Let me tell you a story: This afternoon my four remaining housechildren came home from school, and a short time later the eldest of those children drove the younger three to an afternoon activity on his way to work, and I am alone in the house once again, having exerted no childcare effort since they left for school this morning. I am looking back over my shoulder at the days when my days were so full of childcare I would daydream about getting sent to a hospital or maybe prison, and now here I am getting another cup of coffee and queuing up another episode of West Wing. (I’m re-watching it from the beginning.)
I have been watching a lot of TV while playing phone games. I’m not watching new things: I’m re-watching, because I need more distraction than playing phone games, and I need more distraction than watching new TV, but playing phone games while watching new TV is too much. Phone games plus re-runs is perfect. This is to distract me from the stress of the maybe-house and maybe-move, which grow increasingly less “maybe.”
You might wonder if my time might be better spent packing or at least cleaning and organizing and de-cluttering, and I too wonder that. Why am I not doing that, when packing/cleaning/organizing/de-cluttering would make me feel better by reducing the amount of work that needs to be done, rather than by distracting me from it? Psychology is such a rich tapestry.
I have also been re-watching Northern Exposure. Joel Fleischman is extremely my type. I remember arguments among peers: who is cuter, Ed or Chris? It’s interesting how much younger Holling and Maurice look to me now, twenty-plus years after I first watched the series. I’m not sure if that makes me MORE or LESS squicked now by the “two men in their 60s fighting over an 18-year-old girl plotline”; I think it’s a draw. Maggie continues to be as hopelessly aspirational to me as was/is the French girl in the movie Better Off Dead, and I love Marilyn and Ruth-Anne as much as ever. Anyway it’s not too late to ditch this Big Old House in Town life option and switch to a Cabin in Alaska life option.
Northern Exposure was my JAM (I can hear my daughter cringing saying “we” don’t say that any more, mom)
Also, yeah, Joel was DEF my type. swoon. I bought the DVD of season one years ago and man that show is just the best.
“Psychology is such a rich tapestry.” I just love this blog.
I highly, highly recommend re-watching the Felicity series during this time of stress/avoidance/procrastination. It served me EXTREMELY well during a similar time some years ago.
I dream of a mild virus that demands I be in the hospital for a few days. Preferable an isolation unit? But one with good snacks.
My dream was appendicitis. Verifiable, and not curable without a wonderful stay in the hospital during which I could do nothing but recuperate.
For me it was gallbladder!
Cabin in Alaska???? Can I come? (I am assuming this is ine of those ditch the family scenarios not a pack up 4 children and a husband for alaska)
There is a store complex (for lack of a better description) for sale on an island in the bay of fundy in nova scotia. Do you want to come with me and run a grocery/general store/gift shop/diner/hardware sotre? Remote like Alaska but actually more accessible and healthcare.
That penultimate paragraph is the best thing I’ve read today. This week, maybe. And I’m a flipping English professor [instructor/lecturer/adjunct/underpaid flunky]. I’ve laughed at it heartily at least four times already, through the nose and everything. Whew. Good stuff.
I realized I was emerging from the Cave of Young Children when my dream changed from going someplace quiet, totally alone and doing noting but resting, reading adult books, and watching TV unsuitable cor children for days at a time to going someplace with friends and doing something active and fun. I can’t even exactly pinpoint when the dream changed but just realized one day that I no longer felt like being alone and isolated for days sounded like heaven.
“Psychology is such a rich tapestry.” LOL!
Loved this whole post, love this whole blog, can’t wait to hear about the move :)
I’m watching the West Wing TOO! I have thoughts about Josh Lyman.
I have lived in a cabin in Alaska and it was super fun, I highly recommend it! Everything you’d expect about small town living, plus geographic isolation, always a white Christmas, and sledding all winter for the kids!
I loved Northern Exposure so much that I have all six seasons on DVD, many of them in promotional parkas. I was so delighted to think that the show was mine to watch forever (even though the music rights problem meant the sound cues changed too often) —
And I haven’t watched anything non-Christmas related on DVD in years.
