It’s cathartic writing this. The last three weeks have been so intense. It’s starting to become a blur so if I don’t document it, I’m certain to forget much of it. I need to record all that transpired between the time we sold the house and the time we moved out. If I don’t write it down and try to recall it sometime in the future, I doubt I’d believe it was possible to do everything we did. There’s not a lot of memory left on my brain’s hard drive. I have to clear out some space if I’m going to make new memories!
I had a revelation. I’m doing this for Jim and me! So, t takes the pressure off. I don’t have to be entertaining! I can bore the shit out of myself if I choose to! And I can be honest.
In no particular order…
- Sold the house in one day with 13 offers
- Cleaned out 10 years of stuff
- Rehearsals and production of my play
- NLG dinner honoring Jim
- Jim trained new person to take over NLG
- End of USC classes; read and gave notes to students; graded
- Spent one weekend with SB developing series
- Booked hotels in four countries (devoted countless hours due to my massive hotel neurosis)
- Found villa in Italy
- Found apartment in London
- Mapped car route in Europe
- Mapped car route from San Francisco to Denver
- Set up new bank account, lost new checks, reset up account
- Closed out utilities, subscriptions, etc.
- Re-did our wills
- Dealt with psycho tenant
- Narrowly escaped London rental scam by employing skills learned reading Nancy Drew at a young age
- Booked cars in LA & Europe
- Countless hours spent on clothes (forgot to pack most of them)
- Hair cut and colored
- Bit off three nails
- Dealt with “Mad Men” ending
- Three visits to vet
- 200 plus hours on research & arrangements for transporting dogs (then the airlines never checked the papers they made us get)
- Moved art to friend’s house
- Farewell tea party
- Farewell anniversary party
- Hunted down overdue residuals on two projects
- Found place to live for one month when we return
- Wrote recommendations for several students
- Set up and learned how to do blog
- Found international health insurance policy
- Found bakery in SF for Zoe, my niece who graduated law school and Wes’s, my other niece Lia’s husband, graduation cake
- Moved our cars to Culver City
- Picked up rental car
- Had yahrzeit for father
- Finished one painting, started another
- Got new carriers for dogs to match airlines guidelines (one broke five minutes before landing in France
- Had numerous meltdowns
- Taught myself pool on iPad app
- Pipe burst in bathroom at midnight, day after closing
- Kitchen sink back up three days before move
- Turned our magical cottage over to new owner (whom we love, thank “god”)
- Set up new phone & data plan for cell (naturally it didn’t when I got here)
- Became gypsies. No physical address. Anywhere.
WHAT’S AMAZING ABOUT LAST FOUR DAYS
- The dogs went from lunatics to chill. From clean to filthy.
- We went from lunatics to chill.
- I’ve only had ONE gelato
- How many people we connected with in such a short time
- I stopped thinking about Mad Men
- I haven’t lost anything in 72 hours
- My large, delicious salad at lunch cost 2 Euro ($2.13)
- A bottle of Prosecco cost $5.00
- We found our way back at night from the nearest town, 9 km, Camucia without using our GPS
- Jim learned to work the GPS
- Jim learned to write on the iPad
- The farmhouse we’ve rented is perfect
- The realtor let us out of our lease and exchanged the crap house for this lovely place.
- Our view is window of the hilltown of Cortona is magical.
More on our charming farmhouse in a tiny town of San Lorenzo outside of Cortona. The name of the farmhouse “Le Quiete di Vigneto”…the quiet vineyard.
