Stay where you are! Or not.

Okay, sometimes you can't stay where you are. Sometimes you have to leave. Sometimes you have to move. Sometimes you can't stay in the same state because it is run by twits, thieves, highbinders, dimwits, jerks, numbskulls, crooks, communists, idiots, and assorted bastards, and you thank God the US Constitution guarantees free movement between the states. And then you sell your house and go.

not my house

But, as I have noted during my sporadic entries over the last few months, moving is a chore. I'll put it more strongly than that: moving is a 

🏠CHORE👷😫

It is the most difficult thing I have done in decades, and that's saying something. When we moved into our house in New York we were coming from an apartment, so we didn't have a lot of stuff. After more than two decades in the house, we had amassed a lot of stuff.

Here, in no set order, are the Top Twenty Things I Learned This Year About Moving. This is gonna be a big one.

１ Houses in New York tend to have cellars, and often even attics that allow for storage. Houses in the south more likely have no cellars (because they would get flooded) and if they have storage attics, the temperature in them can get high enough to spontaneously combust things. Therefore, all the lovely storage area you abused in New York will be gone, and now you have to make some Hard Choices about what you can bring.

２ I very much wanted to bring the workbench I had constructed, but in the end the mover -- who was NOT lazy about bringing things -- told me that in his experience the bench would not fit in the garage of the type of house to which we were going. This appears to be true, but I can't tell for sure, because five days after the arrival the garage is still full of boxes. I am not sure it will be empty of boxes until after the Second Coming. I'm glad I sold my car, because this may never be a two-car garage again. 

３ A decade ago, when we were first considering fleeing the Former Empire State, I bought a book called Moving Gracefully, written by Carol Miller Fradkin. As we got ready to put our house on the market I looked through the book for helpful tips. Ms. Fradkin's experience largely involved moving for work, her family uprooted many times, so she knew a lot about it -- but the problems of frequent moving are very different from the problems of moving after a long period of residence. The lesson here is that expertise is not always fungible. In any event, our moving was about as far from graceful as you can imagine. 

４ Not to belabor the topic, but if you've held on to things because "someone might need it" or "it's too good to toss" or "I'm still using this furniture but it's not coming with us" or "I'll use it again someday," you're going to find that the day you have to throw them all out will strike like lightning. I rented a 12-yard dumpster. Then I had a junkman come get stuff (fridge, crappy ol' bookshelves). Then I slowly put stuff out for regular collection so as to not overwhelm the garbagemen, over several months. Then I posted things on social media and gave them away free to the first caller -- including a huge dog kennel from the backyard. Then I had the junkman come over for round two, removing old furniture. Then the movers came. Then I needed junkman AGAIN for stuff that the movers couldn't or wouldn't move or forgot to take. 

５ A special note about books. Which are heavy and mostly worthless. As a child I loved books, not just as repositories of wisdom and adventure, but as the objects themselves. Computers have made them irrelevant. Except for a few rare editions, they are barely worth anything -- people can get the stories without lugging them around. Plus, my childhood dreams of owning a magnificent library were always undercut by my buying the cheapest version of any book I wanted -- used paperbacks, often enough. So when push came to shovel, and I mean shovel, I heaved hundreds of pounds of books into the recycling pile, week after week. I had to ask every time, Did I enjoy or at least respect this book? Might I ever read it again? If the answer was yes both times, I would save it. And now I don't know where to put them all. 

６ I thought we might have trouble getting to the house before the movers did. When we moved into the old place, the moving men went straight from the apartment to the house, fifty-odd miles away, me following in my tiny car. That's not the way it works now, or at least not on trips of 600 miles or so. By the time they got to our old house, they had already picked up a load in Massachusetts. After they left, they went to get another load in New Jersey. I grant you that the truck was enormous, but I really thought we had enough crap to fill it ourselves. Nope.  

