I've Seen Fire and I've Seen Rain - Plus Back Pain

Whew! Things are starting to finally come together around here. John and I were just looking through some pictures we took to document our move process yesterday. I took one of him standing inside the empty Budget truck down in DC and the optimistic glimmer in his eye proves that we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. It was so, so, SO much work, we will never move without professional movers again, and it’s finally, blissfully starting to wind down.

John is the king of to-do lists, and for this I am extremely grateful as if it were just me moving on my own, half of my clothes would still be in boxes and the other half would be strewn over a chair. Not only are our clothes completely out of boxes, but the books are on shelves, the pictures are hung, and the walls are painted! It’s as if we actually live here or something. Who knew?

I guess this is also due in part to the fact that for our first three weeks in Manhattan it rained. Not, you know, a mere drizzle either. I mean rain rain. Amazonian rainforest rain, Indian monsoon rain. Inescapable, endless, buckets full of rain. For weeks. THREE WEEKS! Do you hear what I’m telling you?! It was awful! And it’s not like we were being chicken – not even an umbrella can save you from this kind of torrential downpour. So while we were stuck inside we actually organized and unpacked and spruced the place up.

Luckily the rain cleared up for the 4^th. While this day isn’t necessarily one of great interest to either of us, we ended up watching the show from our friends’ place . . . which just so happens to be on the 32^nd floor and has an amazing view of the Hudson River. Suddenly it became very interesting! The view was pretty spectacular and the show lasted 26 minutes. Hudson apparently ain’t no one minute man. For example . . .

So finally the weather has remained lovely and bizarrely cool. I don’t think this is normal, but it hasn’t hit beyond 80 in weeks. In fact, today the high was 70; very odd, but nice . . . or so I’ve been told, because for the entire week I’ve been laid up in bed with some sort of back issue. Evidently I’m old because something happened and I could barely move for days. Nothing seemed to relieve the pain and so naturally this meant, “ahh, back is to spine is to brain is to tumor is to I’m dying” complete with hand to forehead swooning. The only reason why I think I may survive this is that I started feeling better and could actually walk yesterday. Today I actually left the house, so that’s something. Still in a bit of pain, but I’m getting there. So pathetic. John even painted the entire living room by himself on Monday!! Who does that?! It looks great, though. Pictures next time . . .