The Anchor's on board and the cable's all stored

The Big Day came. The movers arrived around 8.30: some six or seven guys, some burly as hell, some sinewy bantam-weights. What do you do in such a situation? I thought the answer obvious: you run up to Krispy Kreme and buy a butt-load of doughnuts and many pony kegs of coffee. My only regret is that KK didn’t have a call-in service to get the ball rolling while I was in transit. I had to stand around for 20 minutes while they poured one keg after another.

I brought the haul back, worried that I would be tempting a diabetic mover into a coma. It hadn’t even occurred to me to get healthy choices. However, these didn’t seem like the kind of guys who would have eaten a granola bar. And too right. The KKs were delicious. I restricted myself to just one.

While the movers moved stuff into the two vans they had driven up (Mike watching every box of precious science fiction books like a mother hen), I gathered up kitchen items, bedding, all the basics you need in an apartment, and walked them across the street to our rental. Really, we have been truly blessed as far as logistics are concerned. The rental is right across from my daughter’s best friend’s house. They can gaze longingly at each others’ windows when homework and other obligations prevent them from getting together.

But as the day progressed, a black cloud loomed: the final, parting moment. The buyers’ agent called, saying that she wanted us at the house for the final walk-through. Post move-out walk-throughs are a good idea, of course. Owners have been known to leave their trash behind, or replace the nice chandeliers that the buyers thought they were getting with Home Depot tat, or even replace spa-tubs with ‘garden tubs’ on their way out. To new lives with no forwarding address.

We ourselves were burned, years ago, upon buying a house in Wales. The lot was so beautiful, the view of the Brecon Beacons exquisite, so how could anything go wrong? The former owner, the local school’s headmaster, was, we later found out, famous for his frat-boy hygiene. Every local knew the story of how his wife had dumped him, just to free herself from having to clean up after him. He did to us what he couldn't do to her, leaving great piles of broken windows and other builder’s debris all along the side of the house. It was hell to dispose of. So, take my advice: never close on a house without a final review of the property.

But I’d never heard of having the sellers present at a final walk through. “Not a good idea,” said a little voice in my head. But I assented, anyway. We certainly weren’t replacing fixtures or ripping the wiring out of the walls. We had nothing to hide. And surely, surely, we’d have our emotions in check.

Jesse came home, and with a look of deep dissatisfaction, sat on the tailgate of our truck, across the street from the house that was almost no longer hers. She watched, somber as an executioner, as the movers hauled her life away.

When the last stack of book boxes was rolled onto the truck, when the doughnuts were all gone and the coffee-kegs empty, the Lead Burly Guy met with me at the kitchen counter. I was to sign form after form, agreeing to his description of the inventory. “I’m an ex-marine,” he said. I wasn’t so wrecked that I couldn’t see the sense of humor in his eyes. He wasn’t really twisting my arm. It was a good thing I felt like trusting him, because I was in no mood to read the pages he kept putting in front of me.

As I signed, I fought back tears, sniffling as if I had allergies. This was the Final Thing. I’m done. It’s over.

I scrawled my signature on the last page and ran from the house, now bawling my head off. Even in this state, I couldn’t resist stopping on the lawn, to pick up a stray piece of trash on my beloved home’s grass. I hate it, hate it, when you want to cry so badly, you have to plant a hand across your mouth, hoping that suffocation will put and end to the sobs and maybe you, too. I made it to the apartment, glad to draw breath and just cry for awhile.

Mike was already resigned to being point-man on this ill-advised, owner-assisted final walk-through. An hour or so later and he came back home. He had not been completely tear free, himself. The new owners were exceedingly pleasant. Which is good because I expect that at times our friends will forget we’re not there and will just show up show up, wanting to talk movies, politics, and to drink wine. And the male half of the couple is another British ex-pat! So the law of Conservation of the British is still being observed by the universe.

The day ended with one of those acts of kindness that make you glad to be alive, even on a day like this one. Neighbors, the parents of Jesse’s best friend, threw together an impromptu but delightful meal of bistro potatoes, steak, salad. We were too tired to even get in the car, but we needed to re-fuel.

And while we ate, I could admire my friends' high performing kitchen and take notes. Poor Mike. The enhancements I have in mind for Shoe String Harbor are really going to cost him. Since we’ll be eating in more, I tell him, it’ll be worth it. The options for restaurant dining are kind of limited in our part of Long Island. Mostly, the restaurants are very high-end places where the mark-up isn’t justified by the standard of cooking. There are Italian family diners, and the cooking in these can be quite good, but there’s a sameyness about them. We'll be eating in a fair bit more.

Since the move, ten days ago now, Jesse and I have been making our nest in our neighbor’s apartment, wishing Mike was with us. The dogs are confused. But at least Roxie, our no-nonsense Sheltie, has stopped hopping the apartment’s fence. At first, she kept going back to her old house, to bark at the strangers she could see setting foot on her former lawn. A true sheep-dog, it is her good opinion that all disorder is the Devil’s work. But we’ve moved, so she’s moved, and is content in the squirrel-rich environment of the rental’s back yard.

I was worried that Jesse was never crying over, or even talking about, the dreadful loss of home and home town. But finally she did cry, where I couldn’t see here, though she reported it. The new owners had taken down the ivy that lined the wall outside her bedroom. She remembered all the times that she and her best friend had made rings of dried grasses, and had buried the rings inside the vines. I have no idea why did this. Hey, they’re only kids! But that vine apparently meant “home” to her. It’s a shame the new house has a hardi-plank exterior: not a good foundation for vines of any kind.

In the meantime, I am re-learning what it’s like to go to the laundromat. I was hoping that the high-tech Spin Cycle near the University of Texas campus would have machines you could just swipe with a credit card, but sadly, you still have to fiddle with quarters and bill changers. This can be involved, because the minimum price for a large load is $4.25! You’ve got to really want a clean bed-spread.

The good news about the modern coin-op: free wi-fi! And quite a necessity this has become, thanks to my One Great Mistake in this whole moving process. I had originally booked a cable drop for the apartment. Then -- this is sooooo typical of me -- I started regretting the $120 installation fee almost as soon as I put the phone back on its cradle. I mulled over Time Warner’s highway robbery for several days before deciding I had the time to research an alternative. AT&T’s DSL service would, I discovered, be far cheaper to have and to install. So I cancelled Time Warner ahead of the install and started up the DSL service. Unfortunately, this meant we’d have to wait two days for AT&T to provision the already existing drop (ridiculous, but at the $30 install price, I was willing to be understanding).

But I managed, somehow, to give AT&T the wrong address. Upon discovering the error -- the modem arrived at my neighbor’s address -- I frantically called AT&T, to change the address. But a new address means a new order. And another five days, making a total of seven, seven days, that’s a whole week, without that Interwebs Thingy. And, of course, on provisioning day, I spent hours on the phone with technical support. Apologies were made. Trouble tickets were raised. And I still don't have an internet connection.

So not only am I rediscovering life before on-site laundry machines, I’m also rediscovering life before the Big Connecto. And it sucks!!!!! I probably sit down to my lap top five times a day, wanting to browse oven choices or find out the name of Heath Ledger’s last masseuse, only to find my Dell dead and un-talking, save the helpful little alerts it shoots up to inform me that it can’t reach the internet. I KNOW THAT. I feel like civilization has abandoned me, leaving me cold in my loincloth, rubbing two sticks together.

I may have to take a bed-roll to Starbuck’s.