７ And so our stuff wandered to and fro over the countryside for an entire week. We drove down the day after our stuff took off and sat in a hotel while we waited. Well, we also went to the lawyer to close on the new place and started bringing what we had in the car into the empty house, but there was no place to sleep, so we hung out at the Hampton Inn. We also went to the beach. Which was nice. 

８ Our movers were great when they got there. I was sad that all the boxes we packed were just loaded into the garage, though -- my wife had made a map with numbering on the rooms to match numerals on the boxes, and it all came to nothing. Nope, they just piled the boxes up in the garage. So that was a lesson. (They did assemble furniture that they had disassembled, so that was good.)

９ The old cable company wants you back. No, seriously. If you use cable for TV or Internet and you leave, they will come after you. I explained twice on the phone to the operators in Bangalore (or somewhere) that Optimum service was not available where we now live, so even if I wanted to continue with Altice's US company, it was impossible. I think they finally got the message. I once thought that Optimum (formerly Cablevision) would have to better after Jimmy Dolan sold the company. I was wrong. 

１０ Little red stickers. Everywhere. Every box. Every bag. Every stick of furniture. Everything that was ours that made it onto the truck got a little red sticker with a number on it. It set apart our stuff from the stuff that came from Massachusetts and Jersey, so good. But I have removed dozens of them. The highest number I've seen so far was 630, so I may be at this for the rest of my life. 

１１ When people tell you about the weather, believe them. I was dispatched to get a pizza one night and the drive turned out to be longer than I thought. And the clouds opened, and I mean opened. I got a real Carolina Baptism. The water came down so hard that on a couple of occasions I literally could not see well enough to pull off onto the shoulder. The last time I got walloped like that was 15 years ago, and on that occasion I hydroplaned and wrecked the car. Nothing like that happened this time. Thank God.

１２ Speaking of baptisms: Northerners, when someone tells you to make a turn at the Baptist church, ask them to be specific. We have very few of them in New York, and almost nothing but them here. I am happy to see evidence of strong Christian faith anywhere (although I will have to drive farther now for Mass). 

１３ The pizza I mentioned above was pretty good. Pizza, as they say, is like, uh, other things you might name*, in that even when it's not great it's still pretty good.

１４ It is typically humid enough here in the mornings for Aquaman to swim through the air. My fuzzy canine does not like this. He has had one decent walk, where we explored the local park on an afternoon when there was a breeze and the temps were in the eighties. My worry is, will we ever acclimate, or just huddle in the A/C? While taking out the trash this morning I saw a young woman walking two well-trained dogs at a brisk pace -- one of them appeared to be a Bernese mountain dog, a snow-obsessed hairball that Nature intended for cold climes -- and they all appeared to be very happy and active and comfortable. I hated all three on sight. Not just the fitness and happiness, but also the fact that when I had two dogs, walking them together was like being pulled by hyperactive morons driving scooters in different directions. Still, it gave me a little hope that Izzy might get used to this weather. 

１５ Speaking of garbage, they only do one trash pickup per week here. Is that typical across the nation? I believe that in the City and outside the City, every town in New York state does two, and a third pickup for the recycling boondoggle. 

１６ And on that note, problems you don't think about are: What am I going to do with all these damn cardboard boxes? They take them for recycling, but everything has to fit in a big green bin, so at the rate I'm going I will have gotten rid of unneeded boxes in 2028 sometime. There is a dump, but I will have to establish residency first, which means . . .

１７ . . . we gotta go to the nearest city worthy of the name to use the DMV. Not an unexpected chore, but since the car's registration is good in New York state until 2027 and the insurance is paid until November, I'd hoped to avoid doing anything for a few months. Alas, I will need that ID, and anyway we would like to vote this year. The DMV does not let you print out forms and fill them out in advance, as far as I can tell; everything has to be done on the spot. In California I think you can send any old border jumper to get a Class A Commercial Driver's License as long as he doesn't speak English, but here in Normal World they want to make sure you are who you say you are. Which is, frankly, as it ought to be. 

