Snerkology

The breakfront at Bull Feeney's, Portland Maine.

Makin’ like the A-Team

I love it when a plan comes together.

So (and don’t I start a lot of sentences with “so”), here’s the tentative do-able plan. We will ship the Jeep to Maine, and I will fly to Portland somewhere in the vicinity of July 10th or 11th to give myself a few days to settle in before my start date on the 15th. When Bill is ready to move we’ll rent from one of those places that provides shipping for self-packed storage containers, pack it up, and ship it to Maine. We’ll either store it, shift the contents to a storage unit, or perhaps by then we’ll actually have a place to move into. I’ll fly back to Arizona and Bill and I will drive the Ram together, with the dogs, towing the motorcycle, back across the country.

I’m actually toying with the idea of flying first class from Phoenix to Portland, arriving for my new job in style. Because, hey, why the hell not, right? It’s not that bad, cost-wise, when purchasing a one-way ticket. A frivolous and foolish extra $200 which I’ll probably think better of before making the actual reservation (and I can hear Bill’s opinion echoing in my ears even now), but it amuses me to toy with the possibility.

Now if we can just solidify his job!

Time to go wear out the shredder. It’s ASTONISHING how much crap in the way of paperwork I’ve just KEPT for the past 18 years. It’s astonishing how much of that crap can be contained in one four-drawer file cabinet, one two-drawer file cabinet, and two file boxes.

The neighbor's fields, at home in Maine.

Accumulation

Bill and I tackled the upstairs storage room yesterday. In its life it has been my ex-husband’s office, my library, a bedroom shared by Robert and Amanda, then just Robert’s room, then a guest room, then Robert’s room again (shared with his ex-wife and three sons), then a storage room. The sheer amount of JUNK that room has accumulated boggles the mind. Though I guess, considering the fact that I personally have lived in this house since 1995, a bit of junk accumulation is to be expected.

So, we sorted, we bagged, we hauled, we donated, we dumped. We spent all day on that room and there is more to go. Not a LOT more, I just have to sort through some papers and spend some time with the shredder, and there’s a whole pile of books that need to be lugged down the stairs and donated. But DAMN. We put in some SOLID work yesterday. Our initial run to the donation center resulted in twelve bags. When we came back I started in on the closet, and hauled out NINE MORE BAGS of stuff to donate. Not small shopping bags, either. Those big black stretchy heavy duty trash bags. Full of really cute clothes that I don’t fit in anymore.

But that wasn’t the part I was sighing over, and exclaiming over, and feeling embarrassed over, and hating myself for.

You guys, you should have seen the LISTS. And the BINDERS. And the sheer accumulation of things directly related to my anal-retentive tendency to organize the CRAP out of EVERYTHING. For the love of God. I came across a typed and printed grocery list in an old purse that was for two weeks’ worth of meals, separated out by commodity. “Personal” and “Dairy” and “Meat” and “Pets” and whatnot. It must have been for Christmas because “lobster” was being served on the 24th. AND it must have been for when the grandbabies were still here because formula was on the list (I just looked, I’m pretty sure that this is the related entry). I also found the informational packet that I made for our first trip to Wyoming back in ’09, complete with printed out maps and itineraries. In a REPORT PORTFOLIO. You know, the kind with the blue back and the clear cover? Who the hell DOES that? I dug up all of the brochures I collected for our trip to Maui in 2003, in a bright green folder. There were hoarded reports and papers from my days at Western International University. I unearthed the “copious notes” that I took in preparation for the interview I had back in 2007, coincidentally with the company that just hired me (last time they flew me to Maine, this time we had a video conference. Ah, technology.)

I sat at the top of the steps and sorted through old purses and an army paper bags, each of which had a STACK of papers and slips and receipts shoved inside. I kept saying to Bill, “I’m SUCH an asshole.” “Why do you love me?” “GOD I’m pathetic.” “Jesus, what is WRONG WITH ME??” “Will you LOOK AT THIS?” He kept laughing at me and told me it’s all part of why he loves me. Never before has it been so clear to me just how much he has to put up with.

We’re move even on that score than I ever dreamed. Heh.

Tiffany
May 19, 2013
goals, Home, Maine, weekend
archaeological dig, cleaning, Maine, moving
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The cobblestone streets of the Old Port, Portland Maine.

Timing

Monday 5/13:

Right now it’s 7:30 on Monday morning. This is the third post that I have written that will have to wait to be published. “Well, I asked for it” and “Disambiguation” are posting on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, so this one will go out on Thursday. Out of respect for my current manager and the company for whom I’ve worked for the past 18 years, no posts about my move to Maine are going out until I’ve spoken with my manager face-to-face. And since I work from home on Mondays, that conversation is going to have to wait until tomorrow (the day before yesterday, by the time this posts).

My need to WRITE about all of this, though, will NOT wait. So perhaps I will just keep adding to THIS post so that eventually real time will catch up with my blog.

