The Great Exodus Part II

What makes moving so hard and so awful and time crunching and soul sucking is what makes it so awesome. It is a rebirth of sorts but we all know how hardcore birthing is. Just go to YouTube, click on "ICK" and then scratch your eyes out. Or get pregnant and then apologize profusely to your vagina and all her neighbors.

Moving is a fresh perspective that helps you see new things. But be very careful. It can blind you and burn your retinas if you don’t have UV sunglasses and a rosy outlook. Sparkly clean cupboards are the best, newest friend a girl can have except when the girl in question cannot organize them and has NO IDEA where her Goddamned, most beloved spatula is.

“Hey, you know that antique spatula you love, the one that looks like it fingered a forest fire?”

“You mean Smokey The Bear?”

“No, Smokey can’t get fingered. He’s a whole-less cartoon character.”

“You win.”

“Found it in the linen closet next to your high-waited stretch pants from 1994 and some river stones we tripped over while humping on our honeymoon.”

“Ah, now my life can fully move backward.”

Let’s not even discuss the fact that I, I mean she, cannot find her shoes, her Kindle, her reading glasses, which does not seem to matter since her Kindle is MIA and not reading is super trendy or her Good Time Charlie outlook.

Okay, breathe and be honest. All this complaining has so little to do with the move and so much more to do with my fucked up, phantom, unclear and unresolved running injury that I have promised the gods of exercise that I will never again run on a treadmill if someone, anyone can please, tell me what the fuck knuckles I did to my hip/groin/lower back/calf last winter. Pick one or more.

Moving sucks for sure and I do hate having to dig around in the garage for my favorite pair of boots or the Goo Gone or an small glass figurine that I just know will change our new living room design from amazing into F-amazing! But there really is no other reason for my severe frustration than my constant pain and pathetic discomfort. I have been hobbling around, not exercising, not fornicating and not undulating the way I want and need and should since LAST NOVEMBER!  

And now, after two MRI’s, one panic attack, three x-rays, thirty appointments and hours spent on highways and bi-ways to get to these dreaded, shit-stained appointments I am now on steroids and back to physical therapy and not taping my shit or writing my shit and doing my shit I need to do. Let’s not forget the fifth upcoming, root canal follow-up and a mid-morning freak-out and you have yourself a real life Telanovela without spray-on make-up, big hair, shiny dresses or 8-inch stilettos. Nope. All you get here is the bottom of the laundry hamper on fire with nothing to put out the flames except a dirty bucket of tears and some flat tonic water.

"I wish I had a butt hole," he mused.

The Great Exodus, Part I

It has been exactly one month and one day since my last explosive over share and the cruel crazy beginning my very own March Madness tournament. I truly thought that I could continue writing and posting and reading and Facebooking and sharing throughout our move out of Hollywood but shit shingles, was I terribly wrong. People warned me. Websites mocked me. Boxes slapped me but still I thought that the big Beverly-Sweetzer jailbreak would be as smooth as Blue Ivy’s ass after the seventh nanny’s Moroccan Oil application.

Nope. I got creamed, crushed, stepped on and stampeded by what can only be described as the most epic uprooting of a lifetime. Lopsided purchases and lame mementos burst threw every box with unnecessary junk and mind-melting papers spitting in my face hour after hour. As packing begun every corner of the old apartment screamed at me with fuzzy bunnies and crappy cable cords. The paint chips chirped. The cracked walls cackled and the outdated clothes shit in my toilet and didn’t even flush. A week before the big moving day I packed and cleaned and threw things out. I swept and organized and told myself that I was way ahead of the game of life, that we had made the most awesome of choices in less than seven days and could handle a quick exit like the Navy Seals on a Pakistan Monday. The requisite garage sale happened on my front lawn and I made $320 on a collection of unimpressive vintage handbags, nasty sneakers, torn paperbacks and a mound of embarrassing 2004 Citizens of Humanity Jeans no self-respecting crack tranny would be caught dead sucking dick in.

But when the movers arrived to pack us up they carefully, methodically and far too quickly threw twenty years of Hollywood living and loving into cardboard coffins in less than four hours. Really? My adventures in failures and flops, parties and pretending, snot-crying and spit-laughing, joke-writing and word-playing, procreating and pontificating took less than a banker’s half-day to toss and tape up?

Somehow the serious anxiety began when the last box was closed and the cupboards sat empty. If I wanted toast I couldn’t have it. If I felt like homemade pasta I could just fuck off. All the creature comforts were in little sealed prisons while my head spun in different directions looking for answers to all my questions about our future home and drastic redo. The echo of that emptiness and the warbled sounds of all those years and memories being reduced to a simple thud of a box being stacked shook me to my core. And sleeping on a mattress on the last night in the room where I got pregnant, in the apartment where I got engaged, the pad where I was married, in the home my family made out of odd jobs and random paychecks could not permeate the shell of denial mixed with adrenaline that I put up like a white picket fence around seriously soggy feelings.

In other words, luck would have it that the speed in which we made the decision to leave and the amount of distractions buried any real emotions I may have been feeling. And for that I am truly grateful. I mean, seriously. Who the hell has time to boo-hoo and question when three major writing projects are barking at your husband and a string of root canal appointments lodge themselves into the back of your miserable mouth? How about I mention a myriad of doctor’s appointments to try and solve the mystery of my painful and pathetic running injury while I unpack shit I never really liked into a house I kind of worship? How could I possibly be emotional about leaving the neighborhood that formed my entire social circle since 1992 while I was too busy looking for any pair of jeans, a wash cloth, the expired Vicodin and my favorite pair or period underwear? I cannot possibly leave out the thread-bare, nasty-ass t-shirt I use every night as sleep mask, a cotton blinder if you will that always kept out not only the deceptively blinding Hollywood sun but the horrific emotional sound of leaf-blowers and the men who love them. Oh, wait. I need to mention the new, longish commute, tee-ball practice an hour away, Passover celebrations three freeways farther than before and Easter egg hunts in the hills of the other half with a peppering of a two-week spring break for the only Pre-K member of the household in which a mother may or may not feel that her small, wonderful and very loud child has moved, not only into a new home, but into her back pocket and down her throat.

The feelings of shock, denial, exultation and happiness over the last few weeks are all over me like a white, wet t-shirt at a spring break titty contest. Sometimes I look down and love what I see and other times I want to scream and put on a dumpy sweatshirt and hide under a rock. People tell me to slow down and enjoy the experience of unpacking, nesting, finding love for the old and embracing the new. Others say it will only get better but will suck pole for at least three months. Either way I know I have to walk through the changes and challenges of a move twenty years in the making. I only wish my leg was all better and I had a few days of quiet to write, unpack, find my shoes, grieve and open-mouth kiss my new big backyard.