１８ The dog was an absolute champ on the drive south -- the longest car ride he has ever taken (eight hours over the previous record) and the longest drive I have ever made. He caused no trouble except for necessary bathroom/water breaks, and on that score he was no worse than the driver (ahem). He has, though, been having difficulty getting used to the new house. For some time I think he expected we would go home, to where he was comfortable and where his favorite sofa was. But the sofa was old and it was among the junkman's haul. Poor Izzy.

１９ It's going to be hard to think of myself as a Southerner, and that is absolutely not a rap on the people here. They have all been great, as friendly as advertised. But I had spent almost every day of my life prior as a citizen of New York, and damn it, for most of that time I was proud -- utterly proud -- of that state. From America's most world-class city to the natural beauty of upstate and the hard-won factory towns to the west, from its amazing history and its contributions to the nation and the world, there was no part of New York I didn't love. But in my lifetime it has chased out industry, encouraged lawlessness, pushed bleeding taxes to fund criminal activities, and let one of civilization's greatest enterprises turn to garbage. My heart is broken. When I mentioned to some people that I'm from New York, I added that I didn't break it and I couldn't fix it. And that is the sad truth.

２０ My main point in this Voyage of Stupid Discovery is that, while there were many reasons to leave New York  -- financial, cultural, professional -- I was settled in there, there were people we loved there, and (this is no small thing) I knew with dire certainty that selling the house and moving would be among the most prolonged, stressful, exhausting, and infuriating things we would ever do. I was wrong, though -- it was worse than that. And yet, this is nice place, I'm finding my way around, we are not far from the ocean, and I would do it all over again. Which is saying a lot, since I'm still surrounded by boxes and still can't find my favorite pants. Gonna check one more box . . . 

* ice cream

The spice must go!

Okay, I went with the Dune reference for the title, but I had to choose between that and several others: 

On the rack

In a Pickle

Herbs and a-whey

A Change of Seasons

Spicemaggedon

And several others. I'm sure you'll have other ideas. 

What finally made me settle on the title above is that I realized that the guy whose famous series was about a substance that made faster-than-light travel possible, a substance called Spice, was named Frank HERBert. So there. 

Sorry, I'm crazed from lack of sleep. 

 

We have a moving truck booked, and if you've ever hired house movers, you know they won't take food. Especially stuff in open containers. Why should they? Who wants to deal with that?

If we were moving locally I could bring all the open herb and spice jars and condiment bottles to the new place in the car, but we are moving hundreds of miles away, and between humans and large dog there isn't going to be a whole lot of room. Plus, while we can get to the area in less than 12 hours, the movers may take three to seven days. Even with all our crap, we can't fill up the truck ourselves. So we need suitcases and a hotel room. 

So no, no room for spices. Ironically, the thing that makes travel to the stars possible in Dune cannot travel at all here. 

And no one wants your old, open spice and pickle jars. I had a small handful that had not yet been opened, which I will donate with canned soup and the like. But the rest? Down the toilet, down the drain, or just into the trash. 

I just finished the job and I have an incredible mound of plastic and glass for recycling day on Wednesday. I also have a garbage can that smells like an amazing antipasto. 

Now the goal is not to cook anything between now and next week that will be bland because I had to do the purge. Needs coriander? Sorry, that's down the sink. A bit of rosemary? Headed for the landfill. Onion powder? Pardon the oniony scent in the loo. Hundreds of dollars' worth of flavors, gone. 

Can't be helped, I guess. I've already had to part with so much -- sentimental items, books a-plenty, money like there's no tomorrow -- so what's a recently opened jar of dried bay leaves compared to that? 

On the bright side, some of those seasonings looked a little too seasoned. I think my bottle of dried savory had a Durkee label from two or three iterations ago. Never had a lot of call for savory .. . .

Chairs for baby derrieres.

Some years ago when I was working for a family publication, I attended a police training session. The attendees were me and a bunch of traffic cops. As my magazine dealt with topics germane to young families, I was there to learn about the proper installation of child car seats -- and my fellow students were there to learn what to look for when examining the same. 

