The 17th of May

Tomorrow I return to work and you would think that I would have some sort of separation anxiety from my son. But I have eliminated that by taking him in two days early. And honestly, I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to contemplate the fact of missing him. Besides, I have total confidence in my caregiver, who happens to be a close friend of mine whose children and child youth programs I’ve worked with on many occasions. Plus, she has a Master’s degree in Child Psychology and is CPR certified. So, I have no cause for worry since I know she will treat him like a member of her family, as she and her mother have always treated me.
But don’t think that while my son was at daycare, I just stayed at home and whistled Dixie, came home and went to sleep. I’ve been hard at work—and at this point, I need to backpeddle just a bit. Two Wednesdays ago, my mate and I purchased a home together. It’s our first one as a couple and my first shot at home ownership. I was actually able to convince my DAD to move in with us. It’s been my dream for a while to be able to take care of him. I want to leave care of my mom to by brother, but somehow I think she will ultimately become my responsibility too, although I refuse to have her live with me.
But I digress. As you can imagine, there is a lot of work to be done to move ONE place, much less consolidate two apartments into one. Surprisingly, my dad has not accumulated as many possessions as I thought; in fact, it is I who has the most accumulation among the four of us (Ayden comes in at a close second). What I’m attempting—and I do say attempting—is to throw away some of the accumulation. There have been several days of straight packing at both places. Day 1: shoes and purses. The easiest thing to say is that I have a lot. Two tubs of shoes and one tub of purses later, I’m feeling pretty good, even though I have four or five loose purses and about a dozen pair of shoes.
Day 2: packing my glass artifacts. I am one of those people who believes in having a glass for every occasion. That means white wine should be served in white wine glasses; margarita glasses should be for margaritas, etc. So you can imagine how many glasses I have. Keep in mind I made sure that both apartments had these components, so we’re basically looking at a minimum of eight glasses in many cases. Luckily I have a corner curio cabinet to absorb some of the cabinet space these would take up. Oh, did I mention my souvenir shot glass collection? Every new place I go, I buy a shot glass: Atlantic City, Vegas, Puerto Rico, Cancun, etc. And while I’m not exactly what you call a world traveler, I have been a few places. Getting the plates out of the way and working on packing bathroom items, toiletries, and perfumes/lotions. I got that out the way with relative ease since Dad took the brunt of that cleaning out of the way. All I had to do was sort through what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to chuck. Basically, anything that was old was thrown out.
Day 3: Incense and candles. No bull. I like the decorative element. I also like the look of them when they’re lit. Plus, they’re practical. And honestly, almost every time I go out of town, I end up buying scented candles to enhance the smell of my hotel room, and I almost always forget to pack them. So I have a full packing box for each place. Paperwork, office and my computer station. That I had a hell of a time with because although the desk area seemed small, I had a lot of stuff packed in there, and most of it needed to be sorted and packed individually.
Keep in mind that in each of these days, I was dividing myself among three places: the two apartments and the home. While I hadn’t moved anything in the house, one of the main things I wanted to was to get in there and CLEAN IT from top to bottom. This meant using almost a dozen different cleaning supplies: carpet freshener, window cleaner, paper towels, toilet bowl cleanser, floor cleanser, a Swiffer duster, towels, sponges, Scrubbing Bubbles. And I’m spraying, and I’m wiping and bending and stooping and climbing and SWEATING for a few hours at a time, getting a little done each day.
Day 4: Tackling, as I named it today, the ROOM of DOOM. This is by far the hardest task because before I moved from my Dad’s I was essentially using the room as a walk-in closet. There are clothes EVERYWHERE imaginable. Some I can wear, some I can’t, some (like my bathing suits and workout clothes, I no longer have time to wear. In addition, the room ended up also being a large book repository. Okay, to be honest, book, magazine, and writing repository. So today, I continued the task of attacking the room in phases. The easiest way is to break a large task into manageable chunks. So today’s tasks along with sorting the books was to pack the covers, sheets, towels, and other linens into one large bag; jackets, coats, and winter hats into another; and to tackle my photos. I still have one bathroom and the kitchen to clean at the house, but this is the only day I did not go to the house, because after I stopped at Dad’s apartment, I decided that today was a good day to do laundry back the other apartment. I had $16 on the laundry card and laundry that needed to be done, especially Ayden’s, since he goes through a couple of outfits and receiving blankets per day.
Tomorrow: I go to work for the first time in four months. I miss the girls and the melee, and just the general atmosphere of the college. After all, it has been my second home since 19. Also, in the evening, I have to go meet the Terminix representative to see if he can give a better estimate than the Orkin man. So after I leave work, I plan to swing by and get Ayden. With any luck, I can maybe take some of Ayden’s or my clothes over and fold them to make effective use of my time. It will also depend on Ayden and how he feels because for the last two days, he’s been conking out early due to his new routine.