end of an era

I have been holding on to some news. I am not sure if it is because I was in a bit of denial or because I was worried that if I said something, it might not work out.

I got a job.

It's in New Jersey.

So I have been packing up my life.

And, as my car decided to keep to the timeline I imagined, even though I stepped away from the PhD program.

That is to say, in January it started falling apart, slowly, and painfully (for me).

There was no way to take the car with me. I couldn't even get it south so I could give it to my father's friend. Though I think I have successfully convinced my dad that it wasn't a good idea to give it to the friend who couldn't possibly have the money to sink into making it really drive-able again.

So, I had to make a decision of what to do with the car, the little green machine that has been my constant companion for the past 16 years.

It drove me cross country, away from my ex-husband, into my new life in Oakland.  It drove me to the next new life in New Mexico.

It served as my phone booth on those long drives between Oakland and Oxnard ... and sometimes, when I couldn't bring myself to talk to others, as the safe space where I could sing or cry or both.

It was faithful and dependable and constant.

I agonized about the decision, truth be told, though I might not have shown it. In the end, I decided to donate it to KQED in lieu of all the donations I have not been able to make in the past few years. Even as I was sure it was the right thing, it was so painful to let go.  I drove it down to the big avenue below my house so that the flatbed truck could more easily hook it up.

As I walked back up the hill to my apartment... to that messier before completely packed state, downcast and tears in my eyes, I spotted a car just like mine parked just where mine had been not twenty minutes earlier.

I am not sure what it means except that I thought, oh, you came back... may my little green car be happy either in someone else's home or as the parts that make other little green cars go...

I HEART Freecyclers/Freecycling

If you don't know what I am talking about ... you clearly haven't met me.

I learned about freecycling when I was preparing for my move to Albuquerque -- from a woman at the LDS Family Center, of all places.

I had been doing some family tree research and was stumped. I knew I needed to go to the LDS Center because they have the resources ... but it was at the time when the fight over same sex marriage was in full swing.  I felt like a traitor going to the home of the H8ters... but I needed the resources.

A lovely older woman was there helping ... she must have asked me five times if I was Mormon -- no, just here to look up the family tree stuff.  That is another story for another post -- I probably already wrote about it.

But, for some reason our talk turned to her foster child who aged out while in her care -- the woman's birth children hooked up the young woman with all the things she needed for her first apartment through freecycle.

Ah!

What a find... I signed up immediately for the Albuquerque freecycle because I was taking very little with me ... and would need things when I arrived.  But I was cautioned not to sign up til I got here so that I wouldn't get so much email of things I couldn't claim.

The Albuquerque Freecycle is vastly different than the Bay Area Freecycle -- but it is a community I adore ... we are all not-so-secret hoarders ... with things that we keep because we might need them someday -- and can't bear to put them in the trash (Thanks, Dad, for that genetic trait).

There are three kinds of posts OFFER (what you want to get rid of), WANTED (the tag says it all), and TAKEN (what you say when it is off your hands and into someone else's).

But given the right impetus -- someone else *needs* it -- we are happy to part with all the junk that is clogging up our lives.

On the one side of my heart is the hoarder -- but on the other is the pain of remembering what I couldn't bring with me when I left NJ.

As a result, I give things away with abandon ... anything that I haven't touched in a while, I feel like I should offer -- I don't always, but the thought crosses my mind.

And, the truth is, I ***LOVE*** giving things away.  When a million people want the same stupid thing I posted, I wish I had forty seven, so I could give them all away.

Sometimes, I find myself rummaging through my things to see if there is something I can post.

It is some other kind of madness, I am sure -- the other side of the coin of the hoarder?

In any case, there have been very few times when I posted an *ask* that wasn't fulfilled -- and I have scored many other things that I didn't *need* but couldn't help myself.  I find myself throwing some of those things back into the pool now as I pack.

Hooray for freecyclers... may we all have what we want ...

Packing

So, if you can begin to pack things *you don't need* weeks before the move ... doesn't that mean that you don't actually need those things? ever?  Like, do you have to move them?

As I packed said things, I really wondered why I was keeping anything that I either didn't remember, hadn't ever used, and/or had found actually useless in the past.

As the time draws closer, and the packing unit smaller, I may just have to decide what really stays and what really goes.

It gives meaning to the piles of things randomly left on the side of the road or dumped in the dumpster ... they didn't fit and no one could justify them anyway.

And where will I put all the books?  That is really the question ... between my own academic books acquired over the time here and the library books I need to take with me, ugh, it could be a whole trailer full of books in the end.

Umm... and I feel like I am putting things into a time capsule - with cassettes, vhs and dvds, I feel like a dinosaur waking up in the land of new technology.

Packing ... it's a life experience.