The Last Box

I went and saw “Nightmare Before Christmas” in 3-D this afternoon with some friends. It was pretty nifty. I know I’m a geek, though, because at the final battle scene, my main thought was “Dude, I remember this boss fight from Kingdom Hearts. That guy was a bitch.” Still, a classic! And 3-D! Who can ask for more?

I came home, and after a little puttering around, it finally happened.

I unpacked like a fiend for two weeks, and now…here it is. The last box to be unpacked.

The house is set up. All the rooms have all the furniture they need. There’s still art to be framed and hung–the Bathroom of Monochromatic Lust* is awaiting more frames, the bedroom is not quite arted, and I have to repot the houseplants–so it’s not QUITE finished, but the boxes are emptied, the closet is organized, the bookcases are filled, the shui is fenged.

This final box contains, to my knowledge, a set of flannel sheets and a framed print with the glass broken. It will require care to unpack, but frankly, I’ve lost so many breakables in the move, it no longer holds any terror for me. My months in the frame shop fooling with the glass cutter apparently earned me a useful skill–I can work with broken glass without automatically slicing myself to ribbons. (Of course, now that I’ve said that, the minute I touch this box, a shard will leap from the bottom and go for my eyes. But y’know.)

What does hold terror is my deeply rooted superstition that the minute you unpack the last box, you have to move again.

I am a rational being and a fairly good skeptic–we shall ignore for the moment the candy piling up in front of Ganesh and the change piling up under Money Frog–but I stare at the box and a shudder goes down my spine anyway.

Still. Live life fearlessly, or at least fake it. The box must go. The moving gods have had enough of my blood money this year, they owe me a little peace.

Once more into the breach…

*I told my mother about my plan to decorate my bathroom in black and white art of copulating frogs. She considered this in silence for a moment, then said “Actually, that’d be the Bathroom of Achromatic Lust.”

…damnit.

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