We’ve been in the new house four nights, and this morning our dimmest cat is alerting me that SOMETHING IS AMISS!! He’s walking rapidly from room to room, making the mer-SQUEAK sound he makes instead of a normal meow. Then he comes back to me and looks at me urgently: SOMETHING IS DIFFERENT HERE!! He can’t quite put a paw-pad on it, but something is DEFINITELY NOT QUITE AS IT WAS BEFORE!! Poor sweet little dummy.

Yesterday Paul and I made progress on one of our New House Plans. The center of our town has a whole bunch of restaurants, but downtown parking is a colossal pain so we’ve only been to two of them. Now that we can walk to downtown, our plan is to start on one end and go all the way to the other end, eating in each restaurant once. (Er, over a period of months. Not, like, in a row on the same day.) Yesterday we had lunch at Restaurant One–or rather, at Restaurant Two, because it turned out Restaurant One is closed on Sundays. Good to build in a little flexibility right from the start.

Restaurant Two was perfect for us. I love to eat breakfast out and Paul doesn’t, and Paul is not what I’d call an Adventurous Eater (neither am I, but compared to him I am). Restaurant Two is the kind that has breakfast all day, with tons of sides options (including a side of French toast, which is exactly as much French toast as I want to have), so you can have the huge some-of-everything sort of breakfast I like to have at a restaurant, but/and they also had good and interesting hamburgers for Paul. They had good coffee and nice servers who kept refilling the coffee, and I liked their sturdy colorful dishware, and they had a big board listing all the local places they get their ingredients/supplies from. Clearly a lot of the customers were regulars, because they and the servers were catching up before ordering: “How’s your daughter doing at college?” “Is your mom settling in at the home?” etc. I kept making enthusiastic remarks about everything until Paul said, “Remember we are going to eat at ALL the restaurants; we are not going to fall in love with this one and never go to any of the others.” Okay but what about the side of French toast.

I took the three littler kids back to the old house yesterday. They’re supposed to be going through the detritus remaining in their rooms, boxing up what they actually want to keep so that we can bulldoze out what’s left. Yesterday I said idly to Paul that perhaps we should arrange to donate our old house to the fire department for one of their practice planned-burn exercises, so that we don’t have to deal with what’s left. I hate going over there now: it makes me sad, and also it’s overwhelming how much still needs to be done. We’re chipping away at it, but UG this is taking forever. I stand there and I have no idea what to start with. Yesterday I cleaned out under the fridge, which seemed…low-priority. But it ALL needs to be done, and sometimes the best thing is to just DO ANYTHING rather than standing there trying to rank everything in order of importance.

I am wondering how weird this is going to be for Rob. He was home for Thanksgiving in the old house, and when he comes home in a week and a half for winter break it’ll be to the new house. I wondered briefly if it would have been better to wait for him to come home to do the main part of the move, since the other six of us are doing a lot of Adjustment Rituals (special dinners; treats on the coffee table in the evenings; deciding where to put things) that are helping us settle in and get used to this together, and Rob is missing out on all that. Then I imagined trying to do the worst part of the move five days before Christmas, and Rob coming home to a lot of physical labor and two parents at the ends of their ropes (one parent weeping and saying “I know it’s temporary but I am SO MISERABLE!!”), and it seems like it was probably better to do it the way we did it.

So this was not the IDEAL time for WordPress to do an update and make EVERYTHING LOOK COMPLETELY DIFFERENT back in this blog-post-writing area. As if I do not have enough new things to get used to right now, WORDPRESS!

Well. We soldier on. I will say that this morning is significantly less bleak than yesterday morning. There are many factors:

1. I temporarily ditched my keto diet. I was feeling physically terrible (queasy, awash in spent and fresh adrenaline, exhausted, sore) as well as emotionally terrible (overwhelmed, stressed, sad, angry, endlessly reliving the confrontation with the movers), and I took the advice I remember seeing about how in times of crisis you should EAT and not worry so much about WHAT. Almost immediately I felt much, much better. Plus, we could eat dinner without having to have the kitchen settled yet: we ordered pizza and fries and ate at the table and it was a NICE time instead of a huge stressful ordeal of trying to cook, or else ordering pizza for everyone except me, and then having me eating cheese sticks and hard-boiled eggs while everyone else had delicious hot food; and then I put out on the coffee table a selection of my day-off treats and we all sat in the living room and had treats and looked at the Christmas tree. And then the next morning when I was starting to panic about having not ordered a Christmas gift for Paul’s sister yet, I got out a pack of Entenmann’s Little Bites and a fresh cup of coffee, and Elizabeth and I went on the computer and got that done.

