How strange this whole house hunting process has been - like dating I think, but now that we have bought the house it feels more like an arranged marriage or perhaps a rushed marriage. Deep down you believe that this is the one but you still have to admit to yourself that the actual house itself may not live up to the version of the house in your head. And like a lover you may have turned a blind eye now to things you'll come to hate later and you've over emphasized the things you love now. There will be a reality you can't entirely predict. But hey, every good relationship takes hard work, right? And is totally worth it in the end.
And so it's happening. Our home is at last being dismantled - piles of our belongings ready to pack or already packed away in the big corner stash of our hodgepodge, mismatched moving boxes. Things are in upheaval though some normalcy continues. I picked up our CSA share yesterday and came home wanting to eat a tomato - the first of the season! So I absentmindedly open the big drawer to absentmindedly grab the tomato knife from the place where it always is and - oops! That big drawer is totally empty. The tomato knife is deep in the boxes somewhere.
Dismantling is weird, even if it's only to rebuild it a day or week later in a new but familiar place, a part of town that you know or that you think you know, just like you thought you knew this part of town when you moved in here 7 years ago.
And packing is slow - so slow. Now only does it take a long time because there is always more stuff than I think and because, in my case, gestational sciatica limits my stamina. But on top of all that, I am prone to fits of nostalgia, so I can't just pack. I have to ponder my memories while I pack them away. As if moving weren't emotional enough already.
I have summoned my best powers of organization for this move. Even so I think we'll be the people the movers complain about - too many boxes with too many books (heavy!) or weak second-hand boxes with compromised integrity stuffed with things marked fragile (note the extra duct tape at the bottom of the box pile in the above pic). And I've ended up with funny labels "pictures and pillows" or "hangers and a shoe." So far just one "mystery box" - something Sergio taped up before I could label it and now it's anyone's guess what is in there.
So this is the last week - the last week of watching cars drive by from our high rise window, looking at the picture perfect church across the street. The last week of our tiny, intimate and contained apartment. The last week of Julia saying "Bye, Craig" every morning and "Hi, Kathleen!" in the evening when we pass the concierge desk in the lobby.
On the other hand, there's Julia who, despite my assertions to the contrary, thinks that packing is fun. And who keeps saying "Minee?" (our realtor's name) "New house?" Not sure she quite understands what's happening here. Perhaps none of us fully do.
PS: Not to worry: Julia will be riding to the new house in a car seat - not a moving box.
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