If you've had a kid in the last thirty years, you know that car seats for children, especially babies, are of grave importance. They always were, I guess, but if they were even around when I was a baby it was not something most people bothered to have. My earliest memory of being in the car was sitting on my mother's lap in the front seat as Dad drove us across a bridge -- possibly the GWB from New Jersey, but I'm not sure. All I remember was that my mom held me tight and that bridge was the BIGGEST THING I had seen in MY WHOLE LIFE -- all three years of it or thereabouts.

The reason I am thinking of my Crazy Car Seat Class is that, while cleaning out the office in preparation for moving, I found the notebook I used that day! Why I still had it I don't know; it got put in a trunk and forgotten after I filed my report. But it brought back memories of the day -- and the doodles I made during the more boring parts.

"Why is this kid upside down?"

We started with a busy classroom discussion on the types of baby seats, why parents shouldn't get a used seat (may have been in an accident), seats for kids with special needs, and basic physics (weight x speed = restraining force, so a 10-pound kid at 60 mph needs 650 pounds of restraining force) (which is more force than an adult holding the kid can generally muster). 

We also saw a video entitled "Don't Risk Your Child's Life" (an ongoing series) that, while not on the level of the cinematic classic "Red Asphalt," was an eyeopener nonetheless.

The next day we went outside to practice fitting seats in cars and discover how easy it is to do it wrong. My car was one of the ones used -- appropriately, a car that would perish five years later in a hydroplaning incident (no children were with me at the time). 

On our final day, the police, with us students in tow, held an actual session with the public. The police had arranged to have a free child seat check in the parking lot of a shopping center nearby. While I had not qualified as a Certified Car Seat Safety Technician, I was allowed to help and observe. Using my secret code (that is, my illegible handwriting) I took notes on each of the checks I watched:

Child 1: 11 months, 22 lbs.

Should have been in a rear-facing seat

The seat he was in was loose (straps holding the seat are too loose if you can pinch the webbing together)

The retainer clip was too high

The harness was also too loose 

Child 2: 6 months, 20 lbs.

Convertible seat should have been rear-facing but was forward-facing

Belt not used properly

Child 3: 2 years, 30 lbs.

Funny-lookin' kid

Harness too loose

Locking clip used incorrectly

Child 4: 1 year, weight not recorded

Seat and harness too loose

Clip too low

Latch used without the top tether

Child 5: 4 years, 45 lbs.

Booster seat but in the front; should have been in the back seat; kids that age cannot handle airbag deployment

Shoulder belt improperly threaded

And on like that. Every vehicle I saw had something wrong, and it's not like these seats don't come with instructions. Confusing instructions, I imagine. Mostly the problem was that the straps holding the seats were too loose. The LATCH system (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) was coming into use then but was not universal. 

Ultimately I was not asked to write the story for the magazine of My Adventures in Child Seat Safety, but I did become the Child Seat Answer Man for a while when the topic came up. And I learned to warn people to follow the installation directions carefully, and if they're concerned, to talk to a local police department to see if anyone there is a certified car seat technician. 

No matter what anyone reading this thinks of the police, know that cops never want to see people grievously wounded or killed in traffic accidents, and they NEVER EVER EVER want to see children get hurt or worse. 

Even if you have great confidence in your driving skill and your situational awareness, we all know that the roads are full of morons, dope fiends, drunks, the befuddled, the overtired, and the thrill-seekers, and we all need to protect ourselves and our loved ones with good safety practices. 

Thanks for reading, and happy and incident-free motoring to you! 

Live white man's clothes.

Over the weekend I completed a chore I've been dreading for years. 

When preparing to move, it's important to identify the things that should not move with you, to cut down on the waste of lugging things that you didn't use and won't use. That meant, among other things, trying on every single article of my clothing, discarding the worn-out ones, and donating the ones that don't fit anymore.  

It's time.

