Everyday life no longer in Middletown….
I did it. I moved away. I imagine a reader for these who is likely not you. Someone following my specific journey through my journals. Someone waiting for a conclusion, a denouement, and as I tear up a bit, I image this entry will be that. Perhaps you, too, are sad at the ending, or angry, disappointed, or dare I say, satisfied. Perhaps I am all of those things.
When last we left Diarist C46 (that’s me), my wife had gotten a job offer in Boston. We were excited about it, although it was one of several choices. It was the one we took. I had a good long freak out right after the fact, and although it felt epic (was epic) it’s also something I’ve learned is par for the course for me. So, here we are in Boston. I have yet to find a job here, but I will be able to work remotely at my Middletown job through the end of the year. Plus, I am back in the area in June (twice) for my mother, who we got to agree to also move to the area. So, my break from Middletown is not clean (could it ever be?). It’s a jagged, painful thing. I think of the way they have to sometimes further break bones to mend them, and it seems an accurate metaphor. Healing feels like an uphill journey today.
I have no real routine here yet. I wake up at 8:30, grab my phone, and go back to sleep until about 9:30. I get up and shower, and my cat, N. watches, and squawks at me afterwards for pets. She licks my fingers. And I think, maybe I like cats partly because they are routinized creatures, and here she is, easily creating her routine again in this new place. Wait for the human to shower, make sure they don’t drown, obtain pets. Easy.
I make my coffee and pour some cereal. A small but nice thing is dumping the coffee grounds into the food waste bucket. The city takes food waste. We got the list of what goes in the food waste and it really is pretty much this: Is it food? Yes. Is it not food? No. Our 1st floor neighbors brought us the food waste bin for our apartment with a bottle of wine and card. We live now on the third floor of a multi-family building as is common here for anyone who isn’t super rich. Our apartment is really nice, though half the square footage for three times the cost of what we had.
As my coffee brews, I see a long email from my mother. We are finalizing my dad’s celebration of life that is on his birthday, which is Monday, a full six months after his passing, yet the grief returns easily enough. My mother had a friend who wanted to play the violin and her husband wanted to do a reading, and we didn’t like the one he picked. At first my mom was just going to go with it, but I encouraged her to stand up for what we wanted, so she did. I’m proud of her in this email. I know I’ve taxed her so heavily these months with the move coming so soon on the heels of my father’s death. I’m sure I’ll work on the guilt of that once I find a therapist here.
As I sit down to begin my writing today, I can hear my wife working from home on a meeting she’s taking in the living room. We decided to share an office but potentially move to other spaces as we have calls. It still feels loud. Also, our living room is not where I want to be right now since our couch didn’t fit up the stairs. It would have taken up most of the room but we did measure it! The stairs are the issue. Apparently, there’s a whole business here where they cut a part your furniture and stitch it up again in your apartment, and apparently it’s a real legit thing that works. We put ours in storage and still have to decide what to do. We don’t know if we’ll be in this apartment for longer than a year. We don’t know the long-term.
As I eat my breakfast, I put up two tomato plants on Freecycle. I’m glad to have freecycle again. I had it years and years ago when I lived in Raleigh, but there wasn’t a group in Muncie. It’s basically a site that is only giving away stuff. We bought plants on Sunday because my wife is making a little potted garden on one of our porches (we have two lovely porches). But it was a four-pack of tomatoes, and she only had room for two.
I continue to do some things on the computer. I write up new instructions for our new pet sitter (found on an app my friend in NYC recommended and coming over to meet the cats this afternoon). Then a job search that turns up a number of new remote admin jobs at one of these fully online schools associated with a big public university. These jobs are nebulous and hard to tell what they are exactly as the whole structure seems different—and less tied to disciplinary silos—but a few seem like they might be worth looking into more. I only wish I better understood how an institution like this worked, and it doesn’t feel like I have a good shot at doing well in an interview if I don’t.
After I do a little puttering around the house, my wife makes us quesadillas for lunch, and we eat them out on the porch. Then we lie down and snuggle for a few, which we haven’t done at lunchtime in quite awhile, so that’s nice.
I meet the new pet sitter at 2. She’s in college but looks so young. I guess college students just ARE young compared to me now. She seems shy but very sweet with cats. G. comes out and the others hide, unsurprising. I don’t think she has a lot of experience doing pet sitting except for with friends, but I’m happy to support a college student with some summer work.
Then I poke around trying to find living room furniture that will work and go up our stairs. My wife is in a meeting about assessment, which is typically my area, so overhearing it is fun for me. I have several takers on the tomato plants, so working on getting that hand-off coordinated.
At 3 pm, I give my mom a call before our 3:30 call with the funeral home that is coordinating my dad’s service. We write down all of her questions so we are ready. At 3:30 we hop on Zoom with the funeral director and the minister. We get the food and music things sorted while we are waiting for the minister and then go through the program with him. He seems great, and I’m pleased with our plan. The bad news is since my mom is moving too and we want to move my dad’s urn; we find out about disinterment costs. Something I didn’t know existed but is outrageously expensive, and what ya gonna do? At least my mom can sell the spot in the niche where the urn was displayed. But we hang out for a few after the chat, and I feel guilty about how expensive everything is for her to follow us. Follow us to what is not even a certain future.
My wife is done work and makes us some dinner, which we eat on the nice porch. Fresh fish, which you can get around here. We talk about the possibilities for the couch replacement, and then she works on our forms to get our driver’s licenses here. We are working on an appointment for July at an office that is 30 min away because I guess that’s just how it works around here. She’s also getting it set up for my mom since she’ll be here by then. I sit in my favorite chair and play a game while she gets info on the phone from my mom, cause I can’t with another thing today.
I suggest we take an evening walk to relax a bit, and it’s lovely (except for one hill—whew), but then as we’re almost home I start asking her some thoughts on the job situation for me, and it gets intense. She also doesn’t think those online universities are what I’m looking for so I decided to not apply to that sort of thing yet. We’re both pretty scared that this thing isn’t going to work out long-term. She’s reminding me that I need to be open to lots of different paths, when I tend to focus on one and hope for the best, but it’s hard when we are here, and when we are moving my mom, and I don’t know that I can ask her to do that again. And what if I fail and this whole thing falls apart?
On that lovely note, we go to bed early.