On Moving and Being Nice

                                                          [present house, fireplace guys]

We move tomorrow afternoon, and this morning I took one last run through our little neighborhood.  I saw a family of wild turkeys (?), a mama and two baby turkeys, on the side of the road as if waiting for a bus.  We've loved our neighborhood, and not for the wildlife, since that's rare, but because it's just beautiful here.  And on my run I was thinking about all that's happened here in the last year.  A lot, that's what.  So much that it doesn't feel like there's time to go into detail before I go to work, but work is part of it.  Sam and I weathered the bad job situation here. 

[note from sam on our front door chalkboard in the very depths of the bad job.]

I got the new job, the good job, which is still good.  I've dropped nearly forty pounds in the last while, which is really a just a physical sign of bigger changes inside my head, in how I think about myself and interact with other people and attempt to see the world as a nice place.  I won't say more about that right now, but it's been huge.  And I haven't noticed that more than I have lately, in the last few days/weeks, when the closing on our new house has been pushed back and back and back, and Sam and I have tried to pull all of our stuff together and box it up.  This move feels so different from the last.  I have more energy, more emotional AND physical energy.  And maybe Sam would disagree, but it feels to me like I've been less witchy and whiny.  Don't get me wrong, I've had my share of witchy/whiny moments, but I'm finally healthier, and it's so much easier to stay rational when I'm healthier.

Does anyone else have fantasies when they're packing about the days when everything people owned fit into one suitcase or a little bandana tied to a stick and they could just pack the suitcase, palm their hat to their head, kiss whomever goodbye and be on their way?  I obsess over that when I'm packing, imagine becoming a minimalist, wonder and wonder why I have so many dang pairs of shoes.  Anyway, the only trouble with moving now is that we probably can't move into our house yet.  Our stuff can, which is such a relief, but we'll head to a hotel and chill for a week (we hope only a week ...) until closing.  This panicked me at first.  But this morning, running our neighborhood for the last time, I decided the hotel wil be great: I'll have Sam and my cats (try not to think about three cats in a hotel room), and we'll be done packing and we won't have to UNpack just yet, and we can just chill.  Maybe we'll watch movies.  Maybe we'll have a dip in the pool. 

[present house, tooled leather walls, bird garland from paris]

[one more shot of the fireplace dude.  goodbye fireplace dude.]