Over the last two weeks, I had the entire inside and outside of my house painted, the bedrooms carpeted, the bushes trimmed the lawn sodded and I pressure washed the concrete. We packed cleaned and staged the entire house for photos:
Many friends helped and frankly I couldn’t have packed it all up without them. In particular, my girlfriend, Elise, a Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) sufferer for twenty years, worked like three people injuring her RA deformed hands in her herculean effort to make the house perfect.
The house has gone from one of the worst kept up houses to perhaps the prettiest. The Terminex man drove by the house three times and had to look for the house number – expertly cleaned up by Elise. My sofa, entertainment center and non-HDTV TV were given to a grateful friend. My teenage daughter’s room has no junk anywhere, not even stuffed into the closet. I have no idea where most of my stuff collected over twenty-five years 19 years in California, 25 years since college and 49 years of life is except that it is in a box somewhere in the house. The oldest possession I can think of who’s whereabouts are unknown to me is my chessboard from 5th grade, circa 1972, bought during the Bobby Fischer craze.
The house was listed today. After 17 years, I am moving back to NY, leaving my friends, my brother, my daughter and taking Elise with me to Syracuse, NY, SUNY Upstate as I go to Med School at 49 years old. Most likely, I am older than a few of the parents.
The whole thing is surrealistic, and likely to only get more so.
In the paraphrased words of Neil Simon from the Odd Couple, can a 49-year-old man go back to Med School without driving himself crazy?
Stay tuned, we’ll see.