2. We got the kitchen mostly settled. It’s not DONE, but I took an assortment of advice from the comments section and we tried to just Make Decisions, with the idea that we can later switch around anything we find we keep going to the wrong drawer/cabinet for. Paul made dinner in the kitchen last night, and it was definitely a situation of “we have not formed these neural pathways yet”–but we were THINKING “we have not formed these neural pathways yet,” which helped.

3. I got a lot of my bathroom stuff put away. The cabinet is still scraping the lightbulbs, but my moisturizer and lip balm and deodorant are where I expect to find them.

4. I am taking my mild sedatives. I’m taking a half-dose during the day, when I need to be able to keep moving; I take a full dose a couple of hours before bed. This has also made an immediate difference in me being able to sleep all the way through the night, which has GOT to be a big improvement over waking up at 3:00 in the morning to hyperventilate about all the things that won’t seem so bad in the morning.

5. A new neighbor (already an acquaintance, but now we live near her) stopped by with a plate of banana muffins and a welcome to the neighborhood, and told us what a great neighborhood this was, especially for taking walks. She listed a bunch of other acquaintances of ours who live around here, too. I don’t know if it’s true of everyone, but I can say for myself that if you are ever thinking “Should I stop by the new neighbors’ house with a plate of muffins/cookies or is that weird?,” it was not only NOT WEIRD but also I have been getting damp-eyed every time I think of it, and also I have eaten two banana muffins and they have been extremely heartening.

6. We walked to the library, and it took six or seven minutes, which is how long it used to take us to drive there.

7. Just WRITING about it yesterday helped, and then the comments section helped even more. Right now I am typing fast while Paul works, feeling as if I need to stop sitting here and start helping, so I don’t feel like I can go look for the quotes and transfer them—but there were many, many comments that have been bolstering me at bad moments. And just hearing how other people have been through this same thing and are now fine/happy/settled has been very, very bolstering.

I am trying not to wear you out on this topic, but I believe it to be unavoidable: as with a life change such as a new baby, there is no way even a rapt audience is going to want to hear as much as the new parents want to say. But these things can be nice to have as resources, later, when trying to remember how messed-up things were for awhile after the baby/move/surgery/whatever.

We have moved, and everyone is so happy for us, and I am so miserable. I know from previous experience that it is temporary misery. Do you remember the story about when Paul and I moved to a new state long ago in our youth, and I was 100% on board and happy with that move and in fact it was my idea, and I had no sad feelings about leaving my previous apartment, and the traveling was surprisingly fun, and then we got to the new city, and we were having dinner out and I realized I had left my toothbrush at the last hotel. And, good news: there was a drug store visible through the restaurant window, we could just stop there and get a new one! And then in the store I had a weepy meltdown because I couldn’t find the toothbrush aisle in this strange new store in this strange new city in this strange new state.

And anyway, without further revisiting that whole stressful time (the BUTTER STICKS were A DIFFERENT SIZE), I will say that my misery was intense, and I recognize it again now, and last time it was not a very long time before the misery was gone and could be turned into family language (“not knowing where the toothbrushes are” is used to describe any situation where temporary disorientation is leading to out-of-proportion misery).

BUT I AM SO MISERABLE. I hate everything about this. I don’t want to live here. I want my old house back. The movers were over three hours late and then tried to overcharge us, and it led to an emotional confrontation I can’t stop replaying in my mind even though it is over and settled (he wanted us to feel BAD for him because moving is “such hard work!!”—and that was his argument for why we should pay him for 9.5 hours instead of the 7.5 hours they actually worked). It feels impossible to figure out meals. One of the showers doesn’t yet have a shower curtain so we keep having to figure out how to get everyone showered in the other shower, which has a crummy weak showerhead, and the over-the-showerhead rack we have for shampoo and stuff doesn’t fit over it.

