Sunday 26 July
I wake up feeling rough from dancing my face off with my best friend at a “This is 40” Matinee dance party the evening before. Yeah it’s over by 10 but so what leave me alone this is almost 45 barf 40 ok. By the end of the night I’m at 17K steps and have sweat through my outfit thrice over. We end the night at Niagara with a rosé that we don’t need and photo booth pics that we do.
When I wake up feeling like a desiccated coconut husk in need of an oil can, I push through the funk, slam an LMNT, and take another load of stuff to the curb. While FB Marketplace is a race to the bottom, the Stooping JC Instagram account is a godsend. Everything we put on the curb is snapped up. To be fair, we’re putting good stuff out there, because we cannot move with pretty plant pots and IKEA shoe cabinets. Part of me feels bad for how much stuff we are selling and giving away. It’s not an easy thing to dump the contents of your life onto a sidewalk for anyone walking by to pick through. It is not an easy thing to dismantle an apartment, to strip away years of living and accumulating.
In the late afternoon, my mom and I take my favorite little yellow ferry from Jersey City to downtown Manhattan. I try not to think about how much I will miss things like being in Manhattan in 7 minutes and sneaking in a cheeky Cosmo with my mom at the Conrad.
Monday 27 July
Three days. We move to Ireland in three days. It feels insane and like it can’t come soon enough and like we need another year to organize ourselves. The boxes we are shipping get picked up Tuesday so the goal for today is finalize those boxes. It feels daunting. Our backs are strung taut from all the lifting, moving, and attempting to weigh said boxes. Plus we’re sleeping on a mattress on the ground because we gave our bed frame away.
I drag my mom to the Apple Store in Brookfield Place, once again on my little yellow ferry, to see if I can trade in any of my old Apple products. Obviously, everything I have is way too old and they generously offer to recycle it all since they will be giving me no money. However, I make all the employees’ day with my 25 year old white brick of a laptop that still turns on. They call each other over to ooh and ahh and marvel at the dinosaur. The desktop photo is still my side-of-the-stage digital camera shot from a Kings of Leon concert that I still have one of the roadie’s setlists from. Roseland maybe?
My cousins and a few local friends meet us at White Star, our Local, the restaurant where we had our first wedding celebration, the bar where I sat for days and weeks and years on end spontaneously welling up with fat grief tears, where we planned adventures and made friends, and talked about maybe someday what if should we move to Ireland? I don’t think we would have survived Jersey City without White Star.
It is a delightful little evening and it wonderful to see everyone and eat pretzel bites and tell everyone to come visit. When they start to leave and goodbye hugs are going around, it’s the closest I come so far to losing my shit. I manage to keep it together, but I can feel the tide surging. It’s coming.
Tuesday 28 July
All three of us are up early. My husband pours his coffee and starts finalizing boxes immediately. I manage a half a cup of tea before I feel guilty for sitting and chatting and get up to help him. We wrap boxes in saran wrap, securing labels, and triple taping seams. We sweat and huff and puff and I think my husband loses 10 pounds of water weight. I lose no water weight and get dizzy from spinning boxes.
I have my first real sobfest of the move as my mom and I take trips to her car loading it with some books and belongings we’re not taking and some stuff she is adopting. It’s sinking in that this is Big. That it’s not an extended vacation. That I’ll miss her and our view of downtown Manhattan and the familiarity of, well, everything. Stuff is just stuff, but paring your belongings down to move across the ocean is sad and scary as much as it’s exciting and liberating. For the 437th time in the past month I wonder, “What the hell are we doing? Are we delusional?”
We might be but we have a lease in Dublin signed, our Jersey City apartment is re-rented, and a courier is about to come pick up our stuff. Soooo I think maybe it’s too late to back out. But I don’t want to back out. We’re supposed to make this move. I can feel it.
Too tired from running around like maniacs, we cancel our dinner reservation. Lol cute thinking we’d have the time and energy to go to a nice sit down dinner at the fancy new Indian place in our neighborhood. Instead we drag our sweaty selves to White Star for a last cheers and later on eat Mexican food on the couch that someone is allegedly coming to pick up tomorrow.
