The Boxes
Sci-Fi Saturday Night is having a Charity Art Auction to raise money for Jeanine Robinson, the wife of author Spider Robinson, who is dealing with cancer. I partook in the art jam pieces at GraniteCon and the Boston ComiCon. Click the links to see the pieces. 
And so it has begun. On Friday I finished the last issues of Atomic Robo Volume 4. Saturday we lazed around for the first time in forever -and boy was the weather great for that. Just warm enough and sunny so that you perpetually felt like “right now” was the perfect time to catch a quick nap. And then it all fell apart on Sunday when we started organizing for our move in five weeks time.
Dorinda filled 7, 12″x12″x16″ boxes with poetry stuff, (ranging from actual books, to her notes from Grad school), has a nearly equal mass of books obscuring our kitchen table marked for a May 15th yard sale -and since we don’t have a dining room, that’s sort of a problem-, and she still has a bookcase in the living room, and one in the upstairs hallway to clean out. There are also three boxes marked “holy” which means they are full of personal nick-knacks that given the smallest window of opportunity I would throw out while she wasn’t looking, unless she warned me not to. Which in this case she has.
Dee was lamenting that even though she’s packed a lot of stuff and set a truly admirable amount of other stuff aside for the yard sale and/or a one-way trip to the dump, you’d never know, looking into our cramped little office, that she’d done anything. With sincerity I suggested that this might be a sign that she has entirely too much bullshit in her life.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, or just happen to know my wife and her weirding ways, you won’t need me to describe her reaction to this. She might have mentioned about 230lbs. of bullshit she was thinking she could happily part with.
As further evidence in the solid argument that I was building in the case of SANITY -vs- DORINDA WEGENER, I pointed out that in our attic were approximately 7 other boxes full of dank and moldering books and papers that were “to important” to get rid of the last time we moved. They once bore an uncanny resemblance to the mountain of fresh new boxes currently blocking access to my fucking desk where I need to be in order to work. I think I was also stupid enough to point out that her dad had a similar Yankee-Pack-Rat sickness and that cleaning out his tiny apartment nearly killed me, and cost us close to a grand in dumpster rentals, and if she loved me and wanted me to be less of a dick, she would pack less stuff.
All I know is that I broke my back two months ago. There are exactly 8 Very Heavy Things that I plan on moving. This does not include the single long-box full of graphic novels, or the 2, 12″x12″x16″ boxes that my recently condensed book and RPG collection are in. If she’s keeping all this stuff, then she’s moving it.
It’s not that I enjoy being a dick to my wife. Not normally. I usually prefer to let her start the dickery, then strike back with equal or greater dick, and we escalate from there until one of us has a tantrum and wins the Maturity Award for that week.
I’m pretty sure that this move is going to tax my marriage and my family like nothing has in recent years. The last time we moved it happened fast. I quit a job that came with housing. Two weeks later we were settled someplace entirely new. This time we’ve been working out the logistics for half a year and are just now starting the dirty work -if you don’t count the dirty work that’s already happening on Staten Island.
To say that Dorinda has some anxiety issues is to say that maybe the Tea Party has one or two slightly bigoted members. As soon as she is packing she is freaking the fuck out. About what? Who the fuck knows? She sure doesn’t! That’s how anxiety attacks work. Add to that my constantly aching back, and a 9yr old who is uninterested in helping some of the time, is usually standing right where you need to be like a blond road cone the other part of the time, and is ready to throw a stink-fit over anything you might want to get rid of that she had some hand in making;
“Daddy, you can’t get rid of that!”
I examine the rumpled piece of gross, strangely damp, craft paper. It is missing a corner and has some scribbles on it that my child invested at least three, but no more than five, seconds in creating.
“Why the hell not? It’s a wreck, and I’m pretty sure it was wreck before the paper got damaged.”
“I made that for you.”
And that is the length and breadth of her argument. And of course, I have to pretend like it’s convincing.
And then I throw the rumpled piece of shit away the second she’s not looking. I’ve got more than enough macaroni encrusted paper plates and plaster hand prints to last me for three lifetimes, thank you very much. Besides, she knows her mom keeps all that bullshit anyway . . .
So I’ve got a darling child who vacillates between helping and not helping, and who is generally in the way regardless of what mode she is currently operating in, and an anxiety ridden wife who takes out all her anxiety on me, because apparently, “I Do” is some sort of sanskrit anagram for “You may punch me in the balls whenever you need to.”
The POD arrived the day I get back from Heroes Con. I am seriously thinking about sending the two of them on ahead to New York without me so I can just pack the thing alone. It would be a bitch of a job, but it would at least be quiet and metal-stress free.
In other news; THE DAY AFTER RAGNAROK is awesome.
