout the nail biting hours I'd been putting logging increasingly threatening voicemails to my original mover. The last one had something to do with kidnapping his pet gerbil and holding it ransom if I remember correctly....but then it's all a little fuzzy now. Finally we found a mover who not only could do the job, but could be there in an hour and lo and behold...HE WAS! Two strapping guys showed up and literally bounded in and out of my apartment for the better part of an hour tossing my hugely heavy furniture (including the stuff that stubbornly refused to be sold on craigslist) around like jugglers.
In no time at all the first load was ready to go and I set off to open up the unit so they could offload it. "Zooooom!" went the brave little Jetta off in the direction of Pasadena. I sighed a little bit in relief. It was about 4 pm, the apartment was about half way cleaned and the walkthrough was looming on the horizon, but I felt fairly confident that...if everything sailed smoothly from here on out...it would be ok. Right about the time I let out that little sigh, my car sighed too. Only instead of a little puff of breath, it sighed a big cloud of steam. Glancing down I noticed my car was running only a tad hotter than normal...perhaps the steam was a fluke...but no...it started pouring out in earnest from under the left side of my hood. The little temperature guage flicked ever so slightly upward. We were only a few blocks from the storage unit and as I limped into the parking lot praying that something wouldn't catch fire, or explode, I felt the rest of my day dissolve into a puddle.
To be honest with you, from where I sit now it really is just a greasy black smudge in my memory. Tidbits stand out, like the storage facility gate closing on my mover's truck and derailing, leaving the "secure" facility wide open for at least a couple of days. (The facility people's approach to fixing it involved a guy coming out of the office, putting on work gloves, and kicking the crap out of the gate. Why he needed gloves to do this is still a mystery). I know that at some point I limped my car (clouds of steam billowing forth) across town to my mechanic, who was closed and abandonded it, full of belongings, in his parking lot. I also dimly remember riding back to the apartment on top of my roommates furniture in the back of the very loaded car she sent with her fiance (apparently she had been located around 5pm sometime after my car explosion) to pick Chelsea and I up, sliding around the corners and hoping the rocking chair wouldn't careen forward and smoosh me into the seats in front. At some point we did the walkthrough, the manager gestured wildly and promised a check in the mail...a point I didnt have the energy to contend with...and I drove away from Glendale for the last time. Leaving behind neighbors with cold stares, and parks full of little old men playing cards and dominos, the treelined streets where I used to walk my psychotic dog and hide him behind cars so he wouldn't spot other walkers or their dogs and launch a kudjo impression on them (there was also the clover clump he'd sit for hours in with his head on my lap looking adorable-almost making you forget the Jekyl/Hyde aspect of his personality).
Later that night, after an extremely hot shower and watching Chelsea attempt, unsuccessfully, to order pizza no fewer than six times. I realized that in addition to feeling like a walking petridish recently run over by a freight train, I had no mode of transportation, no form of communication (telephone now refused all attempts at charging), and was in a very literal sense, homeless. For those of you who are familiar with the childrens' book the Verry Worried Sparrow, you'll understand my sentiment at that moment when I say: Meep!
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