Moving, pt. 5

We did our last big move today. Family members and fellow churchgoers again helped us, completing the operation within two hours. Virtually everything, save dust and cat hair, is out of the apartment. Karin & I will return as often as possible before January’s end to clean. (We spent two hours there tonight.)

In the carpeted apartment, I found myself gasping and coughing. Not so in the new house, which has laminated floors.

One thing is sure: I’ve gotten more physical exercise this month than in any other since, oh, 2013.

The new Blandings

Samuel and Karin & I are in much better health than when I last wrote, and so this morning, with the aid of friends and family members, we moved into the house that my parents bought a few weeks ago. Or, rather, we transported our essentials, such as our bed, a few chairs, ourselves, and the TV. Since we’re renting our apartment all through January, we intend to spend the rest of the month transporting the littler things. The three of us will make innumerable round-trips, moving a few boxes at a time. We’ll conclude in several weeks with another aided move (of the bookcases and dressers) and then with a thorough cleaning of the apartment.

Today’s aided move was smooth. Sadly, one of our helpers suffered heart pains and had to be taken to the hospital by paramedics.

The move also was sad for Jasper and Ziva. Jasper promptly ran under our bed. Ziva, we couldn’t find; we worried she’d escaped into the garage and climbed up into the car engine. It turned out, she hadn’t left her pet carrier. Then, when we extracted her, she, too, hid under our bed. For several hours, we couldn’t coax either kitty out – not even by waving plates of tuna under their noses.

Jasper is recently emboldened, however, and has been walking around the living room. Ziva has burrowed herself into the bed blankets.

Karin tells me we’re without a shower curtain. Tomorrow I’ll have to re-teach myself to take a bath.

Our new home

On moving day, thankfully, there was very little rain. The next day, it rained much harder.

While our helpers were carrying furniture and boxes into our new apartment, Jasper and Ziva were hiding under the bed. (Or, rather, Jasper was keeping his head under the bed, like an ostrich.) Only after the helpers left did the kitties venture to the living room. Since then, they’ve been sniffing around the apartment. They seem to like it well enough.

Still, they’ve been clinging to us more than usual. When Karin went to work this morning, Jasper cried most piteously; and he did it again when I was about to leave.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The unpacking will be completed by the end of the week – I hope.

Unused to such hard labor, Karin & I sleep soundly. At bedtime, we can hardly move.

Karin (lying in bed last night): “That was such a weird movie, Sweetie.”

John-Paul (almost too pained to speak): “Which movie?”

Karin: “Pineapple Express for Kids.”

John-Paul: “Pineapple Express for Kids?”

(Pause.)

Karin: “Yeah. You know. Superbad.”

We watched Superbad quite a while ago. Why would Karin be reminded of it – or of The Pineapple Express, for that matter? Maybe because of our neighbor, who’s often smoking in his parked car.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This is one of the better apartments I’ve lived in. The main window lets in a good deal of light. There’s plenty of counter space in the kitchen. The rooms are fairly large. The crime rate is fairly low.

As I’ve mentioned, the river is across the street. Next to it is a good trail for running. Karin says she’ll go with me if I run lazily enough.

Moving time

A few days ago, we signed the lease for our new apartment. We took the kitties into the living room to get them used to it. They weren’t happy. Jasper refused to detach himself from his humans (he gave Karin some awful scratches). Ziva refused to leave her cat carrier.

When we took them into a bedroom, they were a little less fearful. They walked in circles, sniffing the carpet.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

At our old place, nearly everything is packed up. We’ve recruited some eight or ten volunteers to help us to move tomorrow. Rain is expected during the move. The weather app on my phone is telling me to watch out for flash flooding.

Though our new apartment is across the street from the river, I’m not worried.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Meanwhile, there’s been awful flooding in Ecuador – even in Quito, which usually isn’t terribly affected.

(Some streets in this video are quite near to where I used to live.)

The floods have been much more damaging in the countryside, of course; and Peru also has been flooded.

Writing, packing, babysitting

This Easter has been the Easter of church nursery duty. I didn’t get to hear any sermons. I didn’t get to tour the Stations of the Cross (not even the ones erected in my church’s sanctuary). I did get to hold some tiny babies.

It’s also been the Easter of packing books – into egg boxes, which is fitting. In two weeks, we’ll’ve moved into our new home.

What to do with the furniture? The couches, we’ll keep for now. The kitties have shredded them. They would shred any new couch.

Karin owns a heavy cedar chest. She just tried, with all her might, to raise its lid. Jasper took this as an invitation to jump onto the lid. Jasper involves himself in all our packing.

Ziva, though, is frightened by the packing. She hides under our bedcovers.

Now to abruptly change the subject: Recently, it’s become possible to use these Roman, Italic, and Bold fonts in Google Docs:

Bookman Old Style
Century Schoolbook
*Palatino Linotype
*Times (not Times New Roman)
Twentieth Century

(* denotes the availability of standard ligatures)

This makes Google Docs a better choice for writing papers. If I were to do grad school all over again, I’d use Google Docs, not LaTeX. LaTeX is a powerful free typesetting system, but the process of writing in code and compiling PDFs over a slow Web connection has swallowed up who knows how many of my most vigorous years.