I've done some weeding before, but this is the first wholesale clearance I've done in twenty-plus years. So you know a LOT of things have been hanging around, waiting for me to lose those excess pounds I put on over Christmas/New Year's/Easter/the Giants winning Super Bowl XLII. And it's time to say, well, if I ever accomplish the weight loss, I can buy some new duds. 

Meanwhile, I had to try on everything. 

The upshot: two lawn bags full of trash, for starters. Old painting clothes, beloved tees with holes, socks and sweatpants with weak elastic, suspect underwear. Out out out. Then: FOUR lawn bags with clothes in good shape that either don't fit at all or just make me look like a potato. That's a pretty good load that won't make the moving truck. 

For the first time in decades I can wear every article of clothing that I own.

The trash men got the garbage and the good stuff was broken down into smaller bags and dropped off at the church clothing collection box. 

Now, about that: I understand that so-called "fast fashion" is polluting the Third World:

Dead White Man's Clothes: It’s the dirty secret behind the world’s fashion addiction. Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill, creating an environmental catastrophe on the other side of the world.

In short, 15 million garments show up in Ghana a week; no one will wear most of them again, and it's all turned into a tremendous landfill. And that's just one African country. Our donations are also said to have collapsed the local clothing industry.

It's depressing, and I have plenty of reason to accept the Australian Broadcasting Company's report. However, I have to ask: If the clothing collection boxes we see everywhere are just essentially collecting garbage, why is there money in it? Who's paying for them? Most of them are not for local thrift stores or charity drives. When you see them in a parking lot, that means someone is paying rent for those boxes to be there. Who's spending money to collect clothing no one wants?

There's more to all this than I know. 

But in my personal defense, I am not a buyer of fast fashion. I have very little fashion sense of any kind. If I have a shirt that is not obviously stained or ripped and is comfortable, I will wear it until it becomes embarrassing. 

Unless I get too fat for it. 

What I'm saying is that I get quality clothing, not stuff meant to be worn once and discarded. So I have reason to hope that the things I've donated will find a better user along the line. There's still a lot of life in that suit I had to give up. 

Or maybe that suit will be picked up by a funeral home. The jacket will be split up the back for ease of use and put on suitless corpse so he looks nice at the wake. And then my good suit will be interned, not in a landfill, but a human landfill -- the cemetery. 

And who knows? When the final trump is blown and the dead emerge from their tombs, there will be one guy who looks at himself in his resurrected body and say, "Hey, this suit isn't mine! But -- it looks fabulous!"

And: "Why'd they have to slice up the back?"

A new lend-lease act.

A few surprising things came out of the US being the primary host for the World Cup this year. One is that a lot of my friends were following the games closely -- some, having coached soccer for their kids, have learned to like the game somehow. Another is that the American squad made us proud, proving that they were not in the tournament just because we're hosting (the old "it's my party and you have to let me play" rule). And the third?

Ranch dressing. 

Ranch dressing, the little dressing born in Hidden Valley, California, has conquered the nation -- and now the world. It's my wife's favorite salad dressing, and she's not alone in that. In fact, The Takeout noted that in a Kraft survey of favorite dressings by state, Ranch dominated, winning 13 states including the Eastern Seaboard from Maryland down. And our visitors from overseas apparently could not get enough of the stuff. 

I was honestly surprised that they had not tried it before. Many people visit America, and you can't escape Ranch dressing, as a dip or on a salad. I would have thought that you could get it in Western Europe, at least. After all, you can find Japanese curry mix in Walmart, Irish sausage in my local supermarket, and I've even seen Marmite occasionally. Vegemite might take some looking, but you can certainly get it online. I would have thought the buttermilk goodness that is Ranch would have wandered farther afield before now. 

But I am glad that visitors to our mighty nation have found a culinary treat to love. I think what is needed is a new lend-lease act to help our overseas brethren enjoy the wonders of Ranch at home. We can start by filling up some oil tankers that are at loose ends; we'll send them to Europe first. Two or three would be good for starters.