I am ridiculously pleased to hear that I can STREAM it.
And I was very much a Joel person, Chris was just Too Much for me. (Not Too Much for me to make an entire Geocities site devoted to his little radio monologues, back in 1998, but definitely Too Much to date.)
I love that I can think of my phone-game-and-streaming avoidance strategy as a thread in the rich tapestry of psychology. Bless you.
Where can you stream Northern Exposure? I would LOVE to watch it again :)
I’ve started re-watching The West Wing from the beginning and it’s as fabulous as it was the first time. I follow each episode with the coordinating West Wing Weekly podcast episode and it really makes me so, so happy. Now I’m thinking I should re-watch Northern Exposure, too.
Those are two of my favorite shows! I’m a teacher, so my busy season has just started, but next summer this is my goal!
Oh man. I always loved Joel (as a tween). Chris was just so damn wholesome and aw-shucks and I didn’t believe it for a SECOND. No thank you.
I say rest while you can. Moving is one of those overwhelming, stressful items that don’t necessarily easier by having more time. If you start earlier, it just means you do more. You will want to slowly and methodically go through those boxes in the basement that you haven’t peered into to years as you carefully evaluate the need to keep each long-forgotten item. Whereas if you pack more huriedly, you will be much more matter of fact about it and will more readily part with items (or at least that is my experience).
Rest while you can. If the move becomes a reality, you will soon be up to your eyeballs in boxes and grateful you relaxed a little.
Speaking of being up to your eyeballs in boxes, let’s talk about where to get boxes. This is a good way to MENTALLY prepare without actually taking action, YET. I moved this year and here is where I got boxes:
-Grocery store liquor section, or liquor store (make sure they still have the flaps on).
-A friend or neighbor who gets grocery or meal kit delivery.
-Order bulky sundries shipped to yourself. Target for example will put a 24 pack of TP in an ENORMOUS box with a surprising amount of sealed air (which you can also keep) for something so non-fragile.
Anyone else have a trusty source for boxes?
Home Depot. Buy them new. Packing is already a horrible jangle of seventy million individual items and chores. You can’t save enough money to be worth the stress of running around to liquor stores cadging boxes!
My husband’s uncle moved from his old home after his beloved wife of 40 years died. It was an overwhelming chore for an 89-year-old, and when we showed up to help pack, he was writing down directions to all the stores in town we should go to for boxes. He was also pale, shaky and just unraveling. We took him to Home Depot, made him buy twice as many boxes as he thought he needed (it wasn’t enough,) and he got himself in hand. Now he has moved on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky, is dating a lovely wealthy widow, and is everyone’s ideal for how to be 91. I credit the boxes.
We live in a small town and own a retail store. EVERYTHING comes to us in boxes. We break them down nice and list them on craigslist continuously for moving boxes.
We also save the plastic bags everything comes in and offer it as packing material.
A small non-chain store might be willing to do the same. We know of at least one other store a block away that does this. Lots of large stores with tons of boxes/packaging actually get money back recycling through local garbage collection while smaller stores end up paying for it to be hauled away.
You have bonus satisfaction of tossing/recycling when a move is over knowing that the packaging material was already re-used once. If that is the sort of thing you find satisfying.
Wonderful advice ! This has been a first
concern of mine in recent years whenever I’ve thought we might be moving .
NextDoor app and any neighborhood or school district FB pages you are on. Someone is always moving, and wants to be rid of boxes afterwards without breaking them down for recycling.
If you know anyone with kids in diapers, diaper boxes are excellent: sturdy, handles, small enough to put books in and not get too heavy. A+ boxes
Well. As someone who spent a month or so this summer de-cluttering and planning and prepping for a move that did not in the end happen, my very important opinion is that you are doing the right thing. I am still reeling from the about face (even though it was a GOOD thing). So do nothing until it is certain is my advice.
I am now on my third watching of the Great british Baking Baking Show.
