I think at some point there was a plan. I’m pretty sure it involved me quitting work first, followed by Harmony finishing grad school, then finally on to packing up some fraction of our things into our little hermit crab shell of a boat. And yet it came to pass that over the weekend Harmony got back from a week away and said ‘Hell with it, let’s move now!’ It seems we’re stuck in the habit of driving past our headlights.
Throwing out books you haven’t read is like giving up on good intentions.
So, we packed up several duffels and headed over to the boat for a deep cleaning. Harmony’s dad owns a ritzy house cleaning business, which has left her with a very particular definition of clean that involves Q-tips in every corner, steel wool on all metal surfaces, and Simple Green on everything else. I will use the same green and yellow sponge on every surface I encounter, forever. Comfort is the name of the game, however, so out came the chemicals and the scour pads. I was glad to have installed a cheap MP3 stereo the week prior, and we made relatively quick work of it.
Serenity’s a pretty gal, provided you like brown.
Quarterberth: The Undiscovered Country of Storage
Harmony going at the stove.
It’s probably a good thing she wasn’t wearing her glasses or else she’d still be there scrubbing.
After the deep clean, Harmony put the finishing touches on our clothing cubbies and we got a look at the interior with the new cushions that she and my Mom made in between her work, classes, and thesis work.
See? Driving past our headlights.
Two things to learn about Harmony: she likes color, and she LOVES decoupage. Expect these things to be totally covered in photos and flotsam within 3 months.
The new cushions. The old ones were – you guessed it – brown. Also, there’s something about putting books on a shelf that immediately makes a place feel like home.
We finished unloading our stuff into the cabin right as a flash thunderstorm blew in. Within moments, a dark cloudy barrel tumbled into the area with great force and burst burst open to dump its cargo of rain and lightning. Instantly drenched, we scrambled to shut the hatches, put down buckets to catch the rain that overflowed our slider, and found a bottle of tequila left by a friend some months back.
Finally, we sat still for a moment. I don’t think it had fully sunk in that we just took the first step in what will be a headlong tumble together down a very long hill. Our lives have been so full and chaotic the last 2 years that it’s been more planning than dreaming. Now we sat on our new cushions, sipping straight booze from mugs with a grimace – considering the moment we’d just found ourselves in and imagining where this all might lead.
Soon the rain let up, the thunder rolled deeper and farther away, and it was time again to move. If that freak storm was an omen, I have to believe that it was a promising one.