This Is Better
I’m mostly moved. There are still some delicate items at the old place: plants, antiques, artworks, etceteras. I may have to rent a van to move Agnes. She’s very large.
I’m just about unpacked. All of the boxes have been emptied, broken down, and stowed away in the basement. The new place is chaotic with heaps and cairns of items in need of putting somewhere. It will be a few more days yet.
I’ve spent so much money. The new space is much larger and needs different things than the old space did. A dining room table and chairs. Outdoor chairs and a little table for my patio.1 A video doorbell and security system.2 A new mattress and bed frame.3 New sheets.4 And endless odds and ends.
I’ve got a hundred and fifty pounds of dirt. Literally. And some large terracotta pots. Today, I planted seeds for Italian flat-leaf parsley, Japanese parsley, and wildflowers for the bees and butterflies. It’s a little late in the season for starting seeds, but I think the flowers will do fine. I’ll pick up some more herbs from a nursery soon. Basil, thyme, and mint, for sure.
I’ve been sleeping on the sofa for days. My mattress delivery was delayed because it’s a “special order” from the factory. It should be here by the 30th. I’m looking forward to it. I ordered a wrapped coil mattress because memory foam is the effing worst. I got an adjustable bed frame to go with it, too.5
It’s quiet here. Planes fly low overhead on their way to the airport. Every 20 or 30 minutes, the PATCO train passes by a few blocks away. At the end of the street, there’s a band that practices all day and into the early evening. They’re not bad. Compared to 7th and Spruce, I’m in the middle of nowhere. I think a car passes down my avenue every 30 minutes or so. No one ever honks their horn. There are no buses, and nobody cares if the bus is turning anyway.
It’s uncanny. The street I live on (and the house I live in) belong to an imaginary America that is also a very real place. It smells of cookouts and 4th of July sparklers. Trees rustle in the breeze. Wind chimes ring out from somewhere, maybe everywhere. Somebody should be smoking cherry-flavored tobacco from a mahogony pipe, but no one has stepped up to their civic duty as yet. Be that as it may, it is really nice here.
Footnotes
-
I have a patio now. ↩
-
I’m on the first floor. The place is impossible to secure physically. I have a front door, a back door, and so many windows on all sides. It’s wonderful. ↩
-
I’ve absolutely hated my bed-in-a-box memory foam mattress since it first showed up four years ago. I left it behind me. ↩
-
I downsized from a queen- to a full-sized mattress. Queen-sized mattresses are ridiculous. It’s like an ocean of memory foam. I only need to fit one or two people in a bed. Maybe three. We’ll see how things go. ↩
-
Elevating the head of your bed helps with GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, aka, chronic acid reflux) at night. I had my old bed frame up on blocks, but that eventually bent the legs and warped the frame. ↩