I am reminded of some of the things I’ve seen here and there and have found helpful in previous miseries. Things like “Eat some food, and don’t worry about what kind of food”—like, get pizza if getting pizza is what you can manage, don’t be all “No, it also has to be PURE RIGHTEOUS BEST-BITE food.” Things like “Take your vitamins/medicines.” Why does that seem too hard? I don’t know, but sometimes it does. I have a prescription for a mild sedative, given to me by my doctor for this exact kind of anxiety-misery; why am I still hoarding them as if there will be a better time to use them? “Drink a glass of water.” It seems like it won’t help so why bother, but it’s quick and simple and sometimes it’s the only manageable step. Unless the cups are all still packed. Maybe have bottles of water on hand for this.

I am also reminded of postpartum, when everything feels impossible and unmanageable, and even though everyone says “Don’t worry about it, just take care of you and the baby,” it just feels IMPOSSIBLE to do that. The dishes can’t just SIT THERE!! The baby’s clothes need LAUNDERING, or at least stain-treating. What about the thank-you notes? And there are half a dozen appointments I’m supposed to be making. There are SO MANY THINGS THAT NEED DOING AND I CAN’T DO ANY OF THEM. It seems like “Just take care of you and the baby” was better advice for the times when a household had a cook and several maids and also a night-nanny.

Anyway I am trying to remember how that time too was a time that passed. Eventually there was plenty of time to handle the dishes and the laundry. Eventually it was not a mind-strengthening logic puzzle to figure out how on earth I was going to take a shower. Eventually I wasn’t crying multiple times a day. I am finding huge comfort in commenter Corinne’s comment about her move:

I just saw a “one year ago” memory for myself on Facebook that said “I only cried twice today and I slept nearly all night” which was a big improvement and probably shined up for Facebook; that that was a week after our move. And now a year later I rarely think of it and am genuinely glad we moved.

Okay, so then I am still on-course for the move at this point. It doesn’t necessarily mean this was a terrible mistake and I will be miserable forever. Also we all have fresh colds. Even at my old house, it was pretty grim to have a fresh cold.

Today I am attempting to redirect thoughts such as “I hate it here” and “I don’t want to live here” and “I want my old house back” by keeping a camera with me and taking pictures of things that seem Good, or things I DO like. This morning Elizabeth took her breakfast to the dining room table (in our old house, the dining room table was not accessible or inviting), and I took my laptop (another recent change I am adjusting to) to the dining room table and sat across from her, and I had a nice view out the windows behind her. That was nice. And I am so glad I got the Christmas tree set up before we moved, and I took a picture of the three littler kids all on chairs in that room; I’d put out a bunch of treaty snacks on the coffee table after dinner. That was nice.

But the lock broke off our bathroom door the first time we used it. And the light fixture above the bathroom cabinet is positioned so that the cabinet doors scrape the lightbulbs every time we open the doors. And there’s a door that closes but then will suddenly and startlingly swing wide open for no apparent reason—probably when a different door in the house opens or closes. The downstairs toilet glugs repeatedly when an upstairs toilet flushes. Several locks have been installed weirdly so that you twist “the wrong way” to lock or unlock them. It’s quirky! It’s quirky! We love quirky! And we will gradually either solve all these problems or get accustomed to them.

But this kitchen is configured totally, totally different than my old kitchen, so there are no equivalent spaces. I can’t say “Oh, I put the cups in the cupboard next to the fridge,” because there is no cupboard next to the fridge. I know we’ll figure all this out, but right now it’s resulting in me standing in the kitchen, surrounded by a hundred cardboard boxes, holding a cheese grater, frozen with indecision.

I went out right away this morning to solve the little billing issue in person, and it could not have gone more smoothly. The woman I talked to was cheerful and reassuring and said these things happen all the time, and that we were lucky the seller sent us the bill at all: she says a lot of times the seller doesn’t realize they’re supposed to, or else doesn’t care, or else forgets, and so the first anyone hears of it is when she’s sending out overdue notices. I gave a little whimper at the thought and she waved it off with cheerful dismissiveness: “And then you’d just panic and call me and we’d figure it all out, no big deal!”

