Moving, Sans the Shaking

There are few things I detest more than moving, because it's like a hybrid of some of my least favorite things in existence. It combines all the heavy lifting and elevated heartrates of exercise with the forced anal retentiveness of getting organized. Scrubbing toilets down with bleach when you've got an open drummer blister (thumb side of the index finger...it's how you pick drummers out of a hand line-up) is at once more painful and possibly more dangerous than regular cleaning, which is bad enough on its own. And then there's all that dust that gets kicked up into the air, which is enough to have anyone wheezing like an asthmatic pack-a-day smoker.

Oh, and it takes up all of one's time as well, which is why I've been light on posts lately. I've got some good ones in queue, so you'll just have to take my word for it that they're golden.

I will share a couple of anecdotes about this move, however. When I started my packing over the weekend, I discovered, buried deep beneath my stairwell, about a box and a half a stuff that I had NEVER UNPACKED from my previous move. It was maybe the most depressing moment of the summer. I think the general rule of thumb is that's the stuff you're supposed to throw away before making the next move, but A) I only lived in this last house for a year, and B) it was stuff I'd been looking for that entire damn year...some of it anyway, and I did throw the rest of it out.

So that was frustrating, but I also had the occasion to do a little gleeful dance as I packed as well. Dork that I am, I have a very large bookshelf I keep stacked from top to bottom with my collection of reading material. The only time of the year I regret having that bookshelf is when the time comes to move, because packing books is a real damn chore.

As I muttered and grumbled my way through that chore last weekend, a few leafs of paper fell out of an old textbook and fluttered to the ground. I gaped for a minute, then siezed them up. It was the letter my Dad had written to me the night before I left home for college, which I had been convinced got lost when I moved out of the dorms freshman year. Packing and cleaning dropped from my mind as I plunked down on the hardwood to read the words of wisdom my Dad had written to me five years ago.

Some of them don't apply any more - I've outgrown them. Some of them will always shape my life. And some of them are probably partly responsible for getting me where I am today.

At any rate, I'm glad to have that letter back...if only I can remember where I bloody packed it.

Posts will be hit or miss for the next couple days. Between the unpacking and getting the internet set up at my new place, I'll try and sneak a few in where I can steal wireless.