Even more discussion on moving, plus bonus memories and a horrible trip down memory lane!

Image by Handiwork NYC on Unsplash

Remember how in my last post I talked about how we would be moving by the end of June, but it might be sooner?  Remember that?

Well, it's sooner.  Actually, it's the day after tomorrow.

I have a lot of Leaving Feelings, but I don't want to sift through them right now, surrounded by boxes of all of my things.  Instead, I want to talk about Returning Feelings.

David and I left our hometown approximately 13-14 years ago now.  We moved from there to a bigger city, and then out East to a mid-sized town where we lived first in a terrible apartment, and second in a lovely house.  Then we moved all the way back to our home province, but 10 hours from our hometown, and lived here for almost 8 years.  We've been back a handful of times over the years, but never for more than a week or so, and always very much in the form of a guest, busy seeing everyone who wants to see us before disappearing for another year.

When we left, everything was different.  Public transit, buildings, bus routes, restaurants, parks, rules, everything.  Everything was different.  The city is still familiar to me in its essence, but not in form.  I know where Main Street Mall is, for example, but all the stores inside have changed, the doors open on different streets, the employees are all complete strangers, the merchandise is foreign, and I can't figure out how to drive or take a bus there.  You know, other than that - it's all exactly as I left it!

Despite this, David and I turned to each other today and said 'We're going...HOME!"

The things I've been worried about have not happened...yet.  The children are still excited and not at all worried about moving to a city of over a million from a village of 600 souls.  The cat and dog are not vomiting with stress over their home turning into a maze of crates.  So far, we haven't broken or lost anything desperately important.  Things always look like they aren't going to get done in time, but I think that if I'm being reasonable I could admit that actually we seem to be essentially on schedule.

"That's pessimistic, Amy!" you say.

Ah, friend, I see I haven't explained to you the true horror of my moving history.

Many years ago, David and I lived in a small apartment over a pizza shop.  At some point the smell of smoke, the police knocking on our door, and the huge breakup fights in the bagel shop across the street lost whatever draw they had once had, and we decided to move.  We found an apartment we now remember as The Hottest Apartment In Existence - because there was a south facing WALL of windows that didn't open and made the space equivalent to living on the surface of the sun.  Anyway, it was a big step up in the world, and we packed to move.  Unfortunately, neither of us read our lease very clearly, and I thought we had until midnight on the last day of the month, but it was actually NOON.  We were in a total panic of throwing things in boxes, in fact the new tenants even arrived and we had to yell 'we're sorry!  We're leaving!'  All of our stuff ended up outside as we desperately called everyone we knew and split all of our belongings up into half a dozen houses while we waited 24 hours to access the new place.  My hands were raw and bleeding and so swollen that when we had to attend a wedding (the day we moved.  I know.  No, I do know how insane that sounds) David had to cut my food for me.

Now, unfortunately, that was only the first in a long, long string of terrible moves.  The move to the East coast actually took a total of about a month and involved me, newly pregnant, having to hand over all of our savings to a slum landlord.  That was also the move where we ended up staying in a friend's apartment because the place we had intended to stay, had, in fact, been assured that we could stay in, turned out to not be available more than a night or two.  We ended up putting things in storage and I took an overnight bus to try and interview for a job that I didn't end up getting so we could afford to move and oh my gosh the whole thing was a disaster.

There's the move where we packed our $200+ tv box that had to be returned or we would get charged money we didn't have.  Packed it at the back of the 26' truck.  At the back.  At. the. BACK.  That was the move where we tried to get our dead car onto a tow dolly by rolling it down a hill.  Ah, yes.  I was alone with the two babies at that point, sleeping in a trailer in a friend's driveway.  

Anyway, what I'm getting at here is that this is not a horrible move comparatively!  We have a truck, we have a place to go, we have an income, we have stuff in boxes, we are not having a complete meltdown of epic proportions.  Things are going okay!

I mean, wait and ask me tomorrow.  But right now, it's all alright.