Yes, this was my advice, too. Let those chickens hatch all the way.
My fantasy has been to win a week vacation to some really girly place so that I can grab a girlfriend and go get pampered while my husband is forced to take care of the kids all by himself. He could muddle through letting them walk around in pajamas and eating cookies for lunch and carrying them to bed after falling asleep on the couch watching Jaws at 10pm for a day, but not a week. In a week he’d have to deal with the fallout himself. And good old mom would be incommunicado.
I went on a ten day trip to visit a friend who lived in Zambia, and I soooo wanted my husband to live this exact version of reality. But he cheated! He took the kids to his mom’s house while I was gone. Even left them there for several days. The trip was glorious, but I’m still disappointed he didn’t experience what it’s like to be the primary caregiver of small children for more than 12 hours at a time.
Girl, ME TOO.
I love watching The West Wing over and over. It’s definitely comforting. I just started it for the 4th time through.
Have you seen Veronica Mars? It was just added to Hulu. Very fun and satisfying show to rewatch. I also like Friday Night Lights enough to rewatch it. And Frasier is super fun, too.
I want to go watch/rewatch Northern Exposure now!
We, too, are rewatching West Wing from the beginning. In a nod to the times, however, we have a new method: frequent cries of “Pause” in order to discuss comparatively how an issue or situation is handled by the Bartlett administration with aplomb, dignity, statespersonship, honor, intellect, compassion, wisdom, humor, selflessness, and so on, in comparison with Another Administration.
Add me to the list of “hospital stay” fantasies!
I watched Northern Exposure in high school. I preferred to watch it alone because I found it to be really spiritual in some way, philosophical perhaps; it was my respite. And yes, Joel is my type.
Oh!!! Northern Exposure! Adding that to my Amazon list now! Years ago we went to Roslyn, where it was filmed and it was magical.
Kevin and I actually argued about packing up the old house. We rarely argue but oh boy, my feet-dragging caused one. :) I think I am motivated by fear and panic sometimes. It all gets done eventually.
I play Farmville on my tablet while watching television…so there’s that too.
I have a fantasy about getting picked for a long, long jury duty stint somewhere local, where I’d have to be sequestered from the news but would still get to sleep in my own bed. It would have to be some kind of complicated non-violent white collar crime.
Ah-Northern Exposure! I loved that show! I grew up south of Chicago born in 1960, and one of grandfather’s friends had a subscription to Alaska Magazine, now that I think of it, he might have been stationed here in WWII. Grandpa knew I loved all things wilderness and would get them from his friend and pass them on to me. Anyway, while all my friends had pictures of Donny Osmond and David Cassidy on their bedroom walls, I had the centerfold of Alaska Magazine. I was entranced…I wanted to visit so badly. In 1991-I was at a bit of a crossroads, I was 30-and I thought-why not just move to Alaska? Worst case scenario, it was horrible and I would move back. But it wasn’t horrible, it was wonderful. I moved quite a bit before then, living in Illinois and Kansas-different places, but as soon as I got here, I felt like it was home.
Northern Exposure wise though-I was leaving my job my first winter here, leaving the parking lot and turning into an alley, and there in the snow and moonlight was a huge bull moose. It was one of the most exciting moments in my life-I mean he was right there-at my work!! I can’t really express how satisfying that was to me, going back to a very young girl in the 60’s in a suburb, dreaming of wildlife and wild places.
I live in Anchorage, so not in a remote cabin-but the great thing about Alaska is that wilderness is like a 10 mile drive away. So I’m all for a Swistle Alaskan Tour!!! My husband mans his BBQ all year round-we are ready to be a pitstop!!
“You might wonder if my time might be better spent packing or at least cleaning and organizing and de-cluttering, and I too wonder that. Why am I not doing that, when packing/cleaning/organizing/de-cluttering would make me feel better by reducing the amount of work that needs to be done, rather than by distracting me from it? Psychology is such a rich tapestry.”
You are one of my favorite people in the world.