Out Of It

Forrest City, Arkansas


We left Tennessee today. We'll be back to visit my parents and the friends we left behind, but I doubt, strongly, we'll ever move back.

My elation at leaving Tennessee is tempered by the fact that my computer bag slipped off my shoulder while I was checking the car doors here at the hotel, and fell to the ground. Now there is a vertical line going up and down the right side of my monitor. This is the sort of thing that is probably permanent and may never go away. It'll be expensive, at the least, to get it fixed.

The past three days have been spent packing up all of our possessions into boxes, getting most of those boxes, all of the furniture, and a bunch of other stuff into a cargo container parked out front of our house, which should have been hauled away today after the closing (I'll have to call tomorrow to confirm that).

The closing, at least, went off without a hitch. We lost three grand on the house (which we had to borrow to pay off, which gives me no pleasure) but at least the final home inspection and the closing ceremony went well. We also got our carry-with-us stuff packed up nicely and the critters behaved well while in transit. And we made it nearly four hundred and fifty miles after getting a very late start to our travels. But right now I can only seem to focus on the negative:

1. The internet connection here at the hotel times out after about fifteen seconds.

2. I'm really, really pissed at myself for busting my computer monitor. I should have been patient and done one thing at a time. But for reasons which will be apparent after reading items below, I didn't feel like I could get away with only doing one thing at a time because I've had to do things three at a time for the past week and it seems that everyone has been pissed off at me for not having things done three days ago, so I just didn't get out of the mode of multi-tasking.

3. I'm very tired after three stressful days, complete with long discussions with my parents about finances and having to borrow money I shouldn't have had to have paid in the first place.

4. The Wife has been irritated and cross with me intermittently all day. At times it's seemed I couldn't do anything fast enough, correctly, or at all without angering her, even when things were beyond my control. I know she's upset and stressed out too.

5. Sassafras will not "do her business" while on a leash and both dogs seem to have completely lost their minds.

6. Last night I didn't get nearly enough sleep; we had no bed and slept on an air mattress and in sleeping bags. It sounded like festival-o-latex last night (and not in a good way) until I realized that I would have to dispense with the inflatable pillow. My sleeping bag would not zip up properly without a struggle and I tried to sleep for about two hours on the floor. My all of me aches right now.

7. We're still waiting for a check to clear into our account that we received almost two weeks ago, so we can have some actual money.

8. Even though I really was not fond of Tennessee, I'm going to miss all of the friends we made there. Two weeks of good-byes hasn't helped; nor did making my mother cry because I was leaving.

9. Today I sold the only piece of real property I've ever owned. It's been a dream of mine for a long time to own property and now I've had to let that go and return to a place where I know the price of land is astronomical and again it seems out of reach.

The cumulation of all this stress has finally made me lose it and I just said something nasty to The Wife and now I really regret it. I've apologized but it doesn't make things any better. Although I'm very, very tired and it's quarter to midnight according to my internal clock, I'm just plain too upset right now to even consider sleeping.