Skipping Town

This weekend, Andrew and I went antiquing in Midtown. And we found treasures, bureaus and desks and shelves and buffets we don’t have nearly enough room for. We didn’t have much luck at our first stop, Homestyle (2403 21st Street); there were some beautiful pieces, but too beautiful for our budget. We fared much better at our next stop, at the antiques place on J Street in the 20’s (I’m not actually sure what the name is…). This enormous furniture and knick-knack warehouse was crammed with dusty bookshelves, colorfully-painted bureaus with charming rounded edges, dark wooden buffets that made me wish we owned a big Gothic mansion. Still not ready to commit to anything, we drove on to Shabby Shack (3655 J Street), where we instantly wanted everything inside: farmhouse cabinets with peeling paint, worn-looking chests of drawers, cupboards with stained-glass doors. Ultimately we chose a cream-colored cabinet, and delivery was promised within the hour. When the man arrived, he helped A...

March 26, 2006. On or around that date, I packed up everything in my Brooklyn apartment, carefully wrapping each mug, each bowl, each framed item from the walls. I wrapped some especially breakable things in pillowcases that would otherwise have gone in the trash. I rolled the carafe to my coffee maker in sheet after sheet of paper, turning it into a big pillow of newsprint. On Monday, when our ReloCube finally arrived and we began unpacking, Andrew smoothed out a sheet of the Times and noted that date: March 26, 2006. Pieces of a former life, frozen in time. I remember those days of packing up. Though saying “yes” to Andrew’s marriage proposal was by far the easiest and most exciting decision I ever made, deciding to move to Barcelona was pretty close. And then there were so many weeks of waiting, of planning and loose-end-tying and more waiting, before I could finally start packing. I don’t remember the specifics of packing—but I remember the constant sense of giddy anticipation as ...

Radiator covers: how hard could they be to make? That was our thinking when we assessed our apartment last week in preparation for the ReloCube’s arrival. The radiators in the living room and bedroom are so long (73 inches and 53 inches, respectively) that we lose valuable wall space and wind up with industrial-looking focal points. How hard, really, could a radiator cover be to construct? It’s just a box with metal grating in the front. And so began our first home improvement project. There was a moment, this weekend, when we felt we’d suddenly jumped in over our heads. Several moments, actually. The first was when we found ourselves at Home Depot on Friday night (we’re so married!), instructing a guy in the lumber department to cut a huge sheet of plywood into pieces in a variety of sizes. (We arrived at Home Depot without even a sketch, so deciding on the sizes took a fair bit of deliberation, as the lumber guy looked on warily.) Soon we had a cartful of plywood, as well a box of na...

We’re ready. We’re waiting. Everything is in place: I rented orange-and-white construction barriers (complete with flashing lights) and “NO PARKING” signs to reserve parking spots on the street for the ReloCube and the truck that will deliver it. We’ve gotten an “encroachment” permit so our cube can sit out on the curb without getting a ticket. And I’ve scheduled a four-hour-window delivery time with ABF U-Pack for Monday. Yes, Monday. A snowy start in Pennsylvania and who knows what else have delayed our cube’s arrival time from January 10 to January 14. I am losing patience quickly, even though most of me is just relieved that the cube has not yet disappeared (let’s hope the same goes for its contents). I tracked it online from Pennsylvania to Dayton to Chicago to Lincoln, Nebraska…now it’s slated to arrive in Reno this afternoon. It’s close, so close. Our toaster oven and soup pots and sweaters. Our books and Romanian sheepskin pelt and frying pans. Our DVDs and alarm clock and meas...

Believe it or not, our belongings are finally en route to California. Over Christmas, Andrew and I packed up our wedding gifts and re-packed some of the things in my parents' attic and filled a ReloCube--a 6 x 7 x 8' shed-like contraption with doors swing open for loading. We filled it about 2/3 of the way, a pretty hefty tangle of books and odd pieces of furniture and kitchenwares and who knows what else. (Some of those boxes were packed almost two years ago--unpacking them will be a kind of excavation.) The ReloCube began its journey today. A man came to Connellsville and loaded it onto a truck with a fork-lift; despite having a tracking number, I have the sense of having packed up everything quite nicely for a thief. We strategically bought renter's insurance the day we loaded up the cube, but that's a small comfort. My fingers are crossed that the cube somehow makes it home.