Last Day of Normal

Today was, I think, the last day of Roseville-normal. Lucia got up at 7. Andrew came home for lunch and got home for good at 5:30. In between Lucia and I played, took a walk, bounced in her doorway bouncer.

Within the normalcy was a quickly escalating chaos; I juggled emails and phone calls from people interested in things I posted on Craigslist, and a couple of people came over to look at the car and the fridge. Andrew had to make an unexpected trip to the dermatologist (he’s fine), then had to rush back here with the car so someone could see it. Lucia can tell something’s up—she’s clingier than usual, wailing immediately as soon as I’m out of her sight. She’s usually fine playing on the floor blanket or in her saucer contraption while I putter around, but not the last couple of days.

Starting next week, everything’s different. Roofers are coming on Sunday to start replacing the roof, a project that was supposed to take place while we were in New Hampshire. Of course, we’ve now cancelled that trip, which means next week I might have to spend every day at the mall to get away from all the banging. (Our landlord was going to try to reschedule it—then landed unexpectedly in the hospital with a serious health problem; we obviously told him not to worry about the roof.) A moving guy will come on Thursday to assess our stuff. And then it all begins in earnest on the 15th.

I was flipping through the New Yorker today and realized that, for the first time in years, I’ll be able to go to all the art exhibitions I want to. Picasso at the Met—I’ll be there. Henri Cartier-Bresson at the MoMA and late-work Monet at the Gagosian—I’ll be there for those, too. I will be a New Yorker again in less than two weeks.

In the meantime—we have appliances to sell, a mountain of stuff to take to Goodwill, and an off-kilter, possibly-about-to-teethe baby to snuggle and soothe. Things are a little crazy.

Comments