TheNew30

How To Kill a Chair.

Begin by lightly announcing to  friends and family that you are leaving Los Angeles and moving "up north" to be near your daughter. Patiently explain to well-meaning friends who question this rather startling news that you know what you're doing. You've moved a total of 37 times in your life. You could probably pull off this move in less than a month!

Realize you must pull off this move in less than a month.

Make repeated trips to visit your new friend, Harry, at the U-Haul place around the corner. He sells boxes. And mama, do you need them.

Take everything you have accumulated for the past 28 years and begin to pack.

After 10 hours straight, stand back and survey your progress.

Panic.

Fall asleep and have dreams of missed trains, rabid dogs, dead friends, ex-husbands, and killer-rapist-box-salesmen hunting you down using your Discover Card information.

Make tea for well-meaning friends who come to help you pack.

Make more tea for more well-meaning friends who come to pack.

Pick up your sister who has flown in from Philadelphia to help you pack.

Try not to notice the look of utter horror on her face when she sees how much progress you've made.

Pack for several days with your sister. Thank God for her about 100 times each day.

Call your ex-cleaning people whom you haven't had clean for you for six months because you didn't have the money. Give them items you know won't fit in your new one bedroom apartment. Like your treadmill, a TV, an iron bed, mattress and box spring, and several pieces of furniture. They take it all, except one sorry, broken chair. Oh well, it will go out on the curb with the other undesirables. 

Movers come. Everything seems to be going along swell. You remind them to please put the broken chair out on the curb. The foreman, Russian, says, "Sure, no problem." He says this to everything, even your offer of a cup of coffee.

Once they double your orignal estimate, tell you you'll get your stuff between 1 and 7 business days, take your money and then cart everything away, you discover how much dust can accumulate in 9 years.

You clean it all up in 3 hours because the new owners - you know, the ones who can actually afford to live here - will do their final walk through that afternoon.

You cry yourself to sleep in the empty house, remembering wonderful Christmases, scary birthdays, new relationships, break-ups, and most of all, your daughter growing up. You loved this house. Goodbye, house.

You drive, with a full car and one cat and one dog, to San Francisco. You will be staying with your daughter and her roommate for perhaps up to one week.

You venture into their scary bathroom. The same empty Bud Light 24 oz is laying on the filth encrusted floor in the exact same spot it was when you came up apartment hunting 3 weeks ago. You shudder in disgust. You vow to clean the bathroom the next day.

You wake that night with an asthma attack. No amount of sucking on inhaler allows you to breathe.

You spend your first day "up north" in the emergency room at UCSF on continuous nebulizers. After 10 hours, you convince the doctors to let you go. They give you facemasks to wear at daughter's dusty filthy house. Whoo hoo.

Day after boring day goes by as you convalesce. I'm too old for this shit, you think. And then it hits you. You are too old for this shit.

Finally, the movers bring your stuff. Your daughter gets told by some of the lovely tenants that, "You can't move in on a weekend. It's a rule. You're going to get a fine for this." Great. Looks like you've moved into Nazi central.(This is later confirmed when the Cable Guy can't get signal on his phone when he tries to get information on how to access the telecom closet so I can have cable, internet, phone. "Damn, lady, it's like a PRISON in here!" Oh my brother, prophesy!)

Box after box after box after box comes in. Movers leave. You roll up your sleeves.

Within 2 hours you are filthy, sweaty and have not, it would appear,  made even the slightest dent in this mess.

There is no safe haven. You have to walk sideways, step over, slide by, and keep an eye out for errant cabinet doors that administer nasty head wounds.

On the way out for her walk, your dog pees on the carpet in the hallway, right in front of someone's door. You drag her to the elevator, hoping she'll stop but there is an unmistakable trail, about 50 ft long, of pee. As you get to the elevator, you hear the offended person's door opening.

After depositing said dog in dog house (which is just a corner of the bedroom that doesn't have boxes, so it's not really the dog house, it's the one patch of fucking sanity in your ever increasingly insane world), you take a roll of paper towels, a small bucket of hot soapy water and go, on your hands and knees, to mop, scrub and sop up the mess.

After this, you really just want to go back to your apartment, the bain of your existence, but you ring the person's doorbell. After introducing yourself, you gesture feebly to the trail, now even more noticeable since you scrubbed it, and apologize for your dog's lack of manners. She smiles icily and says, "Yes, I already squirted some stuff on it for the smell." You thank her for her patience and promise it won't happen again.

You slink back to your apartment wanting to kill someone. Anyone.

