{"id":165242,"date":"2021-01-21T08:52:16","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T13:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=165242"},"modified":"2021-01-21T08:54:31","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T13:54:31","slug":"moving-montage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=165242","title":{"rendered":"Moving Montage"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s stressful to move in the middle of a pandemic. But it’s got to be done. I am now living in the midst of total fucking chaos, in preparation for the movers. I had to have my bookshelves taken apart. I hired my Task Rabbit guy – Casey – he’s the best! He put together some furniture for me last February – right before we went into lockdown. As he worked, we talked, and he told me about his other gig, as a referee for high school sports. He said there was more work in that sector than he could even handle. He had to turn gigs down. When the lockdown came – Task Rabbit shut down for a while (except for no-contact delivery services) and I found myself thinking of Casey on occasion. Clearly there were no more high school sports either. I hoped he was doing okay. So when the time came to move and I needed someone to dismantle my bookshelves he was my first call. <\/p>\n

First order of business, though, was to take all the books OFF the shelves. The sitution almost instantly became totally unmanageable. <\/p>\n

Room 1:<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nRoom 2:<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nChaos. Although there is a method to my madness. I am putting a third of this into storage. I am donating another third. I’m keeping the rest with me. (I’m also bad at math.) So now once they’re all out of the shelves, I can start the organization process (which I’ve done), separating things out into piles of Keep. Storage. Donate. <\/p>\n

As I wander through the maze of my apartment, I’d glance down at this or that pile, and laugh, at the randomness of the books on the top of each pile. A cross-section of my personality. <\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nThat right there tells you pretty much all you need to know about me, including the glimpse of Reinventing Your Life<\/i>, a CBT-handbook of sorts, recommended to me by my mood disorder doc. I went into it skeptical. Skeptical? I sneered at my doc, “You people. This therapy thing is a fucking RACKET.” Granted, I was rapid-cycling and that is why I was talking like I was in a 1930s gangster movie. But I bought the thing, did all the exercises, and yeah, it changed everything for me. So oh well. <\/p>\n

Then there were the DVDs piled up. I will never EVER give up my physical media. Streaming doesn’t have everything. Can you stream Christopher Strong<\/i> any time you want to see it? And if you’re me, you want to see it all the time? I can answer for you: NO. You canNOT. I do not trust the landlords. Streaming is filled with recency bias. Old stuff suffers. Fuck the corporations. I OWN my shit. You don’t get to decide FOR me when – or if – I get to see things. <\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nSpeaking of Bubba Ho-Tep, Elvis of course gets his own corner, with two towering piles all to himself. He’s coming with me. Of course. This pile includes movies, box sets, a couple of comic books, every book I own about him, as well as a book given to me by Pat McCurdy (we discussed Elvis once<\/a>), called IS ELVIS ALIVE?<\/i>, complete with cassette tape shrink-wrapped to the front, a tape which supposedly has a recording of the still-alive Elvis. <\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nAnd of all the movies to be sitting on top of the Elvis pile … It just worked out that way. <\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nI will miss this place. It’s my favorite place of all the places I’ve lived. It’s a horrible neighborhood, and – quite frankly – dangerous – like, sometimes I hear gunfire late at night dangerous – but the place itself is beautiful and peaceful, and cheap (because of said gunfire) – so I have what is basically a two-bedroom apartment for almost nothing. I have been able to stretch out here in a way I’ve never been able to do before. I’ve framed a lot of things and hung them all over the walls. I’ve been able to put things on display – coffee table books, I love – which I’ve never had space for before. It’s my place. It’s also the only place I’ve lived in where I’ve been well the whole time. My old apartment was filled with “bad juju” from the day I moved in. I never fully moved in there. I was so so so sick for the first years I lived there (2009-2012). So the place felt marked by how sick I was. Here, I’ve been well the whole time. And so there’s a peace here, I feel comfortable here. Plus, there’s Covid. We’re coming up on a year of this nightmare. I spent months alone here, without ever seeing people, with going out only to the grocery store. My emotional bond to this place is INTENSE. Also … there’s Hope. I miss her so much<\/i>. This place is so full of her. I am still finding remnants of her in this move. Even little fur balls behind the bookshelves. That’s her. She didn’t die here, she died in Rhode Island, and the place has never felt the same to me ever since I came back. I spent the fall in Rhode Island anyway, quarantining with my sister. So in a way I’ve already separated myself from this place. But I miss Hope. Here she is on our first night in this new apartment. She was SO STRESSED OUT. But once the bed was set up, she knew where her place was. <\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nSuch a good good girl. <\/p>\n

I’m so sick of moving. But everyone’s moving now. At least in the New York tri-state area. It’s amazing I was even able to book a mover on such short notice. Everyone is fleeing the scene. <\/p>\n

Onward. I write to you from the midst of total fucking chaos. By this time next week it’ll all be over and done with. Hard to imagine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s stressful to move in the middle of a pandemic. But it’s got to be done. I am now living in the midst of total fucking chaos, in preparation for the movers. I had to have my bookshelves taken apart. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=165242"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165294,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165242\/revisions\/165294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=165242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=165242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=165242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}