The Price of PETulance

Pets can be a wonderful source of comfort and companionship...at the same time, they can be vexing and annoying. Take our "junior" cat, Guy, for example. I call him the junior cat even though he is only about half a year younger than Booger because I adopted him about three years ago, when he was already three, as opposed to Booger, whom I adopted as a kitten.

About two years ago, I had to take Guy to the vet because he had a blockage in his colon, which was not allowing him to pass solids. In other words, he was royally constipated. After the vet 'cleaned him out," I put him on Metamucil for awhile, and he returned to normal. Well, as luck would have it, the same issue arose this week, and again I had to take him to the vet (a new one, here in Florida) for yet another "cleaning." This time, I was told, Guy had a somewhat unusual colon, and I would have to keep him on special food plus the Metamucil for the rest of his life. (I will admit, sheepishly, that I did consider the possibility of putting him down. Thank God my wife, who is no lover of cats, didn't even consider that as an option.)

So Guy is now home, in recovery mode, which consists of the special food plus me having to coerce him into taking drops orally twice a day, just to keep the plumbing working properly. I guess the point of this rambling is...how does one measure the ROI of pets? Can one? Even though Kendra is no fan of the cats, she did take this photo of Guy...I guess the ROI speaks for itself.

A Fond Farewell

As I sit here in an empty Social Studies classroom at Greenwood High School (empty because it is the prep period of the teacher for whom I am subbing), I have the chance to think back about the last six months of my life--the time period I have spent in this southern suburb of Indianapolis, sharing a small rented house with my wife of now one year and our dog and two cats.

It has been an interesting transitional period. Transitional because, as of this Saturday, we will be packing up what few belongings we have, along with tres animales, and heading out on our two-day drive to our new beginning in Stuart, Florida (that includes a Saturday night stay-over with my sister at her new home in Georgia). It didn't start out to be transitional--my wife, who just last year became the head of adult reference at Greenwood Public Library, figured we would have about three to four years here before we headed south. But a number of factors fell into place: 1) I couldn't find regular, full-time employment here; 2) her library became embroiled in some financial issues; and 3) the Florida job opened up and she applied, pretty much on a whim.

With the reality of our move finally settling completely in, I am excited (to say the least) about this adventure. After all, I have nothing binding me to this state. My mother passed away last October and is laid to rest with her parents; my sister is now in Georgia; my house in South Bend is safely rented to some friends who I know are taking good care of it; and, as I stated before, I have no job to leave (not that I have ever had trouble leaving a job in the past). Kendra, on the other hand, is dealing with a whole complex of mixed emotions: her family, whom she is very close to, are all in the area, and she has never lived more than three hours away; her friends are also all in this area (unlike mine, who are scattered all about the country); and she still likes her job and place of work, despite the recent challenges it has faced.

It has been a mostly good six months. I have discovered a lot of nice things about this area that I never knew when I lived on the northside and downtown Indy. Greenwood is a very friendly community with a lot of good people; it is easy to get around; and it has some great local places to shop and eat. One of its best features is its Community Center, a gathering place and no-frills gym that residents can join and have unlimited access to (during open hours, of course) for only $50 per year. I know I have gotten my money's worth out of the place, and the treadmills and weight machines have kept me from ballooning up over the winter months. The schools here are very good, too, as I have learned from subbing in them--great teachers, and the bulk of the students are serious about learning.

So as we close out this first chapter in our lives, I will look back fondly upon these few months; despite the few frustrations I've encountered, it has been a good ride. Thank you, Greenwood.

Cubic Footprints

Yesterday the movers came and, four-and-a-half hours later with 1,000+ cubic feet of our possessions, went. One-thousand-plus cubic feet. Who in their right mind owns 1,000+ cubic feet of stuff? We do, apparently, scattered over 157 items, including cardboard boxes, plastic storage bins, a recliner sofa (which counts as four, as the three backs are removable and were wrapped and inventoried individually), a gas grill (sans propane tank (empty), which we have to transport), various shepherd’s hooks (bound together, so I assume they count as one item), and a washer and dryer.

It doesn’t look like 1,000+ cubic feet when it is scattered over five rooms and a back porch. I didn’t measure it, so I have to assume the movers are being honest. All the initial quotes came in around 900-950, hence my trusting of the final tally. The load out was uneventful, with the two movers (from the Chicago area, on their way back from Kentucky) working quickly and efficiently. They took care to handle our boxes and bins carefully, and they wrapped all our furniture far better than we ever would (or could) have. About the only excitement came when Guy, one of the cats, managed to shift the weight of the attic ladder enough for him to come flying out of it and into the hallway. (We had put both cats up there to keep them (a) out of harm’s way, (b) out from underfoot, and (c) from escaping out one of the open doors. Guy enjoys the attic and will go up and down the stairs freely whenever I have them down. Booger, on the other hand, does not like the ladder and dislikes the attic even more. But I digress.)