You unpack ONE MORE BOX. In that box, unbelievably, is that goddamn-motherfucking-cocksucking-piece-of-shit-rat-bastard-fuckwad of a chair. The one the cleaning people didn't want. The one you told the movers to put out on the curb. The one that suddenly embodies the entire soul of this Godforsaken trip from hell on a stick that is your cute little idea of moving "up north."

You take chair from box. You do so gingerly. You don't want this fucker to have ANY IDEA what's coming. Because most of all, you don't want it to turn up again in another horrible chapter from your life.

You set it out, innocently enough, in the one area where you know it won't suspect any forthcoming foul play. The kitchen.

With its stupid, Gomer Pyle back turned to you, you pull out your tool box.

A hammer should do it.

You figure it will be an easy death - since it's completely wobbly and no one could ever stand or sit upon it without possible injury.

You rain blow upon blow on the victim of your disgust. The only thing that would make it more satisfying is if you could actually scream while you murder this fucker. But you can't. You live in an apartment now. 

So you hammer and beat and kick and stomp. All while whispering: DIE MOTHERFUCKER DIE.

And that, my friends, is how one kills a chair.

Forget Everything You Know.

Wednesday was moving day. My sis had come in from Philadelphia on Saturday and between her, some friends and my housekeepers - whom I'd no longer been able to engage for the last several months - we got everything packed, locked and ready to load. Or so I thought.

When I opened my eyes on Wednesday, I winced at the sharp pain I felt at the back of my throat. A tight cough followed. By the time I'd dropped sis off at LAX, I realized I had bronchitis. But after my L.A. doc called in some antibiotics I figured I was set. Or so I thought.

After the movers left, I was faced with the dust of 8 years, and, since the new owners were doing their final walk-through only hours later, I set about dusting, vacuuming and scrubbing every surface, floor, ceiling and wall. The sadness I felt about leaving the house came on new from every room, but the act of cleaning was therapeutic. Or so I thought.

Thursday I loaded up the car with as much stuff as it would hold - plus Biggie in his cat carrier (thank you Dr. Bill Carlsen for giving him that sedative - he slept the whole way) and Gracie, who spent the first half of the ride on my lap. I noticed my breathing getting tighter and tighter as I drove, but I comforted myself with the thought of getting to my daughter's apartment and the lovely bed I'd bought her. Ah, I thought, just get me to San Francisco, Lord. Then I'll collapse.

That was putting it lightly.

In the middle of the night, I awoke gasping for breath. Air seemed to be in short supply and I tried not to panic. All that dust, I remembered. I breathed all that dust. In combo with bronchitis, I'd touched off a full-on asthma attack.

So I spent my first full day (Friday the Thirteenth, no less) in the ER at UCSF. They wanted to admit and INTUBATE me. I thought of my friend Paul, years ago, who'd been intubated - and how he'd freaked the fuck out and tore the tube out of his lungs, throat, mouth. And ended up dead. No, no, no. That wasn't for me. Instead, they gave me continuous nebulizer treatments for about 10 hours and then reluctantly sent me home with the caveat that if I started struggling, I would come back. I promised I would, but I was resolute: I would not struggle any longer. I've struggled enough, thank you. Now was time for surrender.

I have spent the past two days sitting on my daughter's bed, reading, watching telly and talking briefly on the phone with friends. Pretty much motionless. Except for when I cough my lungs up. Or what feels like parts of them. This is new behavior. Like most women I know, I spend my days as a body in motion. To be still is a foreign concept, but I am surrendered to it. And little by little, I'm getting better.

I have this to say though: if UCSF's ER staff is any indication of SF as a whole, I'm so happy I moved here. They were professional, friendly (all doctors and nurses identified themselves by their first names) and caring. The doc who treated me for most of the day/night actually called me at Cory's yesterday to check on me. Hey, what hospital can you say does something like THAT?

My feelings about the bay area had been tentative and ambivalent. I had been under the impression that SF people were, well, snooty. That it would take effort on my part to fit in. That, having known my way around the world and its ways (of L.A.) for 28 years, I might be baffled by this brave new world up north. But all it takes to get a level check on compassion anywhere is to find yourself sick as a dog and unable to "man up." I had been measuring my expectations with the same ruler that applied to L.A. - thinking that my experiences here would be as cold as those in L.A.  So I'd planned to play my cards close to the vest. Expect the worst and hope for the best. Because to my mind, SF was a diamond: polished, hard, inaccessible and challenging.

Or so I thought.