Wednesday 29 July
0 days. We move to Ireland in 0 days. Today is the day.
I have timed my tea bags out poorly and on the very last day, I have zero tea to drink. I mainline a Diet Coke and console myself with the knowledge that I am moving to a country where tea is a part of the daily DNA. But god I would murder someone for a cup of tea.
Hours before we move to Europe seems like a good time to do some Amazon returns at Whole Foods, so I power walk my anxious hiney on some errands attempting to make it back in time for the alleged couch picker uppers.
I turn the corner and see a UHaul van. It is important to know that I assume anyone who comes to pick something up from Facebook Market place is a murderer. When I see the older Pakistani man and his teenage son doing a terrible job at parking and emerge from the van in their flipflops, I breathe a sigh of relief that we are probably not going to get murdered by them. When the van doors pop open, a wife and two daughters appear. They have just moved here and have no stuff and three kids. We give them the TV stand, PlayStation, and TV along with the couch. They’re thrilled, we’re relieved. Thank yous all around.
The last few hours in the apartment are absolute flat out sprinting mania. You’re never as organized as you think you are and man did we barely make out of there in time to get to the airport. “I could give a shit about the security deposit at this point” was uttered more than once. In the end, we don’t really leave a mess, but it’s certainly not as clean as it could have been but I’ll blame that on the broken Dyson that crapped out mere hours before.
We check our bags, all labeled with a HEAVY tag, much to the agent’s ire. But they’re not over the weight limit so we can thank those handy hanging scales for that and lady if you need my help getting them on the belt that’s fine but they are getting on that plane.
I am so riddled with adrenaline and so sore that in the United lounge, my arms shake as a bring my Cosmo to cheers my husband’s Old Fashioned. But we made it. We did it. We’re officially on our way.
In the end we ship eight boxes, check six bags (Silver Premium Premium Economy coming in handdyyyyy amirite), bring two carryons and two backpacks on the plane. Our life in 18 parts.
We’re on our way, but there’s traffic. I watch all of The Devil Wears Prada 2 (meh) before we even take off. My vegan meal — falafel and some dubious looking broccoli — smells like the freezer. I pour salad dressing on the side salad that comes with it, thinking that will be fine and I’ll just eat that. And then I remember poop lettuce and think Hm maybe NOT. I eat a roll and go to sleep.
Thursday 30 July
Landing in Dublin is surreal. We live here now? Because our flight is delayed we must come in between banks of flights and the airport is pretty empty. We sail through immigration. After collecting our luggage we hire an UBERMAX because lol we’re in Europe now and I’m not tryna have some Fiat come pick us up with our kajillion bags.
Our new apartment complex doesn’t have a luggage cart, trolley, wheelbarrow, dolly, unicycle, ungatz for us to use to aid in the complete and utter schlep of our 10 bags. We attempt to use the two suitcases with wheels to ferry our large industrial, essentially laundry bags, to our apartment. By this point every muscle in our bodies is like GTFOH.
We get everything into the apartment and finally can look around at our new place. Our home.
I’ve never moved into an apartment that I’ve only ever seen on a leasing agent’s huried wide-angle lensed video. It is exciting and nerve-wracking to be in the space itself. The heat is on and both of us start sweating profusely. As he is leaving, I ask the twentysomething who was tasked with showing us to the door how to turn the heat off. He must see the panic in my eyes because he scrambles back up the stairs and shows us where all the switches are. Most people, he says, just keep all the windows open. Noted. Please still turn it off before I expire in a pile of perimenopausal angst ok tysm.
I congratulate myself for packing sheets and knowing which bag they are packed in as well as having ordered pillows and blanket from Amazon. We open all the windows and the balcony doors, quickly make the bed, set an alarm, and get into bed for a nap we desperately need.
I am disoriented and feel homesick because I’m tired and haven’t eaten and haven’t stopped moving for the past week. But like we made it? And we live here now?
We live here now.
"I am so riddled with adrenaline and so sore that in the United lounge, my arms shake as a bring my Cosmo to cheers my husband’s Old Fashioned." - FELT! I am so so happy for you and PROUD of you. Please keep these dispatches coming!
You did it!!! YAY! Can't wait to hear your updates!!!