New Life in the Woods

Between everything else I’ve talked about so far, I was also working on packing up my stuff… in a half-hearted sort of way. I’ve been living in Berkeley for 10 years and most of my stuff has just been sitting on shelves for the entire time, so everything I had was dusty. Not that I hadn’t dusted from time to time, but it is fair to say I wasn’t as diligent about it as I should have been. Every box I packed involved a lot of cleaning before-hand and I tried to sort everything into boxes of similar items. Sorting different sized books by subject made them harder to fit into the boxes and all of it was taking a long time.

Plus, I was trying to get rid of stuff… really! But it is hard to get rid of old, beloved books and that constituted probably about 1/4 of my stuff by volume. Still, I managed to get rid of about 5 small boxes worth of stuff. I gave it all to a neighbor who works at a senior home nearby. They run a small second-hand shop at the home and she would sell the items there.

The two trips up to the cottage had taken a lot out of me. Dealing with the bankruptcy papers was depressing, as was sorting through all my old stuff at times (old pictures, notes, and letters from ex-girlfriends kept popping up). I wasn’t sleeping well and often collapsed to take long naps in the afternoons. It is fair to say that I procrastinated, with a bit of dilly-dallying and some lolly-gagging thrown in for good measure.

The week before the big move was scheduled my mother came by to give me a boost by packing most of my kitchen things, which really helped. I had managed to pack up most of my books by then and dissasemble most of the bookcases. That just left the big furniture, clothes, and stereo stuff. I managed to pack most of the sterio components and the bulk of the clothes the night before Friday the 16th, when Michael was due to come over in the afternoon to help pack the truck.

Friday morning I went to get the U-Haul and, on Michael’s advice, upgraded to a 14′ truck. I got a discount that made the cost just a fraction more than what I expected to pay for the 10′ truck. I was pretty nervous about driving a larger truck that far, but it was a good thing I upgraded because we needed that space!

Michael showed up as promised and we spent the next seven hours or so dismantling the larger pieces of furniture and moving everything into the truck. He has the energy of a 20 year old and kept me moving at a fast pace all night. It was a bit chaotic, as I’d hoped to have most of that stuff done by then, but it went smoothly enough (after we went and bought some Allen wrenches to take apart the futon couch — could have sworn I had those!). After dinner at a local Thai restaurant, we drove up to Mari and Jerry’s (my parents) house to sleep there overnight before loading up some more stuff I had stored there. Mari and Jerry were in Chicago for a concert that Jerry was performing, so I had to go up and take care of the cats anyway. They would return later on Saturday, after we had left.

Saturday morning I made us pancakes with maple syrup while Michael made coffee. Then we got to work hauling old boxes of assorted books and school stuff from under the house, along with my woodworking bench and assorted tools, which had been in storage for 10 years. Somehow we made it all fit and even made room for a bunch of firewood that had been sitting almost unused in front of their house for most of 20 years. We were only able to take about a quarter of it, but it will help heat the cabin until I get established up there.