Assholes

There is a reason that moving makes it into the top ten reasons for divorce in the U.S.

This whole moving business makes for difficult situations. First of all, we’re renting from our aunt for the summer, which at the least means we can’t leave beer bottles on the front porch and at the most means I need to wear a shirt (or at least a bra) in the backyard. I try not to think of my kids throwing up on the new carpet, or slamming into walls or doing things kids tend to do — like peeing on the bathroom floor in a moment of distraction. It’s stressful.

The great thing is that we’re renting from our aunt and she’s charging us a ridiculously small amount of rent. The bad thing is that we had to reneg on the family we originally planned on subletting from, something that, um, sort of sent them into a screaming rage. A little. Lucky for me, I am an expert on screaming rages and I did lots of bowing, scraping and apologizing, and a tense calm eventually descended upon them (they did find someone else to sublet to, thereby reducing my guilt. I was imagining them, a young, immigrant Chinese family, reduced to homelessness and poverty all because I was selfish and took the cheap way out).

I totally understand rage; I sometimes feel enraged by the leak in my backyard, and yesterday I got the opportunity to vent on a contractor who wasn’t fixing my air conditioner. I got to yell (justifiably) at five different people. It was very satisfying. However, I’ve decided that moving tends to force one into being, for lack of a better term, a complete asshole.

I am not a yeller. I tend to be icily polite, the politer I am, the angrier I am. When I stop talking completely, it sometimes takes me weeks or months to get over it. I really hate this about myself. It is something I know is there and I try to control it, but I’ve lost more than a few friendships over it. I don’t know why I can’t stop being angry. It just is. Medication helps (alot). Calm breathing and yoga helps.

Moving, on the other hand, does not help. Moving makes the crazy worse. And yesterday I found myself venting on strangers, near-strangers, co-workers and passersby. Trying to move while simultaneously fixing up our house and guest house is, in simple terms, a nightmare.

I just hope we move before I become a complete jerk.

In my defense, dealing with multiple contractors, doing do-it-yourself building, packing, caring for two young children and working part-time is a tiny bit overwhelming at times. Today I would have much preferred staying in bed. When my son asked for breakfast, I told him to tell the chef, turned over and went back to sleep. Marti and I used to joke like this when Ben was little; when he would cry early in the morning, one of us would say, “Call the nanny, the baby is crying.” And then we’d laugh, the edge of hysteria creeping in from multiple sleepless nights.

I’m friends with hysteria and sleepless nights, too.

That being said, I went to visit the new house today and an overwhelming feeling of peace washed over me as I walked through the empty rooms. Elsa always has been great at picking houses. The house is small but tidy, with lots of storage space (the kind lacking in the house we own) and cute little nooks here and there. There is a front yard with tasteful desert landscaping and some large shade trees both in front and behind the house. We’re just staying for the summer but, for the moment, I felt like staying forever.

I needed that feeling of peace. It let me know that, despite all the stress, despite our fear that the house won’t sell in this market, it’s all going to be fine. This, too, shall pass, and we will emerge from the experience older, wiser, and with a few more fine lines etched into my forehead.

For now, I am working on the proper way to yell at a contractor. After all, we don’t want those forehead lines to be a total waste, do we?