Moving to a new apartment is stressful, even with professional movers who are supposed to pack everything up for you. 
For instance, there are things you may not want your professional movers to pack up and handle. Perhaps you might want to pack the contents of your lingerie drawer yourself. Then, there are those hundreds of loose CDs lying around the bedroom because you've been ripping them to your PC and transferring them to your iPod. And if you share your place with housemates (as I do) you might have stuff that's mixed together that you need to separate out -- such as all the plates and silverware and DVDs of Twin Peaks, Seinfeld, and the Simpsons and games for the Playstation.
So, I spent all my "free time" (read: the 6-8 hours each day when a normal person might sleep) for the past three days trying to go through the house -- locating things and boxing some of it up myself.
When objects are being moved around and put into containers in the middle of the night, Bocce -- the small nervous Italian Greyhound creature -- knows that I'm packing. She's seen it many times before. We've lived in 7 different places in her 8 years -- Providence, RI (with Damien); Somerville, MA (with Ellen); Cambridge, MA (with Ellen); Los Angeles (with Jeff and Hillary); and 2 different Dogpatch live/work lofts (with Gareth) and the current dilapidated Mission Victorian (with Owen, Ric, and Sye). Additionally, I've gone on hundreds of trips all over the country and Bocce has gone on most of those as well. She's been on cross country flights at least 30 times. She's also been to exotic locations like St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. So, whenever she sees me packing late at night, she thinks she's either going to the kennel or she's getting on a plane. And though she doesn't really mind either of these things, the uncertainty seems to make her nervous. She may be wondering if she's going to be left behind.
Three days of packing has taken its toll on her. Furniture and books have been moved to unfamiliar places and Bocce is dubious about the piles of boxes creating a new wall in the living room.
She hides under the covers on my bed, nervously shivering. And I imagine that big moves like this are like some version of a doggie nightmare, akin to the movie "Dark City," where every night while the human population of the city is drugged into a deep sleep -- the alien overlords reconfigure all the buildings and city layout and change around entire households of people, importing new friends and family members from the existing pool of people. Yeah, moving is totally like "doggie 'Dark City.'" Her whole idea of reality will be 100% changed in less than 24 hours.
Has anyone moved with pets? Any horror stories? Also, did you see 'Dark City?' What did you think? The images and ideas in that movie stay with me, particularly the idea about escaping to Shell Beach.
posted by Jess at 8:47 AM
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