Test Run

Still in Ohio.

We loaded the trailer, truck and my car fully today. I still have tons of room in my car. I wanted to leave enough space for the two cats to roam around and stretch their legs if they wanted to, crying and peeing on stuff no doubt. Actually, there is room in Donnie’s truck bed and trailer as well, but as stated yesterday, it’s the weight that has us worried. We then topped the truck with an 11 foot aluminum boat (dubbed Hal Fiskur, or “dried fish” in Icelandic). The truck’s rear was now nearly sitting on the pavement, so we decided to take a test drive up the street and down a few miles of interstate, to see if this crazy scheme of traveling close to 3000 miles was even a possibility. We are both equipped with CB radios, and so we set them to ch. 21 (close to trucker ch.19) and rolled out.

First thing that happened was my CB stopped working. I’m following close behind this bouncing, white marshmallow of a trailer and suddenly Donnie turns on his flashers (he has it rigged so the trailer lights flash as well - they didn’t work right away today, until he spritzed the connectors with WD40.) He gets out and fiddles with his antenna, then tries to figure out if it was the electrical system somehow interfering. Well, finally, just before we lost all hope, I realized my antenna was just unplugged. I corrected this and everything was hunky dory.

Actually it was. Except for bottoming out on our driveway, we did fine. In fact, as we turned down I90 (the route we will take tomorrow morn), Donnie calls to me over the CB “Forget the cats, let’s just keep going!”

We had to do a lot of cleaning - luckily Donnie worked for 6 hours on the oven last night, so that freed up a lot of his time today... to work on the fridge. I just about passed out from bleach fumes in the bathroom.

Also, I repacked some of my boxes of paper and got rid of a lot of crap I’ve been carting around for no good reason. It was hard at first - we had already been through all of this - deciding what to pack, what to give away, what to donate. But now I had to look at the things I had decided to take along, and figure out what I could live without. And then, not only did I have to get rid of it; I had to throw it away.

As it turns out, even in February, the tree lawn scavengers were still out in force. I set out some bins and baskets, chairs and dishes, and most everything was picked up. So not too bad, all in all.

My friend in Portland just told me that moving is one of life’s great stressors - along with loosing a spouse or coming down with some horrible disease. Except that people who move bring the stress on themselves.

The "What Were We Thinking?!?!" Moment

... came yesterday. We realized that we could fit everything we own into the truck, car and trailer, but then weight became an issue. We had packed every box to the density of dark matter, which caused Donnie to mention the fact that the back of his truck was almost dragging on the ground. I honestly was waiting for the axel to snap as we stood there contemplating the situation. We drove it to a local tire place and had them take a look, and they assured us that, except for using a lot of gas, we would be fine. Tires would not blow etc. Also, I just went to the Uhaul site and it seems okay. I would assume people do stuff like this every day and we should not worry too much about it. Especially if we can at least get 750 miles to my parent's house to drop stuff off before heading out west.

We went back and forth as to what should come with and what should stay, and, like any crisis situation, we began to realize that it really didn't matter. So today, I will probably see if there is some other things I can leave behind in order to lighten the load, just in case.

It is snowing and sunny.

Since everything is packed, I had eggs fried in a baking pan for breakfast and toast grilled over the open flame. It's like camping.. with two cats!

General Housekeeping

President's Day = day off!
Kinda...

Actually, I took yesterday off. I woke rather late, played on the computer, wrote etc.
Dangerous things on which to waste time:
myspace.com
fanfiction.net

I need to get a CD player for my car before I travel (currently I have a broken tape deck in my little green Mink Car that Toyota won't fix...) otherwise I will perhaps loose my mind trying to find a tolerable radio station on my 2,000 mile trip down the Oregon Trail (hopefully I won't get typhoid or snakebite.)

I also made SOAP last night during a final meeting of the Lakewood Lather Association. My friend and I took a class on how to make lye soap from the community classes offered here. It was at her urging, but with the eventual idea that we would end up taking the "Goat Milk Soap Making" class together (the "Soap Making 101" class was a prereq). Since I am so interested in raising goats and the utilization of byproducts therfrom. However, the Goat Milk class was never offered again. Oh well. We made swirly soap last night - hope it turns out.

So today I am updating my online resume, now that I have an address and a phone number in the Portland, OR area. Also, I need to upload my 'zine (which I just realized I haven't done yet, and the spring issue is do out next month!)

