This is going to be the title of my first album and all of the lyrics are going to be totally spur of the moment, ala Adventures in Babysitting‘s “Babysittin’ Blues”. I actually believed that this might be our last move, because I know that living near Los Angeles is logical for what I want to do with my life, but I didn’t realize that the air and water were quite so toxic or that my faith in humanity could be further corroded. I really thought that I had experienced the extent of humanity’s lack of consideration/selfishness/entitlement issues. Turns out… no.

In fact, just this week, after trying and failing to sell all of the furniture that we weren’t about to move, a problem that we’ve never had in the past, we decided to give it all away. This was better, we decided, than throwing it all away. At least someone would benefit. So, Shawna put an ad on Craigslist listing our free furniture items and said that it was first come, first serve. Where we hadn’t been able to sell any of our items at the very reasonable prices we’d originally asked for them, we amazingly enough got over a hundred emails once the items were listed for free.

Now, if you’ve never sold/given anything away on Craigslist, you may not know how the people who buy stuff/collect freebies on Craigslist have a tendency to operate. They will tell you that they are coming and then not show up. So the only way to make sure you get rid of everything is to tell people it is first come, first serve.

People try to overcome this stipulation by sending you their own personal sob story (I’m a single mother… We’re trying to get back on our feet… et cetera and so forth) and asking you to hold the furniture for them until such and such time. And that’s when we say “Sorry. First come, first serve. If you want it, drive fast.”

Anyway, the first people showed up and took the two free couches. Then a guy came and took a tall bookcase and the desk, which pretty much cleaned us out of free furniture. So, Shawna wrote over a hundred people back and told them that all of the furniture was gone. And spent the rest of the night receiving emails like this:

From Mr. Johnathan Summit of jcsummit@yahoo.com: “see thats fucked up … good thing i did not drive there …. piss off”

From Ms. Serenity Tomlinson of smatkt201@yahoo.com: “Either you are a complete idiot, or just a straight up bitch, why in the world would you tell over 10 people to come, knowing full well they are ALL on their way? Your a bitch, and I am almost certain this add was fake, thank you so much for wasting my time. I also found it very idiotic of you to give out your own address, but not your cell number? You wasted a lot of peoples time, and for that I say, go fuck yourself..”

(she pulled the number ’10′ out of her ass, by the way)

From Mireya Villanueva of ayerim79@yahoo.com: “thats fucked up”

I’ve included their personal email addresses in case any of them ever try to do something nice for someone and any of you want to write them and cuss them because you didn’t personally benefit from it.

All spelling errors and bad attitudes belong solely to the senders, and combine to remind me why I have become a cynical, jaded human being. We have one desk chair and a TV stand left in here and what I really want to do is drop them both from the top of the parking garage and watch them smash into a million useless pieces. What I will do, however, is carry them out to the cubby across from the elevator and leave them there for someone to take. Just like I did today with everything else that was still in good condition that we are leaving behind.

Besides the ill health I’ve been in ever since we arrived in California last September, which I really hope is just due to the smog and chemical-laden water that I can’t drink without incurring a migraine, there was just something about being here. I knew that it was wrong and I even tearfully voiced that thought several times before we signed a lease, but Shawna just thought I was scared/insecure/crazy in the head. I can’t fault her for thinking that since I have been all of those things in the past. But I just knew that it was really, really wrong this time and I need to start listening to that inner voice when it gets distressed enough to speak. It’s nearly always right and I nearly always disregard it.

So, anyway, after being out here for a year, I am so homesick for the east coast I can’t explain it. I miss New York especially, which is why we are moving as close to the city as we can afford to at the moment, which is the Allentown area (Pennsylvania), where we can go big pimpin’ every weekend if we want, without the expense of actually living in New York City. We’ve already gone ticket-buying crazy. Laura Pausini is doing a fall tour in the States, Sarah Paulson is going to be in a new play, Linda Eder is doing a holiday concert in Jersey. Which means we’re planning on being groupies for the rest of the year. Of course, it’ll probably dump like three feet of snow and we’ll spend the last quarter of the year skidding our way around the northeast and sliding into snow banks.

We head out tomorrow, with all of our stuff piled to the ceiling in the car, and are power driving it. Twelve hours a day for the first two days and only two hotel nights. Then it’s a brief stopover in Tennessee before heading to our new home/temporary dwelling/nightmare continuation. Hopefully it won’t be the last and when we arrive in our new location I’ll be in a much better place emotionally than I have been for the past twelve months.

At least I know it can’t get any worse.