Now we have an empty house. Empty except for two bag chairs, a small bag table, a 19-inch flat-screen TV, a DVR player (to stream Netflix), our modem, and an air mattress. Oh, and the dog and two cats, who keep wandering around the house wondering what in the hell happened to everything. We do also have the stove and refrigerator, which will stay, and the microwave, which will not. Five more nights of inhabiting the shell of our house, then early Saturday morning we load up our few remaining material items and our menagerie and begin the first leg of our trip, which will take us to my sister’s house in Georgia.

Moving Thoughts

When you move from town to town within a state, the packing phase of the move doesn’t seem to require too much effort. I have relocated within the state of Indiana more times than I care to remember—from address to address within the same city, and several times between cities. My method has pretty much been the same: go from room to room and cram whatever I can in as few boxes as necessary, tossing out what doesn’t fit, and get it from point A to point B as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

Our move to Florida, scheduled for next weekend, is an adventure far beyond anything I have ever experienced. For one thing, there are two of us moving our stuff—in the past it’s been just me (for the most part). Secondly, we are moving about 1,000 miles—the longest distance either of us has moved. Finally, we are using a professional moving company, which in turn brings about its own issues.

The first is preparation. When you move yourself, you can load the day you want and deliver the day you want. With moving companies, you are somewhat at their mercy when it comes to scheduling—to increase their efficiency (and minimize your cost), the moving company will offer you windows, both for picking up and dropping off. What this means, in our case, is that our stuff will be departing our current residence today and will arrive at our new habitat between Tuesday, March 13, and Thursday, March 15. Not only did we have to have everything packed efficiently and completely very quickly, we had to plan out what we will need, in terms of clothes and other supplies, for the next week, as we won’t be heading down to Florida until Saturday, March 10.

The second issue is convenience. On the plus side it is nice not to have to load and unload everything. Sure, we are packing and labeling everything ourselves, but the movers will do all the heavy lifting and, when they get to our new place, will put all of the boxes, bins, and furniture in the rooms designated for each. On the negative side, because we have to have everything prepped and picked up so far ahead of our actual departure date, we will be doing without most of our creature comforts for a week—including, but not limited to, our entire wardrobes, most of our kitchen appliances, our desktop computer, our TVs and other entertainment devices, and our washer and dryer. This means we will have to plan carefully the clothes we will need for the week—not only for work, but also for recreation and travel. Too few clothes and we’ll have to find someplace to wash them; too many and we’ll have to find someplace to squeeze them when we load our cars. It also means eating off paper plates and using plastic utensils—there is a plus to that, though, as I will have far fewer dishes to wash.

The third issue is cost. There are a lot of moving companies out there, and picking one is more difficult than you might think. Sure, you could try going by cost alone, but you’ll find out that, with some exceptions, most of the companies will come within a few hundred dollars of each other. Really, for me, it came down to a gut feeling—which of the movers did I feel, based on my communication with them, would do the best job for the best price. If you haven’t used a mover, you learn that the total cost of the move is based on weight and volume. If you are paying for the move yourself (as we are), you quickly realize just how much that stuff you have been holding onto since junior high is going to run you, and you have to take a really hard look at what you “need” and what you don’t. Both my wife and I have jettisoned a lot of items, including boxes and boxes (and boxes) of books and pretty much my entire CD collection (which I ripped to the hard drive of my computer first). We’ve also donated boxes and bags of holiday décor, general décor, old (mostly cold weather) clothing, and kitchen supplies to Goodwill—and we hope they can make some money off all of it. A lot of times I found myself wondering just why in the hell I still had all of my report cards from kindergarten through high school—then I realized my mom had gone to the effort of keeping them for me, so I had held on to them, too. Now that she is gone, it made it easier to let those go. I also had to come to the realization that, despite the fact that I was really proud, at one time, to have been the eighth grade intramural boys basketball champion at Thomas Jefferson Junior High School in Valparaiso, Indiana, I no longer needed to hang on to the round, flat ceramic trophy painted to resemble a basketball. Ditto with the various and sundry award certificates I received back then, as well as with hundreds of photographs from my college and post-college days that I hadn’t looked at in more than a decade.

Right now the movers are putting our stuff in their truck. Soon it will be on the road to who knows where. For us, it’s one week of “roughing it,” then Florida, here we come.