Thinking about blogs, keeping in touch with people in Ohio and my family across the country, etc. Thinking about how many layers their are to people and how, before the internet, those layers were much more clearly defined. Now it is as if the pages of the book have become wet and are sticking together, words transferring to other places where perhaps they don't belong.
Thinking about how much packing I still have to do, and how this is my last week of work.
Thinking way too much. Should be doing.

To make the merry-go-round go faster, so that everyone needs to hang on tight, just to keep from being thrown to the wolves.

Yup.
That's how it feels right now. Thrilling, yet vomit-inducing.
I am moving from Cleveland, Ohio to Portland, Oregon.
I have answered the question “why?” so many times, I feel like an answering machine message:

“Sarah and Donnie are not available at the moment, as they are moving 2,000 miles away. Sarah is currently searching for a job and a place to live, and Donnie is relocating to another branch of his current place of employment. Please leave your comments, gasps, head shakes, knowing nods and blank stares after the beep.”

But in truth, there is no concrete reason.
In fact, there are probably more reasons to stay.
The one huge insubstantial reason, though, the one that’s wearing a hole in the roof of my mouth like an exceptionally large too-sweet Tootsie-pop, is that I can.

And there are a lot of people that can’t.

I guess I finally understand climbing a mountain because it’s there.

I have an actual dream to post.

As an honest disclosure, when I’m reading a book and there is a section describing a dream (I believe there was such a section in "The Dogs of Babel," which just so happens to be the last book I read), I usually skip over it. But in my own life, I many times find my dreams more interesting than thing I make up while awake. Perhaps the difference is the visceral experience of having and living the dream, of creating something without even trying - without even consciously thinking. Reading about someone else’s dream, even in a story where you have no doubt been introduced to the characters in the dream, is a bit like reading a fan fiction from a series you’ve never seen. Most people who write fan fiction have a deep understanding, or at least awareness, of the world they are creating in, and so they don’t have to go into detail about “Frodo the Hobbit looks like this - he lives here - bla, bla, bla, back story” (and no, I have not been reading LOTR fan fic!) By diving right in, a lot of time is saved, but for those on the outside (of mind or series), it come off at times as confusing or boring.

ANYWAY, that said, here is my dream:

“My two younger sisters and I have been kidnapped by the Japanese mafia, but we are being held in England. We start out at a summer camp, with a lake and cabins and a long administration building. It’s cold; not a time of year for camping. I believe we just stumbled upon the camp and were captured. Both of my sisters have cell phones, and I have a backpack with numerous items in it, but we are under close watch and can’t really use anything to signal others as to our plight, or lead them to where we are. I achieve writing a note without being seen, and there is a magazine lying nearby with a return label with the address of the camp. I stick this to my note.

My youngest sister tries to call out silently with her phone. We decide that our parents have gone to the police, but they don’t know where we are. It is my thought to inform our would-be rescuers of our location by letting them know of a time we will phone out and then they can find where we are via the cell phone signal. I don’t know why I thought we had to set up a time - I think I was thinking of the old way in the movies and on TV when the police have to keep the person on the line for a certain amount of time to triangulate their position. I don’t think it works that way with cell phones, but oh well.

Then we are moved to a library of all places. This is actually the best thing that could happen. Not only do we pass a mailbox on our way in (so that I could mail my note), but there is free internet access at the library. First of all, though, is the fact that I don’t have and British postal stamps. I start thinking that I could just write on there “Deliver to Scotland Yard,” but would it actually get there? Would they think I was just playing with them? I find a newspaper article about our kidnapping and think about making a copy and stapling it to the note. I think about stapling a British pound to the note! Then I decide that the mail will take too long.

It is difficult, but eventually I screw up enough courage to sneak onto the other side of the librarian’s terminal to send an email. I’m pretty sure it won’t be traced by the mafia, but just to be sure, I try to think of a code that I could send my parents and the police that will lead them to us. Eventually (and this has to be one of the cleverest things I’ve ever come up with without thinking), I decide to stick my note in a book at the library, and send a clue to my mom to lead her to it. I think about it long and hard, because I know I will only have a small amount of time to write. The clue I come up with is, “it’s in the book you read to me as a kid, but you had to borrow from Jean.” Then I have to sneak the note into the book without being seen.

So - what is the book? I sure hope mom would know - Linnets and Valerians
by Elizabeth Goudge.