Part II is feeling like a research project. Part I was more linear and took place in only one location: Delaware. Part II has stuff going on in Delaware and Iowa and, really, a whole lot more going on.
Let's start by first painting the picture of what my situation was at the time this happened. I hadn't lived in anyone else's place in more than 20 years. I bought my first house in 1999 and sold it to buy the DE house. I did live in an apartment during the first year while I was in DE but it was still mine. I wasn't anyone's roommate or guest. I had sold as much furniture as I could. I did leave behind a few pieces but those were gotten rid of, somehow, by my realtor (at the time) and/or my neighbor.
The only furniture that I put in storage in Indianapolis was bedroom furniture and a Step Tantsu that I bought in Okinawa back in 2004. So, a mattress set, a chesser, an armoire, a lingerie chest, my hope chest, the Step Tansu, a entryway table, 33 pieces of art, and, roughly, 30-40 boxes of stuff. That's it. It was quite the downsizing from what I started out with in that house, seen here in 2007 shortly after I moved in. I mean, I even got rid of half my books and half my movies so that I didn't have to move them, knowing that I'd move things from storage to an apartment to a house in Indiana once I bought one. All that I put in storage, fit into a 10' x 10' space.
On October 23, 2019, I set out for Iowa with my cats, my computer, and my clothes. I had made a much, much earlier trip in 2018 to drop off a few boxes of things that I knew I wouldn't be needing for a year: photo albums and a good majority of my dresses. I made that trip mainly to drop of my Jeep because the middle child of my former best friend bought it from me. It's crazy to think there was 14 months in between those two trips. The time went so quickly. Anyhow, this was my car last Fall, almost no empty space but still able to see out all the windows:
I stayed that night at a pet-friendly Hampton Inn in California, PA. (Funny aside: I find it great humor in that PA has many towns and cities named after other states) Got to Iowa on the 24th. The driving and such was a good distraction from the fact that it was the one-year anniversary of the death of my mama.
To say it was an adjustment is an understatement. I went from living in a house with only two cats, in which the only things that made noise were me, the cats, the TV, the computer, or the radio to living in a house of a family of four, two dogs, two cats, and a ferret. The room I was staying in was in the fully finished, multi-room basement--seriously, all it needed was a kitchen for it to be its own living quarters--and it was right under the room where the family watched TV. There was no insulation between the floor of that level and the dropped ceiling of the bedroom so every time someone walked across the floor or the dogs went tearing through that room, I heard it. Every time the lever on the recliner released the footrest, I heard it. It was a very loud pop that startled me on more than one occasion.
My cats were having a hard time, too. neither of them are young any more: Buster is 15 and Shivers is 9. Buster has always been pretty go-with-the-flow but Shivers is a little high-strung. She started acting out in February 2019 when I put Mocha, my oldest kitty, down. She got really picky about the litter box and if it wasn't totally clean, she'd poop outside of it. Now, full disclosure, I was pretty lazy when it comes to litter boxes. It was nothing to go four or five days before I scooped it out. However, once she started pooping outside of it, I tried to make a concentrated effort to scoop it out more often. Mind you, there were two large storage boxes that were used as litter boxes. I still use them. I had this kind originally but they were too short so I switched to these.
She would still occasionally poop outside the box but, when that happened, I cleaned it up and went about my business. Needless to say, the carpet was looking pretty rough after eight months of this, especially since I didn't use any special cleaning spray. I would just put toilet paper on the mess until I could scoop up the doodie, knowing that I would be replacing the carpet when it came time to sell the house. In time, it just became something I would look out for: did Shivers poop outside the box? It didn't happen every day. Sometimes, it would be a week or so before it happened again.
Why am I talking about this? Because it contributed to me having to leave Iowa. But, I'm getting ahead...
Now, the former best friend was fully aware of the situation. She and her daughters were in my house for five days in May of last year. Shivers pooped outside the box on, at least, one occasion while they were there AND there were stains on the carpet from the two months of accidents prior to their visit. But, when it came time for me to move, I'd become accustomed to the issue. It didn't faze me when she had an accident. I wasn't tracking frequency or anything so when the former BFF asked if she was doing better, I assured her that the cat was doing better. Little did I realize what would happen when we moved into a house with four other people, two dogs, two other cats, and a ferret.
The accidents started happening the very next day, very early in the morning, and UNDER the bed. After the second time--one in which I had to cut off part of the hanging box spring liner because it was ON the liner (you know, that part that covers the springs so that nothing gets in between the springs? yeah, ON that part)--I took the mattress set off the metal frame and put in directly on the carpet. That way, if there was an accident, it would be MUCH easier to get to.
Let's segue away a bit from discussions of poop. Let's talk about mattresses for a moment. In February 2018, I replaced my mattress set with an awesome mattress set. Not quite Cadillac Escalade level but definitely in the "super comfy to me, I never want to get out of bed" category. That mattress set got put in storage. The mattress set I was sleeping on...I don't know when it had last been replaced. I don't think it was that old but I was feeling its affordability. As a single person with no kids, I don't have to choose between a good mattress and getting braces on the kids. I get the good mattress. In this case, the kids got braces.
So, I was sleeping on a mattress that wasn't mine, my cat was waking me up on, a daily basis, in the wee hours, and there were buffalo that tromped through the room upstairs on weekdays in the early morning. Basically, sleep was NOT happening. When I did sleep, it wasn't restful because I was half listening for the hershey squirts that came out of my cat's ass.
The hours of being awake were different kinds of challenges. I had moved to a place that was seven miles from its nearest "town", population 1003. It had one grocery store that was sparsely stocked, one gas station, and a few other small businesses. The next largest town was 20 miles away. Thankfully, it has a population that is large enough to warrant many businesses to include a YMCA. I signed up for a membership, there, in mid-November but, again, I'm getting ahead of myself.
The week after getting to Iowa, I wanted to be sure I was doing my part to provide a bit for the folks in whose house I was a guest so I signed up for a Costco membership. What better place to get a whole bunch of stuff than Costco, right? In the first two weeks, I had to find a place to get the food that my cats ate and a place to get kitty litter that might help with the issues that Shivers was having. That place and Costco were in Des Moines, 65 miles away. So was the mall. If I wanted to meander around a bunch of stores and people watch, I had to drive 65 miles. It was in this mall that I had planned to transfer my part-time job from Delaware to Iowa but after making that drive a couple times, I realized it wasn't going to happen.
What was also difficult was to see my former best friend in a different light. In that past, I didn't pay a tremendous amount of attention to some of her behaviors or those of her family. My visits were usually quite short and focused having fun while out and about doing things. I had had a glimpse during my "drop off the Jeep" visit back in 2018 but, again, I didn't process it like I did while actually living with them.
During the 2018 visit, the whole gaggle of folks--friend, her husband, their three kids, the oldest's boyfriend, and I--made a trip to the Amana colonies. We took two cars and left around, I think, 9 in the morning. We arrived an hour or so later. We walked around, had lunch, walked around some more, and by 2 o'clock, I was ready to go. I was done. So was the oldest daughter and her boyfriend. The former friend was irritated that we wanted to leave but we left anyway. I wish I had my own car but that had been bought by the middle child already. We went back to the house and hung out/decompressed. The friend, her husband, and her two other kids didn't get back until much later. I don't remember what time. I just remember that they stayed there and had dinner. She was still irritated that we didn't stay with them and finish the day as a family.
That was the glimpse that I didn't process or dig into.
(This is pretty long and there's more to come so I'll publish this and move on to a Part III)
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