Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

My sense of home isn’t stable right now. That isn’t a bad thing. It just is. Losing my marriage brought on a really scary sense of the rug being pulled out from under me; instability. So I learned to dance on a shifting carpet. I’ve been living here for seven years, and although I didn’t like it at first, I’ve made so many great connections here. Leaving is sad, and yet, I’m very excited to be doing it.

When I’m here, I know where the grocery store is. I know where to buy the best brand of canned tomatoes. I know when and where the farmer’s market is. I know on what night choirs rehearse. I know where to take a yoga class, where to kayak, where to karaoke, where to hike. I know where I can find the really good cat food. I know enough people to throw a party and know that it will be a great time. When I move, I will have to learn all of this stuff again. That’s not bad. It just is.

At the same time, my parents’ have sold their house. We moved into that house when I was 10 years old. Now I am 34. Before we lived there, we lived in a place about a mile away in the same neighborhood. We first moved there when I was four, so for 30 years, my parents’ neighborhood was the place I went wen I said I was going "back home." It was "base" when things weren’t going quite right.

So I don’t have the stability of a marriage. I don’t have the stability of the place to go home to, and I don’t have the stability of staying here. This has been home for 7 years. I’ve been here through a lot, and it’s a hard place to leave. I have packed 10 boxes now. This study is starting to look bare. Empty shelves. Empty closet. A large pile of boxes.

And yet, there is stability in my life, and that is in the form of people. I have wonderful people in my life. My parents don’t have that house, but I still have them. And on a more daily-basis, I have Jeep and Maggie. I adore these girls. I have my old friends, who live all over, and who I know I can call for both important and mundane reasons. I also have my online friends, many of whom have become friend in real life, too. I think of them as hanging out in a box (my computer), ready to chat no matter where I live. I’ve seen it so many times. An online friend moves across the country, and I’m still talking to them the next day, usually about something silly and unimportant. Silly and unimportant gets me through the day sometimes.

The world just keeps getting smaller and smaller.

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You may be wondering about the nicknames I’m using for myself. I was
given the nickname “Lady Cutie Troublemaker of the Midwestern Lands”
ages ago on Tribe.net, the social networking web site on which I
am extremely active. It seems to have stuck, and people who know me
well generally say that it is an ideal nickname for me. I’m moving
away soon, so I’m dropping the Midwestern Lands part. Plus, it’s such
a mouthful that way!

“Proactive Busybody” was a term given to me by my ex-husband,
Hamilton. It isn’t an insult at all. At the time he said it, he was
smiling. I’m actually quite happy with the description because it’s so
very accurate! I think maybe he and I were talking about planning a
trip or something, and I was probably saying how much I liked doing
stuff like that, and he probably said that it was OK with him that I
planned it, because I was such a “proactive busybody.” 😀

Sometimes I use “Sparky” as a nickname. This was given to me by
Hamilton as well, but he got the idea from an e-mail I received from a
professor. I had sent an inquiry to this professor some time after he
had left this university. In his response, he said that he remembered
me well, and that I had always added a spark to his class.

Now you know!

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Last night I returned from 4 days in Georgia. Saturday was spent at Flint Hill, the Lipscomb’s Farm. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were spent going through approximately 150 boxes in the basement of the house in which I grew up. These were boxes of stuff gathered from all around the house that had been put into storage units during the time the house was on the market. These boxes contained antique cameras, pictures, birth certificates, moldy old clothes, actual trash, albums, jewelry, appliances, etc. Priceless antiques were in boxes with moldy old shoes.

I made the mistake of writing “Crap” on the top of several boxes, which was apparently offputting to the estate sale ladies. My mother is currently in a bit of a quandry regarding the estate sale, as this company is the only one that will do estate sales when there isn’t a lot of furniture, and they have no dates available before the house closing on August 18th. I don’t know what will happen now, but I’m sure it will all work itself out somehow.

My parents bought our house in 1980. My mother is a pack rat. My father is a bit of a slob. I have a little of both of those qualities in me, too. So the sorting wasn’t easy. 150 boxes, four thousand square feet, two and a half days, and 25 years of detritus. My mother and I had quite a time of it. We found fascinating letters, photographs, and items. I heard a story about every piece of furniture, every painting, every item. I want to remember them all, but I think the only way I can manage that is if I get my mother to start writing now!

I am taking 15 boxes when I move next month. I’m also getting some library bookcases, a lovely sofa and chair, a hall tree, an Oriental rug, a copper coal bucket, a bedside table, mostly antiques. My mother and father talked me into taking more than I wanted, but I think they were actually right in doing that. It’s hard to imagine me with a family in a house right now, but if that ever does happen, I do think there are some things that I will want. So to that end, some other items of furniture are being put into a storage facility for me. The most important of these items are my great-grandmother’s upright piano (or was it great great grandmother?!), a 1922 roll top desk, and several brass rubbings done by my parents when we lived in England in the very early 70s.

After all of that sorting, I think that I will have a much easier time getting rid of things in my own apartment! I kept feeling like each item I took with me was an encumberment that would keep me from being able to move freely through my apartment and freely through my life.

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