So much was happening in our lives during those weeks that our idea of long range planning was “what’s for dinner tonight?” It was exhausting just reading and tracking our to-do lists.
We gave up bike rides in order to get things done. We were living on five to six hours or less of sleep a night. We started having “sleep disturbances”. Night after night we weren’t able to fall sleep until two or three or four in the morning but we still had to wake up no later than eight and keep on going.
We did so many errands that our neighbor Ivar stopped asking us if we needed to borrow his van. Instead we fell into a shared custody arrangement.
Packing Bunny Queen and Lizard King, our life-size clay chess pieces that have been in the family for twenty-five years or more, was our most challenging packing job. Big, cumbersome, and awkward, we knew we’d need to create our own packing boxes for them. Since BQ and LK are fragile, we had to get copious quantities of Styrofoam to soften any possible mishandling during storage and future shipping.
We found bits and pieces during our bike rides, coming home one memorable day on our bike with scavenged flat sheets of Styrofoam, carrying them one-handed on our bikes with twenty-five-mile-per-hour crosswinds. It made for an interesting ride.
Dumpster diving for Styrofoam was our answer to finding what we needed. After errands late one evening we scoured dozens of dumpsters in three or four shopping centers. I’d lift the lid and do the initial screening, getting everything I could see and reach. If it looked promising Chelsea brought her cell phone over and we’d use the LED app as a flashlight. Once or twice Chelsea had to crawl in to retrieve a particularly good piece.
After an hour or so we had what we needed.
Creating the boxes and getting those bulky, heavy characters finally settled in and taped up was a full two-day project, at a time when time itself was at a premium. Just thinking it through and collecting everything we needed was a major time sink. We heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief when they were done, majestically occupying the ground floor of our stack of boxes.
It wasn’t all grim during those weeks. We had the huge fun of traveling to the Improv in West Palm Beach and the Hard Rock Casino in Fort Lauderdale for Alex’s stand-up comedy performances. We got to see a few very funny comedians, including Alex, and we got to see a lot of really awful comedians. We also got to spend time with Amanda, Paul and Denise, Tyler, and assorted others who came to see and support Alex.
One weekend day in mid December we had a bit of excitement when a number of fire trucks showed up at the house next door. We quickly heard there’d been an explosion. “Should we be worried?” I asked Chelsea, laughing nervously.
It was a false alarm, we’re happy to report, but it gave us an entertaining break in the midst of our work.
And we had Willo, our bulk trash pickup guy. Willo had befriended us a year or more earlier when he spotted us hauling out eighty, yes eighty, contractors’ bags of leaves from our yard. He helped us carry the very heavy bags and won our undying gratitude. From then on we saw or talked to him at least once a week.
He kept telling us how much he would miss us, that we are such a bright spot in his life, and he entertained us with his hilarious story-telling style. We miss him. (Update: Chelsea heard from him recently. He said he’s doing well and he misses us. So here’s a shout-out to you, Willo! We miss you!)
Another bright spot, more like a beacon, was having dinner with the Gallegos family several times. We were too shy to just go up there, instead, Carmen and Jose came by to see us one night and talked us into coming over the following day.
What started as an intent to stay only for dinner and get home early spiraled quickly out of control into an evening of stories, laughter, stories, and more laughter. We discovered, in addition to their long list of attributes we love, we’d have to add good parenting.
They have four daughters, Janette, Sandra, Monica, and Vanessa, oldest to youngest, and one son, their youngest child, Manny,. The “kids” range in age from thirty-three or so down to fifteen. We had the incredible good fortune to eventually meet all but Janette, who lives Asheville or Charlotte (can’t remember which) in North Carolina.
The kids are all bright and lively and talkative. They know how to tell a great story, and because of their travels and multi-culturalism, they have plenty of wonderful stories to tell. Carmen had fixed some incredible Mexican dishes, we had wine, coffee, tea, and Chelsea’s favorite for the evening – ice cream. Hers was coconut served in a coconut shell, mine was pineapple served in a pineapple skin.
I finally realized I was pretty tired and asked what time it was. We’d planned on staying no later than nine, but it was now one a.m. I laughed when they told me one – I thought they were teasing me. We left quickly, embarrassed that we had kept them up so late. They all laughed at my embarrassment, and after a few more last minute stories we were on our way.
Little did we know then that they would play a huge part in our good-bye from Delray Beach and Florida, leaving us with lifetime memories.
Then at long last came the long-awaited Phone Call in the second week of February. We got notice that all the “situations” had been resolved, and we’d close on February fourteenth. After two and a half years of thinking about it and planning for it, I finally called and arranged for a storage space.
Our lives were about to change forever, with no going back.