Unshackling

Nightmare at U-haul

Now that I have my rig, I have to consider moving into it.  There is a fair amount of renovating to do but it is never too early to start planning the actual move.  In the past five years I've moved from a two bedroomed two bathroom house with a fully furnished basement to a one bedroom apartment to sharing an already furnished apartment. Somehow, the amount of stuff I have has not diminished a fast as my living space has. Instead, I am shackled to mountains of stuff in storage.

Storage is expensive. If I am to really embrace being happy, I need to get rid of all this stuff. It is a burden on my mind and on my wallet.

I actually got an encouraging start to paring down on the Friday before I bought my rig. I was about to blog about that when the big purchase happened so my story about selling my first item was delayed. Well, here it is.

When I first moved into my one-bedroom apartment, I had practically nothing. No bed, no chair, no table, not even a shower curtain. I bought the bed first. I splurged a little, bought a full-sized Serta from Sleepy's. I loved that bed. The second thing I bought was a plush and cushy comfy chair. Having a nice place to curl up with a good book and a glass of Martinelli was a priority for me. Sadly, I can't take either of those items on the rig; time has come for them to go.

I placed an ad on Craigslist - which can literally be like taking one's life into one's hands. I have put stuff on Craigslist before - with absolutely no luck - so I really didn't expect much. And then, about three days after I placed the ad, I received an email. Someone was interested in the chair. The person included a phone number so I called.

The voice on the other end was high energy but low pitched. The background was very noisy so what I heard was that Tony wanted to buy my chair, could he come by and see it that afternoon if his friend's van was available? Well, sure he could, I thought. And then I thought, it's Craigslist. What if Tony is a serial killer?

I reached out to my Facebook family, begging for someone to come with me and at least witness my demise. One friend wrote back saying, "I wish I could go with you . . . God has your back". What?  "No!" I replied. "God said 'Bring back-up!"

Tony called again to get directions and I gave him the address. I like to be sure that I am calling people by their correct names so I double-checked as we were about to end the call. "This is Tony, right?" I screamed into the phone. The background was still deafening. "Jasmine!" I heard in reply.  Jasmine?!  Lord have mercy, this was a woman on the line! My anxiety level immediately dropped but I chided myself for that. Women also kill, I thought. I still wanted someone to come with me.

Ultimately no one could go with me. I made sure that my phone was fully charged, told the people of Facebook where to find my body, and I figured that since I had to check in to reach my storage unit, someone would eventually figure out that I was missing and come looking for me. With that, I took off for U-haul.

Jasmine had not arrived when I got there. I decided to go to the storage unit to poke around while I waited.  I called Jasmine and asked her to call me when she arrived.  After about twenty minutes the call came through and I hurried down stairs and out to the gate. Jasmine said that she and her friend  (I'm calling her Ana) would be waiting in a green van.  Sure enough, I saw the van parked outside the gates in front of a lovely Econoline E450.

Rrrrowrrr!

This is when things got weird. As I reached the gate, three boys approached me. They must have been around eleven years old. They each had bits of yarn hanging from their heads (I have no idea). One of them said,

"Um, hey, I like your hair".
"Thank you", I replied.
The second boy said, "I'm Jamaican, too".

I chuckled to myself.  Apparently wearing dreadlocs was synonymous with Jamaican to them.

Then the third boy said, "Take me home with you." Huh? Now I was concerned. What was wrong here? Were these boys orphans? Did they need foster care? By this time I had reached Jasmine and Ana. The three boys trailed behind me repeating their request. Jasmine took one look and started yelling at them. Only then did I catch on to what was going on. These eleven-year-old boys were hitting on me! I was horrified! Jasmine chased them off, muttering about what happens when idiot boys see a fine booty, so I never got to ask the boys the question that still burns in my mind: What, precisely, did they expect to happen?

Jasmine turned out to be a delight. She curses like a sailor and her heart is as big as the universe. Ana played a ruefully amused straight-woman to Jasmine's antics.

Jasmine

Jasmine loved the chair! Her chair. No way would her husband and son get this chair, she declared. I actually felt a little choked up. I was so happy to know that my chair, my little island of refuge, was going to someone who would truly love and appreciate what it offered. If she couldn't have a room of her own, at least she could have her own comfy chair.

While I still have a long way to go before I have cleared out my stuff, I am really happy about how this part of my process has begun. I told Jasmine about my plan to live in a van. At first she looked at me as though I had newts growing out of my head. Then she got another look in her eye. An enterprising look. "You don't got kids?" She asked. "No," I answered and she nodded.  "Yeah, you can do this. This is a great idea.  Let me tell you whatchu gonna do." And then she gave me all the inside tips for how to get a van for free. She is quite the source of information and inspiration and good luck, apparently.  Just two days later I got my rig - not quite for free but almost.