So the movers showed up on Monday and boxed up our house:

(That guy, over on the right? That’s Darin, working throughout the chaos. He has focus.)

The movers came back on Tuesday and took everything:

Sophia, Simon, and I were not there through this hilarity. We were at Disneyland:

Darin stayed at home and—yes, you guessed it—worked through the entire nonsense of movers taking all of his stuff away. How he does that, I have no idea.

We’ve spent the last several days working our way up the coast, stopping in Santa Barbara and Monterey. Now we’re in the Bay Area and I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet. As in, we’re here now. Every so often I find myself on the verge of crying and I find myself shaking it off. Crying about what? Yes, we’ve left a lot of friends and a great area to move to a great area with a lot of friends.

I’ll save the crying for after a few days of having the kids all to myself with no breaks.

I also saw the house today—Darin drove me around the neighborhood and then we stopped at the house. The owner was there, washing his car, and he gave me a tour while Darin stayed with the kids. (The guy’s a career cop, and he’d noticed us driving by before, on a day when there were lots of cars driving around because of the incredible number of yard sales. Spooky.)

I love the house. I love the neighborhood. Darin did good.

But I’m completely knackered and this is the easy part, because Darin and I have gotten to tag-team the kids all week. What happens on Monday, I ask you, when it’s me and two kids and Darin’s off in the office taking it easy?¹

Well, we have plenty of errands to do, that’s for sure. I just have to remind myself that this is a big adventure.

¹ For some definition of “easy” that encompasses “Suddenly becoming a manager of a giant, high-profile project at a high-profile company.”

A few weekends ago Michele and I took a one-day course at UCLA Extension entitled “Finding and Working with the Right Literary Agent for you.” Since the total amount of novel-writing I’ve done in the past three months approaches zero, I looked at this primarily as a reason to get together with Michele and think about writing some. I didn’t expect to learn anything.

One of my nervous tics during a class like this is to observe other people in the class and do character sketches of them, describing their persons and personas. I always focus on the Loudmouths, the ones who believe they’re in a seminar of one and try to hog the teacher’s attention. And the prime Hog this time was a character all right—at one point, while the Hog was going on and on about something in her nasal, grating voice, I leaned over to Michele and said, “Do you know the character Pat from Saturday Night Live?” (Sadly, she doesn’t.)

Anyhow, as I was attempting to observe “Pat” surreptitiously to write down her description, I realized that I couldn’t see her very clearly. The only way to see clearly enough was to squint, and there’s no such thing as surreptitious squinting—go ahead, give it a try, I dare you.

I guess moving has been good for me. I’ve woken up and smelled the espresso about needing to get back into shape, and that day I got a wake-up call about my eyesight.

Which was disappointing to say the least, given that six years ago I had LASIK surgery. Now, it was something of a medical miracle that my eyesight could be corrected in the first place, because I went from -12 diopters with astigmatism (which is the technical term for “blind as a bat”) to 20/20. Well, 20/25, but close enough for government work.

I went to the optometrist (where I haven’t been since 1998, it seems) and got my eyes checked: they’re at -1.25. I got myself a new pair of glasses yesterday and yup, I was in serious denial about how bad my eyesight had gotten. I must have been straining my eyes really hard to see clearly. I could read signs a block and a half away, whereas before I had stopped trying to read them.

All of my old psychological wounds about wearing glasses have resurfaced—I got called “Four Eyes” more than a few times. I suppose I can get contacts again, even disposable ones this time, which I certainly couldn’t get with a -12 prescription. My inner moppet is screaming, “NO! They said no more glasses and no more contacts and I don’ wanna!” I look at Fia and Simon and wonder if I’ve cursed them with my eyesight. If in a few years they’re going to have to start braving the Four Eyes label.

Evidently Apple covers LASIK now, but do I really want to have that procedure again, if my eyes are just going to keep changing? Is this just vanity on my part? Or should I just get the contacts and be done with it?