Raveling the Knitted Sleeve

Fumes. I think I’m going to be functioning on them and not much else for the foreseeable future. Waking up around 1, after falling asleep somewhere between 9 and 10, may not be my best option, but I’ve been doing that a long time. Not going back to sleep until 5 or later — that’s new, and unwelcome.

The person most responsible for this the last couple of days is that useless nurse practitioner I never requested to see and don’t plan to go back to. But every time I call in a prescription, she denies it until I see her. We had this conversation a month ago, but apparently she remembers none of it, and now her office, which took a week to notify me last time, can’t even be bothered to tell me they’ve declined my prescription. I learned about it from the pharmacy.

So now I really don’t want to go see her, but I don’t know what plan of action to take. Call and complain to the clinic administrator, if there is such a person? Try calling the PA I would rather see? I follow their stupid rules: I go in every year; I get my blood drawn at the health fair every year, with results sent to the clinic; last year Lynn and I went to Montrose to do the tests offered by Lifeline, including the blood test this nurse practitioner thinks I need . . . I really don’t need to be dealing with her right now.

But once I swirl all that around in my head, I move on to other things, like moving. One minute I’m thinking we’re sitting good while Lynn says no; the next Lynn’s thinking we’re okay and I’m the doubting TL.

Yesterday we socialized a lot more than we packed, but we did fill the truck with garden stuff from the Weatherport, because it can sit outside at the new house (although Lynn reports everything is covered in cottonwood sap). It seems to me, looking around at what’s left in the Weatherport, that we’re looking at a day’s work just to dispose of everything in there.

We haven’t solved moving logistics, either. It does not seem, after we conducted two tours of the Some Day Ranch yesterday, very likely that the garage will be ready to take on storage next weekend, but if we could get some of our crap out of this house next weekend (although then we’re moving rather than packing), that feels like it would be helpful.

We’ve gotten one bid on moving, from a company called Sibley and Son (which isn’t either the Sibley I know or his son). The man has seemed very nice, but has what sounds like serious dental work lined up for much of the second half of August. He could move us on Aug. 9, and we might ask him about the Monday after that instead, but then he heads to the dentist and no heavy lifting.

We got a recommendation from a friend who moved in December, and that man is coming today to look at our stuff and provide an estimate. I think this is a secondary job for him, and am not sure of his availability. Sometimes he’s very quick to get back to us, and other times it takes days and/or a prompt from Lynn.

Spectrum has been quick to cash our check but can’t decide when they might install internet service. Every time Lynn calls she gets a different answer, and now they’re telling her this Wednesday. “You said that about last Wednesday,” she told them. And all they were really prompt about was their phone survey to see how their customer service had gone.

Then there’s all the moving going on around us. We had two breakfasts scheduled for yesterday, and for the first one, with our regular gang, Mark and Theresa announced via text that they weren’t coming because they were house-hunting in Montrose. Then they announced they have a buyer for their house. Mark had told me earlier in the week they were thinking of going to Montrose, but that was a seriously stealth house sale.

I’ve been paying attention, as you know, to the real estate market, and I’m still looking, trying to determine if we were suckers or realists. There are a lot more houses on the market, and several of them — all smaller than our current house — are coming in slightly above the price we sold for, but our broker has a new listing of one less bedroom and 300 fewer square feet in the hastily-built and flood-prone Sunspot subdivision for $357,000. This after she told us $350,000 was too high for our asking price.

At our second breakfast, we learned that another Mark, this one paired with Kym, is also planning to move. They have decided, after both of them had health issues, that perhaps it would be prudent to be closer to kids, both of them now in Montana. So Mark, who is on transitional retirement at Western Not State, will finish out his year of half-time teaching, and they’ll move next June.

My Zillow research project (that sucker or realist quest) turns up other news about friends. I see that my friends Veronica and Jim appear to be following through on their plan to move closer to kids (once again, following health issues) in Texas; their house went on the market last week. And the man who was supposed to be the plumber for our construction project but who retired just as we got underway apparently listed his house a month ago. I used to play volleyball with him and his wife, but that was back before their kids grew up and perhaps moved to someplace where Dick and Cindy might now go.

(I also see on Zillow that the owners of the house that used to belong to Janet and Marty Johnson, just across from Carol’s house, have abandoned the notion of getting $423,000 and are now seeking $399,000. That’s a house very similar to the one we sold for a lot less than even their new asking price.)

And then there’s Andrea Bocelli. He’s been stuck in my head for days. I put some Youtube video at the bottom of a post the other day, and the video that cued after that was him singing Elmo the Muppet to sleep. And why that song, out of everything, has been trapped between my ears I don’t know, and since I’m not really that familiar with it — although it’s his biggest hit to date, I believe — I only have about two lines (the ones that swell) in litany in my head.

Huh. Translated, it comes out to “Time to Say Good-bye.” Maybe that’s why. I didn’t even know I spoke Italian.

Perhaps, if nothing else works, I will have Mr. Bocelli come sing me to sleep. After all, it worked for Elmo, and he didn’t even want to close his eyes.

I’ll spare you the Elmo version, but this is what’s stuck in my head. Con te partirò literally translates as “with you I will leave,” so with you I will leave this song.