{"id":802,"date":"2007-07-27T02:22:59","date_gmt":"2007-07-27T08:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=802"},"modified":"2007-07-27T10:14:13","modified_gmt":"2007-07-27T16:14:13","slug":"poetry-friday-travelers-beware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=802","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Travelers Beware!"},"content":{"rendered":"

*** This week’s roundup is hosted by MsMac at Check It Out. So, um… check it out<\/strong><\/a>.***<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>(Sorry for the overly-large pic, but I couldn’t resist. It’s so spooky<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

So, hello there. Long time no blog. I was supposed to be covering for Jules’s blog vacation this week, but as you may have heard, I moved last week and things didn’t exactly go according to plan. Here’s a few highlights:<\/p>\n

* The U-Haul truck we rented was too small, and we had to take it back. Of course, there weren’t any larger ones available on such short notice.<\/p>\n

* The movers we hired to help us load said U-Haul graciously worked out a deal to move us in one of their trucks, complete with unloading at the end. Money we didn’t expect to spend, but at this point it seemed like the answer to a prayer. And it even gave us an extra day to finish packing, which we needed.<\/p>\n

* Then… they got lost on the way to Ithaca, and because we’d forgotten to exchange cell phone numbers with the mover-guys the husband and I spent a couple of hours sitting in our empty new apartment wondering if, say, the truck blew up, or they’d driven off a mountain…<\/p>\n

* Right after they did finally pull up (yay!), a thunderstorm started (crap!).<\/p>\n

* We went back to Cambridge the next day, to get the rest of our stuff and clean up the apartment, to find that “the rest of our stuff” didn’t even fit in our two cars. We decided to scrap anything that we didn’t absolutely need and called 1-800-Got-Junk for the rest. More money we didn’t expect to spend.<\/p>\n

* The day after we arrived in Ithaca for good, my husband’s truck finally, irrevocably died. And since Ithaca has a law about not leaving a car parked in the same place on the street more than 48 hours, and since B. had to leave for Barrington in 36 hours for the show he’s designing and didn’t have time to think about selling it, we had to find somewhere to store it, fast<\/em>. Which we did, but – say it along with me, now – that was more money we didn’t expect to spend.<\/p>\n

So, yeah, it’s been kind of an adventure. But like any good adventure, for every unforseen obstacle that leapt unbidden into our path, a heretofore unconsidered solution presented itself. I mean, did you even know there are places that store cars for you? I didn’t. And I think it was good for us to get rid of so much stuff. And the day-long-delay meant we got to sell a couple more pieces of furniture on craigslist. And we met some incredibly nice and helpful people. And at least B.’s car made it to Ithaca, and now we can stop wondering how much longer it will last and get on with looking for a new one.<\/p>\n

Kinda like with Harry Potter. I finally got to read Book 7 – after the dust settled I basically sat down with it on the couch and refused to unpack anything until I’d finished. I felt I deserved it. Anyway, thinking about HP’s entire journey over the years kind of reinforced the idea for me. The moral: There are always obstacles on every journey, and in finding solutions sometimes you end up in places you never expected, but would have been sorry to miss. You end up feeling alternately cursed and charmed. And if nothing else, you always get one or two good stories out of it.<\/p>\n

So I’m reminded of Neil Gaiman’s<\/strong><\/a> poem, “Instructions,”<\/strong><\/a> which gives helpful advice for anyone who happens to wander into a fairy tale. You can find the entire text here<\/strong><\/a>, or in his recent collection Fragile Things<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (reviewed here<\/strong><\/a> in November), or you can watch this video:<\/p>\n

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*** This week’s roundup is hosted by MsMac at Check It Out. So, um… check it out.*** (Sorry for the overly-large pic, but I couldn’t resist. It’s so spooky.) So, hello there. Long time no blog. I was supposed to be covering for Jules’s blog vacation this week, but as you may have heard, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}