Boxes All ‘Round

I don’t even fool myself into thinking this time will be the last. I picture myself at 83 years old, arthritis twining around my bones, packing a banker’s box with books, muttering to myself “simplify, simplify” and trying to decide if I really need to keep that trashy historical romance about Sleepy Hollow (I will, of course). I’ll be as crazy as my grandmother (it doesn’t matter which one, they were both a bit nuts in their heyday, although my mom’s mom definitely made the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest look like a kindergarten class off their Ritalin) but I will have enough a grasp on reality to know that I need more boxes, much like I do now.

As you may surmise, I am planning a move. Uh-GAIN.

This time it’s because having a cracked out middle-aged man come running up to me and start screaming at me for calling the police on him doesn’t make me feel like, to paraphrase the ancient knight in the third Indiana Jones movie, I have chosen wisely. Also because the St. Pete Police’s Narcotics guy responded to my complaint about the related drug problem on the alley by my house was the first he’d heard of a drug problem on the alley. Apparently he doesn’t hear much, what with his head buried in the sand and all. ‘Course, since our mayor has his head firmly up his ass about the crime problem in the south side of the city, I guess the officer’s only following suit.

I no longer feel safe alone in my home, and I am done. So much for the naive liberal of three years ago. I guess it’s easier to be open-minded in a safe neighborhood. Ah, well, we all gotta go sometime…

But the good news is that the fine folks at R. W. Caldwell Realty (who have yet to trudge into the new millenium with a web site or else I would gladly link to it here so that all three of my readers could click on it) have agreed to manage the property as a rental for me and, should someone be more daring than I, sell it). They’ve been incredibly helpful, stopping just shy of letting me store my piano at their office until I settle somewhere else, even though one of their property managers plays (come on, Poul, I KNOW you read this, it’d be a great fun on a Friday afternoon, or you could celebrate every closing with a little song. No OTHER Realtor in town does that, I’m pretty sure).

As per usual, I’m not real sure where I’m going or when I’ll get there, but I’m amazingly OK with that. I think I’m part nomad, happier wandering.

It’s just hard to fit all the boxes on my back.