I fretted that since the seller’s name was on the bill, the seller would get credit for paying it. She said that is just never going to come up—and that if it DID come up, it’s all very clear and easy to see how things happened: the house closed on this date; the bill was issued too shortly thereafter to have the new info; the buyer paid the bill. “No one is going to ask you to prove it—and even if they did, you HAVE the proof! It’s your house! It’s your check!” She showed me her screen: “There’s your name!” “So my fretting is all for naught?,” I said. “For NAUGHT,” she said; “It’s kind of cute, though,” she added. I nearly asked her on the spot if she were by any chance in the market for a fretful middle-aged assistant. The key to living a good life as a fretful, anxious person, I think, is finding the people who find it cute—or, at worst, find it charmingly exasperating.

My next task is a much more fun one. Every year we give gift cards to our bus drivers. To make it clear to the drivers what the situation is (like, why are we giving one driver $10 and the other driver $40), I have each child hand over a greeting card with a $10 gift card in it. Not that I think the bus driver is keeping such careful track, but anyway that is my fret-reducing way of doing it: $10 per kid, handed over by that kid. All four remaining housechildren are on the same bus now, and this has been one of our drivers for a number of years, so I don’t want to skip his holiday gift card just because we’re leaving this house before Christmas. But this time I think I can skip the whole fussy element of one per kid and so forth: I’m just going to make one from all of us, thanking the driver and putting in the last gift card.

Today we took the kids over to the new house and we set up the Christmas tree there and decorated it. In an empty house, which felt a little odd. But it was a nice bright day, and most of us were in good moods, and the house looked pretty even though it was empty, and William set up his phone to play us Christmas music. And later when we DO move in, the tree will be all set up and we’ll have pretty Christmas lights the very first night.

This task was part of our effort to do for the kids something we’ve noticed working for us: the more we go over to the new house to do little tasks there, the more it feels familiar and comfortable and Ours. It’s like getting a newborn, and every time you do a quick wash of that baby’s hair under the faucet, the baby is more Yours. So we decorated the tree at the new house as a little acclimating activity. And Paul has been sending the kids on little errands whenever they’re there: “Oh, can you go around and open the back door for me?” “Hey, can you bring this over to the barn?” They’re starting to feel comfortable finding their way around.

Also, having the tree up and decorated reduced my Moving Stress and Christmas Prep Stress by one notch. This morning (“morning”) I woke up after less than four hours of sleep, wide awake and absolutely STEEPED in queasy adrenaline, and one of the things I was panicking about was getting the tree up. Now the tree is up. I wonder what will wake me up tomorrow morning (“morning”).

(I have not been sleeping well. I keep dropping things: as I was loading the dishwasher I dropped a bowl, which didn’t break; then I tried to add another bowl, dropped that one, and it hit the first bowl and broke it. Then I was making pasta and dropped the whole salt-shaker into the pasta water. I am as touchy and weepy as if I were first-trimester pregnant. I get weepy if anyone is nice to me. I get weepy if I THINK about getting weepy.)

The seller mailed us a house-related bill that was sent to her but is ours to pay, and it was postmarked from her address on Tuesday, and we received it yesterday (Saturday), and it is due tomorrow (Monday) or else there will be 12% interest. The bill was sent to her in October. This means my plans for tomorrow have to be 100% re-prioritized: the most important thing is seeing if I can handle this in person since her last-minute mailing of the bill to us means there is no time to handle it by mail. “Maybe her mail took six weeks to be forwarded, and then she sent it on to us right away?,” suggested Paul tentatively into the storm roiling darkly around my borders. I am trying very hard to come up with better Coping Thoughts than that one, to tell myself a story about how this situation does NOT mean our seller is deliberately being terrible to us. Maybe she was injured, or ill, and her mail sat waiting for her for six weeks while she recovered, and the MINUTE she was back home she saw the bill and was HORRIFIED and got it into the mail to us THAT VERY DAY. Maybe she sent it way back in October to her financial person, thinking it was her own bill to pay, and the financial person is the one who held it up; or maybe the financial person bounced it back to her immediately but she didn’t realize she was supposed to send it on to us. Maybe one of her kids handles her bills and that kid had a life crisis of their own and couldn’t get around to it as promptly this month, and we’d be so sympathetic if we knew the whole story. Maybe the problem was with the bill-sender: maybe they were supposed to send it to us to begin with, and that was the mistake that caused all the confusion. Maybe there is some other way in which the seller did the right, good, well-intentioned thing and it was purely accidental that we were hit with this stress grenade in our mailbox.

