Month: September 2019

As I’ve mentioned I have moved. I moved about two hours away from where I have been living for the entire life of this blog. I moved back to the area I group up. I still have the same job. Luckily, they are letting me work remotely Wednesday through Friday. This means I have to be in the office Monday and Tuesday. That makes for a long commute.

My alarm goes off at 5:40 in the morning. Until I moved I didn’t even know there was a 5 in the morning. I drove through the countryside in the morning light. I have been staying in a hotel on Monday night to make the stay easier. Don’t know if I am going to keep doing that. It can add up.

I was at my parents watching the Chicago Bears game. It wasn’t a very exciting game but the Bears were winning by a touchdown. The Denver Broncos were driving near the end of the game with only a couple of minutes left. Bud the dog needed to go out. My mom was going to take him so I could watch the end of the game. He got all excited when she put his leash on. He got all confused as I stayed in the chair and my mom took him toward the door. I was supposed to walk him. He refused to go outside. I took a break during the two minute warning and walked toward the door like I was going to walk him. I opened the door and him and my mom went out. I closed the door and went back to watch the end of the game. He wouldn’t leave and just looked at the door. So he came back in and just stood near me as the game wound up. During a weird sequence at the end of the game the Broncos scored and were going for two points to try and win the game. The got it and I was so upset that the Bears had lost and were 0-2. 0-2 teams don’t go to the playoffs. I grabbed the dog and took him for a walk since I didn’t wanna handle the Bears losing. As I turned a corner I heard a bunch of people in the neighborhood cheering. I wondered if there had been time on the clock left.. no way the Bears came back and won. I checked my phone and sure enough they somehow did.

I have mostly moved in. The boxes have been emptied or put in their place. I am still sleeping on a mattress on the lower level to keep Jobu company during the scary nights in a new place. It’s scary for a cat in a new place. There are new smells, new sounds, new monsters, and ghosts. After a few days, Jobu started to get braver. He even would venture into the main level and sniff about a bit.

One night was downstairs with Jobu. I played some cats sound out of my phone which got him all excited trying to find the kitteh friend. He suddenly jumps up and spins around. He hides behind me staring a the stair up to the main level. He puts one paw on me as if to confirm that daddy was there to defend him. I laughed. He just kept staring. After about 5 minutes I got worried and looked around upstairs thinking maybe the raccoons were back. I didn’t find anything. He has slowly been recovering from this horrifying incident.

Near the end of the week, it was dark but not that late, perhaps 9 pm. I went up to the main level which was in darkness to put something in the fridge and throw some Jobu fur away. As I turned the corner to walk into the darkened kitchen I heard a small crash behind me that sounded like it came from the empty upstairs. All my hair stood on end and I thought this is creepy. I ain’t afraid of no ghosts. I threw the Jobu fur away and all my hair stood on end again. Being the brave soul I am I marched upstairs looking for maybe something that fell over. I didn’t find anything and slowly the creepy feeling faded. I went back downstairs to a terrified Jobu. That’s when I noticed that the dustpan I had put on the end of the broom had fallen off. I had been sweeping out the bathroom. I laughed.

I have lived in the same apartment for eleven years. I didn’t even have a smart phone when I moved in, that’s how long ago it was. For family reasons I have had to move a couple of hours away to be closer to my parents.

On Wednesday I loaded the truck up with even more of my stuff and made the two hour drive and loaded some more of my stuff into the abandoned house. I didn’t have time to really find a place for most of the stuff so it just sat in the living room or the garage.

Friday was the big day. I loaded some stuff into the car. I tricked Jobu into his carrier. He didn’t mind at first. He thought he was going on a adventure. He sniffed at the exciting outside air, but then I put him in the car. In the car meant vet. He mreowed urgently. I climbed into the drivers seat and open up the carrier which confused and relaxed him. I petted him as we drove. About a half hour into the drive he realized we weren’t going to the vet. He also realized it was really boring. He went to sleep.

When I got to the house I put him and his liter box in the downstairs bathroom with some water. Unfortunately, I had to take care of some stuff and I had to leave him alone in the terrifying new house for a couple of hours. When I came back he was hiding behind some towels. I managed to coax him out with some treats. By the end of the night, he seemed to be settling in. Not wanting to leave him along that first night I slept on the couch near him. He bothered me all night long. He kept waking me up to reassure him and protect him. At one point during the night, I woke up with him climbing and sitting on my face.

On both Saturday and Sunday I brought up two more loads in the pickup.

I did experience a couple of horror movie moments in the early nights. Some of the lights weren’t working in the lower level. I thought it might be the breaker. The breaker box is in the farthest corner of the basement from the door. As I used my phone to light my way into the spider infested corner I thought if this was a horror movie this is when I would get it. It wasn’t a horror movie and I quickly had fixed the lights.

The second horror movie moment came the second night. I was still sleeping downstairs and Jobu was still waking me up a lot. Every once in a while, on the very edge of hearing, I swore I would hear someone talking in the living room upstairs. Every time I convinced myself that I was imagining it I would hear it again. When I got up to go to the bathroom( old man prostate) I decided to find out once and for all. I climbed up into the living room. There’s a nightlight plugged in up there that seems to be going bad. It just flickers. So I am walking up there in the flickering light at like 3 in the morning straining to hear talking. And then I heard it, a commercial for a vasectomy. For years my mom has had a radio on and tuned to a talk radio station to make people think someone was in the house. I had been standing near it earlier when my mom called me and I had turned it down but not off. So whenever a commercial would come on it would be just loud enough to barely hear.

Friday afternoon a friend and his stepsister picked me up in her car. We headed south through Illinois fields. Eventually, we ended up in roads I know by heart, not by name. I new around that corner was were great grandma lived. Back that way an old farm my grandpa used to till. We picked up my grandpa’s old truck. My friend and I drove it back north.

On Saturday I loaded up that truck with the first of a few loads. I then drove with a subset of my worldly good further north. A change is coming.