The Last Moments

The very last moments are the hardest. The echoing bare walls and floors... their cleanliness only reminding me that things looks nice because of their emptiness. Suddenly I feel like crying, knowing that this is it, it's the end, our time in this house is done. It almost feels strange because I was never attached to it. I've learned not to be, something particularly important in the life of an expatriate with an uncertain future. I also feel dizzy, almost nauseated by the simple motion of getting close to the walls, looking up and stretching my arm to remove the nails that were there. The nails that held pictures, photos, little things that make a home. Maybe I'm dizzy because of sheer exhaustion -- going to bed at 4 a.m. one day and then at 5 a.m. the next day, only sleeping a couple of hours each night -- that is enough to make one feel sick (that reminds me that I should be sleeping and not blogging).

I can't remember when was the last time I slept in an empty house, though. We usually never do, moving in and out of houses in the same day. That's how it is meant to be when one is moving to a place nearby. So it's all the mortgage company's fault!! I was so glad that my husband hadn't shared this with me earlier, only last night as we were struggling to continue packing, "drunk" and numb from our sleeplessness -- he would have hired movers if we had been able to close on both houses on the same day. Isn't that infuriating? I never gave a second thought to the fact that we were "doing-it-ourselves" since I've been conditioned from a young age to always do the cheapest thing, but K explained to me that he decided to go with the storage boxes because our stuff would have to be stored for nearly a week and that it would be very costly to have movers and storage somewhere before reaching the final destination. Our belongings would have had to be loaded to a truck, unloaded at a storage facility and the same steps again to unload at the new house. I didn't really know that K was seriously considering movers since, after all, he received [will receive in 3 months] a bonus so we could afford the relocation. Isn't it infuriating to think that we're going through this because of somebody else's fault?

Why does an empty house elicit such different feelings depending on the circumstance? Why wouldn't I even consider the idea of taking photos of this house now, but I was very enthusiastic taking photos of the new house when it was empty during last week's inspection? In that case, the emptiness is hopeful, it holds promises of things to come when we make that house ours; in our case right now the emptiness is merely melancholic, almost depressing. I don't like the feeling of having to inhabit a half-empty and then an empty house for several days. It feels very unsettling, temporary, insecure.

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Some scattered reflections and updates about the move and the sale of this house:

This afternoon as I was stuffing the very last things in some of the storage boxes when the truck came to take them away and all of our possessions were removed from here.* Well, except for several other things that either didn't fit or needed to be on our possession during the time in-between houses. And now we don't know what to do with all this stuff! We're probably going to leave some of it at our neighbor's house and pick it up later... it would have been better to have asked for another box (already included in the price), but that would involve more hassle.

Important consideration about self-moving: as I packed our stuff I thought that for people who are organized and neat and who unclutter their homes regularly it's probably not that hard to move. That's not the case with us, though, quite the contrary. Besides, in our last move we had a newborn and a two year old plus a dissertating husband, so my parents did almost all the packing and we weren't able to discard many items.

Boxes
For 12 and a half years now I have been saving the boxes of nearly all items we buy or get as presents (e.g. most of appliances, including TV, microwave and computer) because I knew we were going to move again soon. After we got married we saved the boxes of the countless presents we received because we knew that we were going to live abroad, then we continued doing the same, all with the return to Brazil in sight -- a big move in which we were going to take a large container (by ship) full of stuff. And now, when we're finally settling down I want to discard those boxes. I feel self-congratulatory about having saved them -- at least it's environmentally sound since we don't have to get other boxes for lots of the stuff -- it may compensate just a tiny bit in face of the tons of polluting items we're putting in the trash (again today).

Happiest news about the sale of the house
Yesterday I was caught by surprise by the arrival of the buyers and their realtor. They were coming for the final "walk through" and hadn't told us in advance about it. I'm so thankful for that!! They were measuring the walls so they could plan their move and they were just about ready to leave when they remembered to check if their fridge would fit. "Fridge? I asked. Are you bringing your fridge?" When they said they were I immediately explained that we were concerned that we were going to have to buy a new one for the other house and I wondered if they'd let us take it (even thought it was not "excluded," like the washer and drier were, in the listing of the house and the disclosure) -- and they said it was OK!!! So all of a sudden we had to another item to load in one of the boxes and it took me quite a while to get it cleaned and ready. Good thing our neighbor was able to help carry it too. And to compensate a bit for the extra and unexpected object in the box (it did make a big difference in the end -- almost everything would have fit if we weren't taking the fridge) I filled the fridge with most of my linen closet! :)

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OK, I'm totally exhausted and I can hardly write anymore, let alone end this post in the poetic note it started. I actually needed to write another very special post about Kelvin, but I guess that one will have to wait until tomorrow or later.

I just want to say that I wish I could be more excited about the move, but the prospect of having to wait several more days in homelessness before we can get in the new house is very off-putting (um balde de água fria - a cold water bucket, as we'd say in Portuguese).

It looks like tomorrow is going to be a very, long day. I hope to post again from my BIL's house, but let's see how things go.

*I took pictures, but with the video camera, so I won't be able to download them right away since I don't know where the cable is.