(I remember this feeling from the post-partum stage. Everything can be fine one minute, and irredeemable the next minute. My baseline stress level is set so high that a SMALL stressful thing knocks me out of the park. My skin feels sunburned. I snap at everybody for nothing. Paul tries to pet down the worry wrinkles on my face. I am getting a glimpse of what I’ll look like in ten years.)

The movers have been successfully booked for this coming week. We reserved three guys and one truck. It’s not a chain; it’s a private company. From Yelp reviews, we know to expect one guy (the owner) and two slouchy, young, but relatively competent assistants. Beyond that, we have no idea what to expect in terms of anything. We are not having them move boxes, just furniture. But the furniture includes a washer, a dryer, a stand-alone freezer, a treadmill, some workshop things. We’re having them take the new oven from our old house and swap it with the old oven from the new house. How long will all of that take? Three hours? Eleven hours? One hour? WHO CAN SAY. (By any chance, can YOU say? Like how long approximately does it take three guys to move all of a family’s furniture-but-not-boxes to a house five minutes away, plus move one oven back to the original house?)

Paul was over at the new house today and said he absolutely heard mice. For sure, heard mice. We already knew mice were HIGHLY LIKELY (and in fact it has been a thrill to contemplate getting a Barn Cat), but it feels a little different to know for SURE that the house has mice, and to suspect that the house could in fact be BRISTLING with mice. Mice who EVEN AS WE SPEAK could be turning all my beautifully-packed boxes into mouse-nest fodder. The seller far away, thinking brightly about how glad she is to be rid of this DISASTROUS MOUSE-INFESTED HOUSE.

(When I do sleep I have stress-dreams. Here I am, back in high school and I can’t find my locker. Here I am in public, and I am not wearing pants. I am driving and I can’t find my route and there are no brakes and the road is icy. I am trying to get to another floor of this building, and the only way is to haul myself through this awkward system of hatches. I am in an elevator and it keeps lurching and sinking nauseatingly, and I can’t remember what floor I want.)

The last time we dealt with mice was in THIS house, when we had an indoor/outdoor cat who liked to bring us LIVE gifts, which resulted in a brisk reconfiguring of the various species population levels of our house. First I bought Mice Cubes: humane traps which very successfully caught mouse after mouse—but I kept releasing the mice into our yard and I suspect they were coming right back into the house (and/or being escorted back in by our cat), because we weren’t noticing a decrease in Signs of Mouse.

Then I acquired three Victor Electronic mouse traps. It’s been awhile, but what I remember is that for the first week or so I had to check the traps several times a day, and I performed multiple mouse funerals per day. Then I only had to check every few days. Then we stopped having Mouse Signs.

With a larger house, including a barn, and with indoor-only cats now, we are not sure which techniques we’ll use. Electronic mouse traps. Cat flaps, so that our cats can get into the unheated areas of the house/barn; perhaps one or more of our cats will turn out to be skilled mousers. Or maybe NO cat flaps, plus a barn cat, so that the Mouse Remains will not be brought into the house proper. Or maybe TWO barn cats, for company and teamwork.

I am finding certain songs very sustaining as I make the enormous effort to motivate myself to pack and clean. Some of these songs make no sense as sustainers/motivators. For example, Sledgehammer by Fifth Harmony:

It’s about the heart-pounding thrill of a CRUSH, not the heart-pounding stress of a move. But I’m hearing it as the latter, and the girl-power vibe and heel-stomping beat makes me feel as if I can manage.

Another non-instinctive choice is Wheels, by Foo Fighters:

The beat; the way the music does those little pauses with a weird sound; the melancholy/survivor vibe.

Hall of Fame by The Script featuring Will.i.am is easier to understand as motivational:

…Except that I greatly dislike the whole “you can be famous and amazing and the greatest and the best” theme, so I don’t know why I like this song so much but I just do. I like the beat, I like the music, I like the voices, I like the combination of voices. I think part of it is that when they’re listing things they think people should aspire to be as they aim for greatness, they include “students” and “teachers” and “truth-seekers” along with the less-likely “astronauts” and “champions.” And “you can move a mountain” feels particularly applicable right this minute when I am moving basically a mountain, and also it is possible to substitute “you can pack a box” for “you can break rocks.”

