A May Christmas-Cardy Summary

I know. You've been sitting on the edge of your seat. Checking a blog that seems to be dead. Dead as a doornail. The most recently published entries are pathetic. April and May needed some serious help.

Will the blog revive? Yes.

What happened in April and May? We didn't die (althought it has felt that way). The blog isn't defunct (although it has felt that way). We're just in the middle of moving. In fact, for the last 10 days I haven't even logged into a computer. And the ten days before that Philip was monopolizing ours day and night to tie up all the loose ends of our life.

So dry your tears! Start checking my blog again. I'm back. You will not be disappointed.

And this entry...this is the last blog of "The 8th Year". If you forgot, that's the title of my blog. This has been the 8th year that Phil and I have muddled through the world together as a couple. And it has been "a year of digging deep" and I am glad we did so much digging. Even thought we got really dirty and we haven't struck gold, I know Philip and myself better. I feel like we have had the time and taken it to figure out what we want in the next stage of our lives. And I will keep writing about how it all works out.

On June 1 the blog will have a new name and a new look. Do NOT be alarmed. It will still be little me, pecking away at the keyboard, trying to make sense of my life and pursuit of happiness.

Over the last few weeks I have experienced so much. It is more than enough material for twenty entries and then some. I wish I had a keyboard the night Phil and I stayed up all night to finish packing or the next day when Phil tried to talk to the movers and, although they were native English speakers, he could not understand a word of the Boston accents. I wish I had time to write about Ramona saying good-bye to her best friend Kate--they agreed to get married when they grow up and Kate pointed out that they'd have to be married in Boston because boys and boys and girls and girls can't be married in other states. If only I had a moment to paint a picture of Sumner's last day a school. He planted three plants in the school yard; his class toasted to him saying good-bye and good luck in English, Spanish, and Creole, over fruit punch and cheese puffs; they wrote him a book telling him how they remembered him; then they all shook his hand, one at a time, before one boy asked if they could hug him, and they did; Sumner read the class dino jokes while they waited for his bus; and then he chose to ride bus 078 home with his best friend for the last time. And the day that we were supposed to be packing up for our trip and cleaning the house, but we got locked out of our friends' car with Phil's phone on the driver's seat and had to spend our morning retrieving it and then spent the days hugging our friends good-bye. We left the next day seven hours later than planned and made it to Hartford...that's two hours from Boston.

And here I am tonight, writing in a business center in a Holiday Inn Express outside of Birmingham, on our final approach into New Orleans. As we've driven through CT, then PA, onto VA and into Tennessee for six nnights and then through GA and Alabama, I've come to realize that I am moving to the South. I know, I have been saying it for months, but there has been something about the gradual decent into the South that makes it real. Really real.

And how are we doing?

Here comes the Christmas cardy summary...

Ramona: In summary, she has logistics on her mind. She has to work out the logistics of our move and how she is going to manage it. For practice, over our last several weeks in Boston she insisted on carrying a suitcase, which was full of her toys, to school each day to distribute to her playmates. At school she also orchestrated several "moves". To move, she'd enlist the help of four or five of her peers. They'd move all of the toys from the play kitchen/costume area into the Block Room. It was a lot of work, yet Ramona accomplished it several times (with the help of her friends).

On the day we said good-bye to our house she sang a song, through her buckets of tears, that went something like this:

So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
We've got to be moving along, but we can come back and look at the front of you.
And wave hello, but we won't live inside.
We'll live in New Orleans and live by our gandparents. (SHE'S STILL CRYING HARD AND SINGING)
And we will have sleepovers at their house sometimes.
And we will have sleepovers at their house sometimes.
And I might wake up with a present by my pillow at the sleepover.
So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
We've got to be moving along.

As soon as we drove out of Boston her next question was: when will we get to the "log barn"? (The "log barn" was the log cabin we stayed in for six nights in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee) Where will Sumner and I sleep? How long will we be there?

And today, when we pulled out of the log barn she started in on the sleeping arrangements in the new house in New Orleans. "Do Mema and Grannabelle know each other?" This has been of grave concern to her. She wants to make sure that her grandparents all know each other so that they can all hang out with her at the same time, "If they do then when Grannabelle comes to visit she can sleep in my bed with me, if she doesn't wiggle, and Mema can have a sleepover too and sleep in my bed. But it might get a little squishy. And if Alex comes to visit she can also sleep with me. But not at the same time as Grannnabelle and Mema..." It goes on and on.

And she can't stand the clothes I packed for her, so she wore nothing the entire time we were in the log barn. When we went out she wore one of two outfits.

And she can't stand it when any of us so much as brush against a towel she if going to use.

And she's demanding a lot more of everyone. As my mother says, "When things are out of control, you need to control what you can."

Sumner: My sweet, sweet boy. He is doing just fine. Sumner doesn't seem to feel things in fits and spurts like Ramona. He is steady. Steady sad. Steady mellow. Steady content. His moods don't flash by they wander thru.

The last few weeks in Boston were stressful because nothing was steady. Each day a few more of his things would disappear into taped boxes. He'd storm around roaring at me for packing them away. Sometimes he'd cry. And refuse and then accept a hug and cry a little harder.

Like most kids, he lives in the now. He doesn't do a whole lot of anticipating. So the last weeks in Boston he went to gymnastics and played with Nikhil and went to school just like he always does. And he didn't think of each event as his last. When he said good-bye to Nikhil there were no kisses or hugs or tears, it was a see-you-tomorrow good-bye.

He's crying more than usual. And we're hugging a lot.

Philip: I won't presume to say how he is feeling and what he is thinking (at least not in print), but he still has a sense of humor.

He had a hard time parting with the homestead. I knew this long before he shared some tears with me and the kids at hour final farewell. He wanted to put our plunger in the dish washer and bring it along with us because "it is a really good one". He would have also thrown our toilet brush in the back of the van if I had let him. We were eating down capers until the last day and Phil was SO pleased to give away of nesting rum and tequila bottles as well as our racks for can food to happy homes.

For comic relief he watched Wedding Crashers about seven time in May and many lines from this fine film have become our anthems. Like, "Let's not take a turn to Negative Town" and "Living the dream" punctuated with some air punches to the sky and "It's be fun" "Yes, I am sure it will be fun for the people who are going [not me]" and "What an IDIOT" among many others.

He's taken care of a lot. For once we tried to divide and conquer and he took the paperwork and I took on the physical packing. This means he also took on the lion's share of worrying about money and bills and closings and mortgages. And he's done a good job. Ballard St. has new own owners and as of Wednesday Nelson St. will be ours.

There have been bad moods. Like yesterday when he had to listen to the Chronicles of Naria and then the tinny Music Machine CDs for about four or five hours straight. At the end of that he started to talk like God/Aslan until Sumner asked him to stop because he was afriad Phil may turn into a lion. Or the day when missed an exit after getting another late start, which led to a thirty minute detour. He bitched an moaned for an hour or two while I stayed cheery and then just as he was rising above it snapped at me for finally getting grouchy.

Mainly he's still laughing.

Me: I'll get to me later tonight. It is 11:01 and check out was a minute ago and I already extended it once. I need to go brush the kids' hair.