The Mayflower Moving Company seems determined to cement our status as pilgrims.   Our things won’t arrive for another week. Once we got the keys, we moved to our glorious new home with pretty much the clothes on our back and the dog at our feet. 
 
Some would say we are squatting in our new abode, but a story is all in the telling. Perspective, perspective, perspective.  Why squat when you can “glamp”?  (photos above).  We have take out,  our Target card, Costco,  and don’t forget Joe, our favorite Trader.  
 
We decided to leave the fully-stocked hotel because Homie didn’t like it, and the canned air induced a cold in Ali.  A slightly under-the-weather Ali makes sufferers of “man flu” look like Amazon warriors. Ali shared the cold with Jory, who passed it on to Lillie.  And having a common cold in 2020 is akin to leprosy thanks to COVID.
 
As someone fascinated by the mind/body connection, I sought out Louise Hay’s connection of the emotional components of a cold. Hays says colds come about when there is “too much going on at once. A sign of mental confusion, disorder, helplessness or despair. Mucus and tears are ways to release repressed or pent up emotions.  If you have a cold, you may want to see if there is any crying or grieving you are repressing”.  Bingo.  Think of Hays when you next get a full blown case of the sniffles.
 
Tyler of course, never got the cold. He’s also not quite sure what’s going on.  He’s just excited to finally have his own room. I’ve been drinking sambucol like it’s happy hour and find writing cathartic. A way to release the swirling emotions.  Grateful to share them with you.
Now in our new home, without the canned air, the colds have really abated. The home is majestic.

Leaving LA was heart wrenching…For me it was 26 years of my life, for my husband 20, and for the kids, their entire lives. Three of us in the car were sobbing (one of us, not sobbing, asked if we were almost there yet before we even reached Santa Monica. Yes, he’s also the one who now chases down hotel corridors after his sisters screaming, “I’m the rotten egg!  I’m the rotten egg!” like it’s a desired thing). 
 
Today was supposed to be our moving-in day. Life, it turns out, is about pivoting.
 
Tomorrow we (finally) should close on the house.  But our furniture is....still in LA (furniture meaning all our worldly possessions).  Apparently, the Mayflower moving company doesn’t have drivers. This would have been helpful information to know before they packed us last week.  (Aside: at this time of great unemployment, how can a national moving company not find drivers?)
 
Hence the in-between. We know what we’ve left, but not what our lives here will be like.  Right now we’re virtual schooling and working in a cozy (read cramped) hotel suite.
 
We did find amazing gourmet donuts this morning (pictured above), so (Keto be damned) that’s a start.  
 
Two days after we left LA, there was a sizable earthquake, our favorite neighborhood pizza joint shut down without warning and the Notorious and Beloved RBG passed away.  Change. Can't avoid it, so here's to embracing the unexpected, the new, the constant change.