Friends and Family, Moving, Settling and Pianos

So, there are a lot of things I don't understand. I don't understand Geometry or how to conjugate Latin verbs. I don't get why reality TV is popular or how the Grammy people thought Continuum was a pop album. What Hollywood thinks is entertainment these days, what the hell's going on in Washington . . . mind boggling. But the thing I don't get most of all is the people I know and deal with on a day to day basis, or near enough, at least. They . . . well, they're a mystery to me. Why is it that people I've never met face to face, people who live on other sides of the country or even in other countries are better friends to me - at least on a moral support level - than the people in my real life? Why is it that I connect better with people I'll probably never see as more than a still image from a digital camera than I do with the people next door, down the street, the ones I'm related to, the ones I've known for years?

We moved recently; there are still boxes all over my new home, but at least they're mostly boxes we've started bringing up from the basement. Some old friends of Jerry's helped us with this move, along with his sister, her husband, and his parents - some other friends of ours helped too. Thank god for Michael, Ruth and Erich, I tell you, or I'd never have made it through the moving proceedings. Regardless, we moved. Now, let me give a little background for those of you who aren't as familiar with the situation as others; we first looked at this new place the day before Halloween. We signed a lease dated to start on December first. We could finally move in shortly before Christmas - there was this whole old-tenant drama that I won't go into, but acquiring this place wasn't pleasant or easy. I tell you, the things parents will do to get their kids into a decent school system. Anyway, aside from all the hassle with the old tenant, I have two kids at home - kids who need their toys and clothes. I have a kitchen to run and I need my kids to be able to do things that keep them out of my hair for a bit every now and then. Needless to say, after about the tenth time of packing and unpacking in two months, I gave up. The old house wasn't anywhere near as clean and organized as it should have been to move - which is my fault, yeah, I get that.

But people - meaning family and old friends-not-Michael-Ruth-or-Erich - didn't need to give me shit about it and go on about how the place should have been ready to go when they got there and they're never helping us move again. For one thing, there's a reason we didn't ask them to help in the first place, and that was pretty much it. For another thing, take a look at the situation at hand before you open your big, nasty mouth and start spewing shit. It's hateful and hurtful and I've known you're not my friends for years. Jerry started to get it a while ago too, about when you traded him in for his sister. Yes, it's a huge favor to help someone move. Yes, it's a pain in the ass if shit isn't ready to go. Yes, I had a long time to get it ready, and yes, I'm home all day when Jerry's working in an office at least forty hours a week.

Sorry, last I checked, being a mom twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, was a bit more than forty hours. And I DON'T GET PAID, OR THANKED, OR JACK SHIT. So fuck off with your insinuations that I should be doing everything. If you have a houseboy (who also works at least forty hours a week, I should remind you) and full time daycare, you have no place to talk. If you're married and have a third to help you pick up and pack and all that shit, you have no place to talk. If you're not in my house all day, every day, seeing what's going on and what I'm doing, you have no place to talk.

Anyway. Thanks for helping us move, we really appreciate it. And yes, Jerry did say thank you, as many times as I did. Whether or not you chose to listen is your own issue.

And again, anyway. We're settling in quite nicely, and I love how moving into a slightly smaller space with considerably less storage space gives the impetus to get rid of shit we should have gotten rid of years ago. It'll be nice to not have so much crap, and the kids sure as heck don't need as many toys as they have. It's nice to have Michael and Ruth right up the street, and Erich and the school only a half mile or so away. Morgen's already ridiculously excited about her new school (her first school, really, but far be it from me to correct her), and going on a tour of it after the parent orientation meeting only enhanced that excitement. Every other day, she asks if she gets to go to school tomorrow; I love that she's so into the whole idea, but man. My baby's going to kindergarten in the fall, and I've been married for almost eight years. It's not the fact that I'm nearing thirty that makes me old, it's those other two things.

Now, for the most exciting part! Erich's mom's old upright piano is sitting in my dining room as we speak. It's beautiful with the carvings and the wood and . . . it goes so nicely in this flat. When we buy a house in a few years, I'm so going to have to make sure it's got woodwork that matches the baby . . . and man, it's great to hear the kids or Jerry playing that thing. I may even pick up a fake book and start learning a bit, because yeah - how do you have a piano in your house and not play? I love that there's always music in my house. I wouldn't know what to do if there wasn't.