Homeless

I will pass over a week or so of hectic activity associated with the move and come down to Friday (6/30) at 5 PM when the packers had packed and the movers had moved, leaving us with an empty apartment that looked amazingly big and dirty. It didn't take very long to clean. Some hungry philosophers came by and received the perishables. The non-perishables had been packed (except the garlic, which the packers rejected). Colin did the kitchen because he could stay fairly still with his sore foot. I did the other rooms, a quick sweep and mop plus the window sills, an abbreviated version of my usual weekly bathroom cleaning. After all, I'd scrub on my hands and knees for my fellow but not for Princeton!

We had sequestered all the things we were taking with us in our car: four days worth of clothes, sheets, two pillows, a plate and two bowls, two sets of silverware, spatula and stirring spoon, two travel mugs, a pot, a pan, electric kettle, olive oil and lemons, Flake (a British chocolate treat that Colin had brought me from Oxford), box of important papers, air conditioner, our stuffed backpacks containing computers and work stuff, toiletries, origami sculpture in progress, last minute items like the garlic, two more tomatoes from our garden, and one scarlet runner bean pod. All this was packed into three wooden wine boxes that we thought might come in useful on the other end. After cleaning, it became necessary to repack everything because we had agreed early on that we were also going to bring our plants. Colin wavered on this idea--admittedly, it was ridiculous--but I attacked the problem with energy while Colin rested on the porch with our last bottle of beer.

By the time we pulled out at 7 PM the total population of our tiny two-door Toyota Tercel (not the hatchback type ALAS!) was: the above-listed items, one utterly enormous sprawling tomato plant named Mr. Stripey (picture your average tomato plant and double it in a pot to match--Mr. Stripey, why did you have to grow so much??), one also enormous aloe plant named Just Look at Yourself, one small pot of mint (I sneaked him in; Colin hates mint), one plant named Weird Plant (a member of the grape family that dies disconcertingly every winter only to sprout back out of his weird bulbous trunk--now in full growth), and two jade plant starts (we abandoned big jade plant, a sad loss). Also two humans--one big enough that both front seats had to be able to be pushed all the way back, two big boxes of car tools (in case of roadside breakdown), the car manual, two crutches, and a fifty states road atlas. Wooohooo!

I am very sorry we did not take a photo of this prodigious packing achievement, but I hope you can imagine it. We turned in our keys and rattled out of Princeton, homeless!

And we are homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
[Paul Simon, Graceland]