You've seen houseboats, but never ranchboats!

Interest-free loans will be given to finance these exports. And no tariffs! We want them to enjoy the dressing and not try to steal our secret salad technology. There's a reason that Valley is Hidden. 

Enjoy the taste of freedom, friends! 

[P.S.: For the record, I prefer French or Italian or even creamy Caesar to Ranch . . .  but keep it under your Uncle Sam hat.]

Don't hit the dog!

I didn't! I didn't hit the dog! 

Okay, I swatted his behind, but does that count? 

Like most dogs, my fuzzy friend Izzy loves to be outside. He'd be outside all day if he could -- if he didn't get too cold, hot, or wet, which conditions generally lead to his desire to call it quits and seek shelter eventually. 

Yesterday was almost just right. Warm but not too hot or humid, sunny, generally T-shirt weather for us human types. As I was settling in to get to work, he made the noise indicating that he wanted to go out. The I-gotta-wee noise is indistinguishable from his I-wanna-loaf-on-the-grass noise, but generally as a work from home freelancer I can accommodate him, just in case. But this turned out to be a loaf situation, not a wee situation, and I could not hang around with him all morning. (Note that we have no fence of any kind, so he can't just be left out there.) 

I tried ordering, cajoling, wheedling, and barking, not in that order, all to no effect. He remained a lump on the lawn. I tossed dandelions at him. I gave him gentle shoves with my foot.

Finally, I went for my secret weapon. 

Yes, the broom I keep on the porch to sweep off leaves and such. Pushing the bristles under his side I applied gentle pressure until it annoyed him enough to make him get up. And as he stalked off to find someplace to P, I gave him a little swat with the broom in the A. 

How can you hit a harmless dog?

With all the fuzz on his behindular area, I doubt he even felt it. And even you Zaprudered a film of the incident, you'd see such a slow-mo swing that not only could not hurt a fly, it would barely brush it away. 

Anyway, that was my Animal Abuse action for the day. Mind you, if Izzy ever finds out I swatted his behind, he'll complain quite a bit. So don't say anything, okay?

American as fried apple pie!

I don't know if you heard the big news over the Fourth of July celebrations, but for a limited time McDonald's (yeah, the place with the twerp CEO) brought back its apple pies.

"But," you who haven't heard ask, "they always have apple pies."

"Yes," I respond, "but not deep-fried apple pies, the way God and Man intended."

Monolith Pie

You obviously have not heard that, for a limited time around America's 250th celebration of Independence Day, McDonald's would be bringing back it's fried version of its pies, rather than the baked type they have been selling for years. I personally suspect that this was at the urging of its most famous french fry cook, one Donald Trump, who as we know loves McDonald's food even more than does its rather peculiar CEO -- who seems to have never eaten it. I think Trump put the word in -- to make this holiday REALLY special we need McDonald's pies deep fried in grease, which is how we won the Cold War. (It just stands to reason.)

Well, last week we had house-selling stuff going on one night that precluded cooking, so dinner came from the Golden Arches -- and so did dessert. 

So, how did it match up to the pies of my youth? Was it crispy? Was it tasty? Was the filling as hot as magma, roughly 2600 degrees Fahrenheit, as people recall? 

Yes, unlike the modern McPie, this had a nice crispy exterior with a sugary top. It was pretty tasty, although as the celebrated Mrs. K notes, the pies were never all that awesome; if they were, the famous failures of the McDonald's ice cream machines wouldn't be such a big deal. As for the heat of the filling, it was no big deal -- I think if you eat the pie as soon as they hand it out it's much hotter than if you save it for dessert, as we did. 

But make sure you eat it ASAP: the label warns you that the clock is ticking!

You don't want your pay frito to turn soggy and oily. 

On the whole the pie was a nice but not needed treat and a pleasant schlep down memory lane. Now, if they start frying the potatoes in lard again, that will be much bigger news that will require a new investigation to be opened. Stay tuned!