Counting down

Twenty-seven more days in Northampton, MA.

The awful buyers finished their last round of contractors today. The car I stupidly leased for someone else is going to be returned on Friday. I've been feeling so powerless, played upon, so broke. Knowing the buyers are actually going to buy the house and stop being entitled brats and that the car is being returned, though it's costing me a lot, seems like such good news in comparison to the uncertainty of days prior. Stick and rubber band.**

I walked around the town today. (Northampton is really a city but there's nothing city-ish about it.) I tried to feel like I'm going to miss it. The wide-opened sidewalks with few other passersby, the cute cafes, the trees everywhere, texting across the middle of the street without getting hit by a car. But I couldn't well up that feeling of nostalgia. That's what longing for a place is about.


** "stick and rubber band" comes from the Crosby Street loft days when I was married to Russell. The landlords wanted the low-paying grandfathered-in artists out and so they would not fix anything as a form of harassment. The elevator barely ever made it to anyone's floor without lots of opening and closing the metal gate doors and fiddling with the gears that made it run. Someone had the big idea of putting a stick in a faulty lever and holding it there with a rubber band. We thought this was brilliant until an upstairs neighbor said, "We've settled for a stick and rubber band?" That's become my analogy when I think something's great but realize I'm settling.