Details

Two weeks from today, we are moving. We are packing up the apartment we have lived in together for two years and that D lived in for eight years before that. We are headed north to the suburbs of NYC, to our brand new house with the black shutters and the red door. I really love the red door.

Over the past few weeks there have been millions of pesky little details to attend to. We had to get out of our lease, switch our electricity account to the new house, and sign up for an account to pay for water. (In other news, did you know that in the suburbs you have to pay for water? That was a new one for me.) We had to figure out where to send our first mortgage payment, arrange for an inspection by our insurance company, and start switching our address to the new house, which, as it turns out, is a really, really big job.You would think that there would be a better way to make this address switch by now than contacting every single company and institution that might need to get in touch with you for some unknown reason at some unknown point in the future. And shouldn't everything just be digital by now anyway? My e-mail address never changes.

If those were all the details, that would be more than enough. But there is more.

Because we are not just moving into a new house, we are renovating that house before we move in. As a matter of fact, as I type this, tile is being laid, floors are being refinished, and various fixtures are being installed. There is furniture to buy, paint colors to decide on, and long meandering talks about color schemes, measurements, and appliances.

There are some of these details that I am really, really bad at. It just so happens that those are the same ones that D is masterful at. And vice versa. I am not the least bit interested in choosing movers, picking appliances, or supervising a construction crew, and I barely know how to work a tape measure. D is even less interested in interfacing with banks, lawyers, mortgage companies, insurance brokers, and the various utility companies that are banging down the door for our information.

A word of advice for anyone considering marriage and home-buying anytime in the future: marry someone who is good at the things you are bad at. After the past few months, I am absolutely certain that this is the magic pill for long-term happiness.

Anyway, despite this overwhelming crush of details currently on our plates, there is one detail - one unknown - that looms in my mind larger than all the others.

I am worried about my TV.

I haven't written much on this blog about my love of TV, but I assure you that it exists, and it quite possibly rivals my love of romance novels. I religiously watch twenty-two different shows, and re-runs of old favorites (think: Gilmore Girls) every week. Some might call me a TV fanatic. And I guess I am.

So you may ask me how I manage to fit in all that TV. There are five prime times every week, and each prime time is three hours long, which equals fifteen hours of prime time a week. Fifteen hours, and twenty-two shows, which means some of my shows overlap with each other. Here is where the invention of the DVR has revolutionized my life. My DVR is a work of art. It is programmed fastidiously, and constantly updated to ensure I never miss a thing. And I don't. In our little New York apartment we actually have two separate DVRs, one for me and one for D, because when it comes to TV, we are above compromise. We each need our own.

And next weekend, the cable company will be switching off the cable in our apartment to transfer the account to our new house. And they might be able to transfer all of the data in my intricately programmed DVR, but they might not be able to. I just don't know. And the new DVR might record my shows next Monday, but it might not. I just don't know. And there is literally nothing that gives me more anxiety than missing one of my shows. Laugh all you want. This is my thing.

And the truth is, I could let myself worry about all sorts of things. I could worry about clothes, and shoes, and various kitchen necessities getting lost in the move. I could worry about the movers transporting my prized romance novel collection. I could worry about whether our new furniture will get delivered on time. I could worry about figuring out where to do my grocery shopping in my new neighborhood, and I could worry about whether I will be able to find my way to the train station and back on the first morning of my new commute to work.

But I am choosing not to worry about these things.

There is so much change coming our way in the next two weeks, and so many details to oversee, that it would be easy to lose sight of the big picture in all of this. So I am choosing not to.

I am worried about my TV. And I figure that everything else will just fall into place.