Harry Potter

Our apartment is now overpopulated with cardboard boxes, for which Ziva and Jasper are extremely grateful. Karin brings home boxes; Karin’s mom brings boxes; Karin’s dad brings boxes. Collapsed, the boxes take up most of our space. Filled, they would cause the apartment to be unlivable.

It’s some relief that our landlord is allowing us to store the filled boxes elsewhere on his property.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Evenings, when not filling the boxes, Karin has been playing a lot of Harry Potter for the PS One. I hear the TV exclaim:

“Concentrate, Potter!” (Madam Hooch teaching Harry to fly on his broomstick).

“Flippendo!”

“Wingardium Leviosa!”

And now, whenever I do chores in the apartment, I catch myself muttering: “It’s LeviOsa, not LeviosA.”

Not because it’s in the game, but because it’s the only line I can remember from the movie.

I’m thinking of buying this shirt:

Mary plays a lot of Zelda. I think she would like this Harry Potter game, too.

I suppose that one day I should read the series. How soon? As soon as I finish reading the complete works of Lois Duncan. I’m about to finish Stranger with My Face (downright terrifying).

The housing search

Ecuador lost, 2 to 0. Our chances of winning this World Cup are trickling down the drain.

I didn’t work today, so Mary offered to drive me across South Bend to visit the different apartment sites. I told the landlords that the city was evicting my wife, my kitties, and myself to build a fire station. The landlords sympathized. Near the end of the tour, I visited a cheap place not far from IUSB and very close to the river. I reported about it to Karin and she approved. Tomorrow, before I go to my job, I’ll turn in our application to live at that site.

An impending life-change

Today, Karin went “out on the town” with her little sister, Brianna. I stayed at home. Karin and Brianna were going to eat lunch at a buffet that I suspect of having made me ill (with vomiting and the like) not long ago. Also, they planned to visit the kitties at the Humane Society. My own eagerness for going to the Humane Society has been weakened since Ziva came to live with us. Two kitties are enough for me.

This time, Karin took to a large, orange-white male. She photographed Brianna holding him.

“He looks like Jasper,” I said, examining the photo.

“I guess he does,” said Karin.

(Notice, also, Brianna’s blue eyebrows.)

We aren’t going to adopt this feline. This isn’t our impending life-change. No, the city has decided to tear down our building to make room for a new fire station (you can read the news here). We’ll have between 45 and 50 days to find somewhere new to live. This affects me most – our current building is very near to where I work, and I don’t drive – but it’s bad for both of us. We won’t find a cheaper rental. We won’t be compensated by the city: We’re renting month-to-month, and the city isn’t kind to monthly renters. We may have to accept an unfavorable new lease.

I often ask for prayer for Ecuador. Please pray for our country to defeat Colombia on Tuesday. Pray for Ecuadorians to elect a good president on April 2. But pray, also, for Karin & me to find a decent place in which to live.

I return to Bethel

Finally, my Xanga has been shut down.

I moved into Mary’s & Martin’s new house. My helpers were M&M, my uncle, my brother Stephen, and Sabby — heroes.

Right now, M&M’s basement contains approx. 30 boxes of my books. Their garden contains my treadmill, abandoned to the recyclers. So long, Timothy. …

I teach just one section at Bethel but often walk across campus to get to IUSB. What an innocent place, Bethel. There isn’t much feeling of urgency …

… except in the class that I teach. There the students sit up straight, eyes wide open.

Through the grapevine I hear:

The readings are difficult;

When he lectures he uses big words.

(And I thought I was so colloquial!)

Our first textbook is Hume’s Dialogues, which many of the students have been supplementing with SparkNotes (not what I recommended, but OK). The class discussions are satisfactory. The students make good points. I wonder which points are from SparkNotes.

Yet somewhere a screw has come loose. In previous years I would quickly learn all the students’ names; this semester, so far, I haven’t bothered to. I know the names of the most frequent talkers. That’s all.

Maybe the reason is that I have so many students (one section at Bethel, two at IU). Even a few students’ faces seem unfamiliar. I never used to have this problem.

Or maybe, during the last year, something happened that is now preventing me from caring like I used to.

A new season

No tutoring this last week, but plenty of busyness: (1) attending meetings and turning in paperwork; (2) reading textbooks (and a few secondary sources); (3) writing essay prompts and syllabi.

(2) and (3) have been pretty exciting. I chose each textbook because of its fonts. And I’m writing my IUSB course documents in Plantin and my Bethel documents in Photina.

Next week — Monday! — I’ll begin teaching. And during the nights I’ll be packing up my books to move out of my apartment. This has been a convenient but pricey place in which to live.

Where will I end up? I don’t know. Mary & Martin have offered to host me until I find somewhere better.

They just bought a house near Bethel. Their yard has a hot tub in it, with a large fence for privacy. Between the fence and the sidewalk, flowers grow out of a narrow strip of dirt. I told Mary & Martin to clear out the flowers and to plant tomatoes for public use: “Mishawaka Unity Garden.”

Along the eastern boundary of the yard is a noisy road. The western boundary nearly touches a power station.

Others might recoil, but I find the scenery quite charming. Industrialism, traffic: I am able to glean comfort from such things. I will miss the river, though. And it will be sad not to be able to walk so easily to my church.