Soon I will have the ocean. In moments of panic – the ones that usually occur in the middle of the night while I lay sleepless – I think about having proximity to the ocean once again. And all of the breathing that will ensue once I plunk my butt and my toes in the sand.

11:45: Just got off the phone with my new boss and officially accepted the position. Then I scheduled a meeting with my current boss for 9:30 tomorrow morning to break the news. I also spent some time this morning drafting what will be my “So Long and Thanks For All the Fish” e-mail to my various friends and colleagues. You don’t realize how many people have influenced your life until you try to put together a distribution list for something like this.

Tuesday 5/14:

It’s 8:00 a.m. I meet with my manager in an hour and a half to break the news to him that I’m leaving. I’ve started recognizing the finite nature of a lot of things about my life here in AZ. “The number of times I’m going to walk through these doors is limited to what I can count on my fingers and toes.” “How many more evenings will we lay in this bed, watching this TV, in this room? I wonder what our next bedroom is going to look like?” “I can totally decline that meeting because it’s happening in July and I won’t be here!” “How many more times can I fit in dinner at Espo’s before I leave?”

I read Britt’s post today about how happiness takes guts. It was timely for my day, for our point in life. To quote her:

You are looking, reading, thinking about how to be happier tomorrow than you are today, or happier tonight than you were this morning. Not everyone does that. Not everyone has the courage to go looking. But you do. So I mean it when I say this to you:

I know that you have the courage to be happier.

And it’s a good thing, because you’re going to need it.

Yep.

I’m having a lot of fun mapping out how long it takes to get to certain places from the vicinity of Portland, Maine, and finding all kinds of places I want to explore. Quebec, Montreal, Nova Scotia, Cape Cod, Rockland, Portsmouth, Boston, Montpelier, Isle Au Haut, Martha’s Vineyard… if we wanted to, we could drive to New York City in 5 hours, or Washington DC in 8 hours. Oh, the pictures I will take.

12:20: Well, my meeting with my manager went well. He congratulated me and thanked me for all of my hard work. I’m not sure when he’s going to tell the rest of the group, but the word is trickling out since I posted Well, I asked for it. A few of my fellow AcronymCo employees follow me on Facebook. So the cat is out of the bag.

I had one more meeting after the one I had with my manager, then I met Bill for lunch at Red Robin. I was starving beforehand, and now the food sits like a lump of concrete in my abdomen.

Anxiety wreaks havoc on my digestive system. I’m considering asking for a refill on my Xanax.

I’m going to need to write down a lot of these details as they happen, since I have a feeling that once all of this stuff is behind us and we’ve settled into our “new normal” the details will be extremely blurry. Hell, they seem blurry in the very moment in which I am living them.

Hoo boy.

Wednesday 5/15:

8:30: Just sent my official resignation letter to my manager, and faxed my official acceptance letter to my new company. No turning back now! Not that I wanted to. I have a laundry list of things to get done before my last work day. I want to leave things in good shape for whomever is going to be assigned as my coverage. And yet… ALLLLLLLLLLLLLL I want to is sit and read Explorer’s Guide Maine, which I bought for my Kindle a few days ago. Maine has a LOT of nooks and crannies. It’s going to be awesome to explore. I wonder if I can get a local newspaper to sponsor a weekly “Tourism in your home state” kind of thing? Because it’s weird, but a lot of the native Mainers I know never bother to actually, you know, explore. I certainly didn’t until I moved away and then started coming back every year or two for vacation. And now I want to see All! The! Things!

3:15: Whittled my inbox down from 236 to a respectable 81. I actually managed to be productive, thanks in part to just plugging my earbuds into my head and letting Google Play Music All Access zone me out. I signed up for their free trial. I judge it to be decent thus far. I can actually look up and listen to whole albums without having to buy them.

I just realized I only have two more “work from home” days before I’m done at AcronymCo (Monday the 27th is a holiday). This is a luxury that I think I won’t have at the new company. I’m also losing a week of vacation a year until I’ve been there for seven (or is it five?) years, when I’ll get back to four. And they don’t have sabbaticals every seven years. So, I’m giving up quite a bit of free time by moving to this new job. But it’s WHERE I want to be, so I think that makes up for it. Like I said in this entry,

I will be losing a lot, by leaving this life that I live right now. But I consider it worth it for the things I will gain.

You know what’s weird? I wrote that entry on July 12, 2012. A year and three days later, I’m starting my new job in Maine. My prediction of that entry:

And it’s happening, just about a year from now. The clock is ticking. As soon as I’m finished with my degree, and I only have four classes left. Then I will be eligible for all of those jobs who wouldn’t consider sixteen years of experience equal to a degree. I could apply to those jobs reserved for new and recent college graduates.

Once the job is secured, everything else follows at a rapid pace.

Once the job is secured, I take that gulp and I take that leap.

Hello, gulp. Hello, leap. Right on time.