Immortals, by Fall Out Boy (song starts at 0:40):

Another of the “we are so awesome” type, but darker and with some humor (“We can be immortals—just not for long”). I find it a good TAKE ACTION song.

Stereo Hearts by Gym Class Heroes ft. Adam Levine:

It’s about dating, not moving house. But the beat and the cheerfulness are helpful.

No Such Thing as a Broken Heart, by Old Dominion:

It’s about taking romantic risks, but I’m broadening it to cover all life-changing risks. Cheerful sound is once again helpful.

Kids, by MGMT:

A friend said this is “life soundtrack” music: you have it on and it makes your life feel more like a movie.

Odds Are, by Barenaked Ladies:

Again and again and again and again. Perfect “It’s going to be okay” message. (Also, when Henry was having some trouble with anxiety I told him that I use this song to help with feelings like those, and now HE uses the song too. It’s a good therapeutic song.)

No Sunlight, by Death Cab for Cutie:

Melancholy sound but upbeat: perfect combination for feeling sentimental but needing to get going.

Time Bomb, by Tove Lo:

Doomed-love song but the right kind of sound.

I am wondering if you have songs like this that you use for similar purposes.

You should have seen me this morning: morosely packing wall art into moving boxes, listening mopily to Death Cab for Cutie, noticing the walls start to look empty and grubby, and getting all weepy and sad about leaving this house. After awhile I had to switch to Odds Are on repeat, plus a steady stream of the kind of motivational/attitude-changing talk that would be super-annoying coming from someone else but I’ve found can be successfully SELF-applied: “Is this happening as a result of a financial or marital catastrophe, so that you are going to lose a lot of your things and also you are having to deal with those severe stresses on top of everything else? No. Are all of your dear belongings BURNING IN A FIRE? No. Are you having to LEAVE THEM ALL BEHIND as you escape to another country with only what you can carry? No. No, in fact you are giving them a good dusting, packing them gently, and BRINGING THEM ALL WITH YOU. So stop DABBING AT YOUR EYES and thinking ‘My houuuuuuuuuussssssssse’! Also, maybe check the calendar: I’m not sure this was the best time of the month for this particular packing task. Maybe next let’s pack some computer cables or the junk drawer or something.”

I’m also using the “This happens to everyone” technique. For example, one source of stress right now is that it seems as if our old house is breaking: the dishwasher is gradually losing usability, and now there are two brownish spots on the office ceiling that I can’t remember if they were there before or if they’re new leaks. But, like, statistically, this is going to happen to pretty much everyone who is moving. There are going to be unpleasant little surprises with the new house and also with the old house, and those are not surprises happening only to US and OUR move.

And as we pack, we are leaving behind all these dirty/grubby/dusty places. That too happens to everyone, or nearly everyone (I do know there are people who regularly move all their furniture to clean under it and behind it, but those are not the people who generally seek out my friendship), and so our situation is not a situation that will shock or appall the housecleaners. This isn’t just US and OUR house and OUR move: everyone who moves has to deal with this one way or another when they move. Everyone’s walls look sad and kind of grubby and lonely after the wall art comes down. *sentimental tears leaking*

We’re re-using a stranger’s moving boxes, fetched for me by my friend Morgan from her neighborhood freebies list. And, like, the box marked “Glen’s golf shirts / running clothes” was at one point being packed by someone, possibly someone overwhelmed. And yet now Glen’s golf shirts / running clothes are presumably residing in their new home, and the move is over, and the boxes are no longer needed. This is just the normal way it feels to move, and these are the normal things that happen; the discomfort is not a sign that this is a terrible decision.

Then I took a lunch break, and I found I have hit my wall with re-runs of The West Wing. I think of it as losing a lot of joy in the fifth season, and now I’m partway through the sixth season and it seems like every episode is tense or harried or frustrating, and a lot of the humor is gone. So I’m switching back over to Northern Exposure, which so far is a pretty good call. The slow-burn romance is too blatantly/obviously a deliberate slow-burn romance but I’m okay with that. One of the downsides of The West Wing–though I found it understandable as a plot decision–was “not enough romance.” (I don’t think they really had TIME for romance.)