On Moving...

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we must move.  Having recently discovered there is heavy metal  ( the most likely suspects - cadminium, lead or mercury - EEK) in the water, which may have sunk through our skin - as it did the glaze on my dishes, staining them black - we needed to find a new apartment in a hurry.  It should be noted we only used the water to shower in, not to cook or drink.


I must admit, in a flush of vanity I raced to the mirror to examine my skin closely to see if I had gotten darker... like the dishes.  No luck there, if it has sunk in its hiding in our vital organs somewhere (blood work in the near future will reveal that sordid tale if there is one).   Since my first big surgery for cancer in 1995, without a tan, I maintain a pale appearance, so much so, that without make-up, those who know me will ask if I am feeling unwell.   It's a slight burden to bear since I am still here to tell about it, but one that makes it hard to race out of the house in a hurry.

 I hasten to add this all came about in JULY, along with the electronic failures.  I haven't had much time to add to those, the fact that after I had found the new driver I needed for my camera on a web-site recommended in a comment - THANK YOU, you know who you are! - I plugged the thing in and smoke actually came out of my camera.  I unplugged everything with as much speed as my uncoordinated hands would allow, before my whole computer and camera had a chance to blow up. The connect cord had fried itself.    *sigh*

In the search for a new apartment, the usual adventure ensued.  On the day we were enlightened of our situation, I leafed through the local paper's classified.   NO PETS was the common theme.  I have long since tired of calling those ads anyway, in a pathetic attempt to remind these people that the animals were here first.   Furthermore, I used to advise these humans - and I use the term loosely - that it is the owners of said PETS that are the problems.   I was having too many other issues with things blowing up and worried about our livers to use the energy needed to remain calm in the face of adversity.

I drove the nine miles into town to pick up a city paper.  I called the only ad that did not mention pets.  Left a message and went on to the next.  The next FIVE.  That was it out of an entire page of classified rentals. 

Well about fifteen minutes after I had left messages, I received a call back.  It was from a young sounding, bubbly (for a guy) gentleman who wanted to know all about me, why I was moving, etc.  I didn't get that funny feeling one gets when one is about to be stalked either.  So I went to meet him at his meat market a few days later  (YES, he is an honest-to-goodness BUTCHER!).  He also agrees with me on the issue of animals and their owners...

Well needless to say we hit it off, he is a dear man in his late thirties,  the second floor apt. we will be renting is a few streets away from his market and adjacent laundry mat - he also has a catering business - and the name of the street is Kelley St.   My maiden name.  How scary is this getting.  The number of the house is 34-36.  The number of the house we lived in for 12 years in the city for which I worked was 34-36.   Creeped out yet?!   How bout this...  The nice man who is vacating the apartment due to his daughter convincing him to move to Florida to be close to her, is a retired policeman.  I met him on the first day of his retirement. 

And sooooo, it is fate that we leave the farm, and we will miss it.  Most of all Grandma (whom I could not find a suitable home for), though she has lived here her entire life.  Her daughter, who is just beginning to warm to humans, the Grandson, who has taken up residence under the farm shed, the Hussy, who continues to remain a safe distance, and last but not least, Dead-Beat-Dad, who most appreciates the auto feeders for food and water I have left in the shed, along with a bucket of food and good water for refills. I have left a note for the land-lord that if he does not continue to feed them his, now fixed, mousers will go elsewhere, as they do not eat mice, and cannot survive and be healthy enough to catch the mice, on a diet of birds and what-ever.

I will miss hearing the twenty-one gun salutes preceding Taps, across the street nearly every week. Busy place, that one.

On a lighter note, since I choose to look at it that way....  I am still receiving calls from the messages I left three weeks ago on prospective landlord's machines.   One called while I was driving, the battery on my blue-tooth was dead, so I advised him while the phone was on speaker I could call him back later I do not talk on the phone while driving.  His reply was, "Oh, I guess you don't need a place to live that bad do ya?"  To which I replied, " With a person like you as a landlord, quite frankly, no."     A woman returned my call three times, she was polite, but...  kept saying, "Well, the apartment is only big enough for one cat..."  Needless to say I wasn't in the mood for her the last time she called and asked me to "reconsider getting rid of some of my cats."     I was in the middle of packing boxes while realizing I was running out of same, right on the edge, and I confess I let her have it.   " Oh, and are you the type that would simply get rid of an obnoxious child as well?  Cause let me tell you something, I would rather see someone with an attitude like yours gotten rid of, the nerve to ask me to get rid of my animals.  Oh, and another thing, is the apartment you are trying to rent something out of Alice In Wonderland or something, cause if it isn't big enough for more than one cat, where pray tell, would two humans fit?"     I hung up rather than give her a chance to come back with some rude retort.  Much better to let her stew over what I had just said.

Last but not in the least, least, Thank GAUD it is now AUGUST.   Last night the smoke detector let out two long bursts. Then went silent. Not the routine for the battery going dead in a hard-wired unit noise. The real deal.  Only just two bursts.   About fifteen years ago in the same part of the house there had been a fire.  They never discovered what had caused it, but part of this place is 110 service, the other the old 40... yikes....

I didn't smell any smoke so I grabbed my flashlight and went out (at 2 AM) to take a spin around the house to see if anythng was visible in the - now vacant again - downstairs apartment, or the attic.  I was joined by Grandma, her daughter and the teenager.  Aw.    I stayed awake on FIRE-WATCH until my son got up. At which point he told me the other day while he was taking some of our things out of the attic a squirrel waundered nonchalantly by him up there.............................     I think I can now safely assume something must have been chewing on the wire until it grounded itself out and got the shock of a lifetime.

And so I remain truly yours until the move is over.  See you on the other side.