Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

01 October

October dawned without a thought for monthly updates and ordinary things. This was the day we needed to be out and the race was on. We dismantled the bed–for those late to the game we have a sturdy wooden loft bed that was not getting out of there in one piece–as well as manhandling out my big Ikea shelving unit and dismantling my desk. Suddenly, too, my computer was in pieces and I was cut off from the computer world. AT&T made it worse by cutting off our phone service twelve hours earlier than we asked them to. Sitting in a living room devoid of furniture and full of debris, I felt very much alone.

With much effort we heaved the fridge out of there, throwing away perfectly good food which could not be taken with us as well as the spectacularly nasty things that lurk at the back of disorganized people’s fridges. As tiredness grew, every bruise–and there were many–became a personal affront. Trivial things flared into argument and the stress levels rose until my nerves were at breaking point and we were wasting time arguing over boxes without labels (in the end, resentfully, I labeled these ones “random shit”).

Perversely, along with rage at the situation we were in came enough adrenaline to keep things moving along.

We had to make more trips to Office Depot for more boxes. We realized the full extent of our disorganization over the last eight years when we found duplicates (and more) of endless simple household items–two big bottles of bleach, two of Simple Green, one of citrus cleaner, bottles of cleaner I had no clue we’d ever bought.

At midnight we were still packing and there was now no bed, no bedding. “Sleep” that night consisted of four hours shivering on the living room floor, fully clothed and covered in towels and whatever else we could find, complete with the Siamese cat that we had brought in out of the cold.

02 October

Exhaustion and cold woke me up, and I got straight to work, pushing beyond exhaustion and desperate for help, any help but not knowing where to get it. The dreary task was endless and frustrating as I had packed the rest of the house and was unable to do anything useful any more. Only Don’s vast cavern of stuff remained: I had already taken most of mine over to the storage shed. Knowing that we were still planning to go to Stockton tonight to store the stuff, I eventually had to sit down and cry. I was aching, beyond all my limits, sick to the stomach. My feet hurt; food made me feel bad. I was existing on caffeine and sugar and the almost constant rush of a huge hours-long panic attack.

When the laywer came round for a progress report, informing us of the (already known) consequences of not moving out, we said we’d be out by six, but the task was too big for us. At two in the morning we were still loading the van with no end in sight. We set the alarm for an hour of sleep and I shivered my way through all of it, my reserves at their end, shivering so hard that I woke Don up, too.

03 October

By now we were past the legal date to move and I was in deep shtuck, physically, emotionally and mentally. Overnight, gates had been set up at the park entrance, ominous reminders of the fate to come.

I called in sick. I was sleepless, nauseated, mentally useless. Then I called to rent the truck for a third day. When the lawyer came round and told us off for not being out yet I had nothing to say and nor could I blame him for being annoyed. We weren’t messing around; we hadn’t slept for two days; the task was simply bigger than the both of us and had been left to the last minute. We simply couldn’t do it. We needed help and we needed it badly.

The stakes were high: we were told that if we didn’t get out while he was still around, they’d file unlawful detainer against us and we could kiss our credit goodbye for the next seven years. I felt no resentment; we had known this was coming for almost a year now and still we were here, at the last minute, swimming upriver.

Then the help came. The lawyer proved himself a truly decent human being and pitched in himself. Together we got the job done, stacking things willy-nilly into the truck and the van. We did one final walk through, saying goodbye, admiring my pretty jasmine one last time, and hearing the hollow echo of a dying home. I had not wanted to leave the house this way, with junk and abandoned stuff strewn everywhere; I had wanted to clean it, to bless it and cleanse it in some kind of ritual, and to move on with a sense of completion. Instead what I got was haste and panic and abandonment, and I’m not sure which way would have been more painful.

The Siamese cat, who’d vanished in the morning, came back at the last minute and I snatched her up into the cat carrier I’d put ready just in case.

At a quarter past twelve the gates were closed behind us for the last time. And to my surprise, all I could feel was an overwhelming sense of relief.

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