Early to bed

Last night I went to bed at midnight, which is pretty early for me. I'm not usually in bed until after 1, and then not usually turning the light off until after 2. It must be the moving--

Husband and I went to our favorite restaurant for the last time (at least for the foreseeable future) for dinner. It feels like the start of the official goodbyes. I'm excited, yes, but as someone put it yesterday, you also have to say goodbye to the people and things that have been an important part of your life. In someways, it feels like saying goodbye to a life, without knowing how things will turn out on the other end. I have the usual first day of school jitters: what if no one likes me? What if, what if, what if. Going to bed feels like the right thing to do in the face of all these questions. Sure seems better than packing or painting! Speaking of which, I'm running out of time. Off to tackle more shelves.

Appointment, sh-appointment

One of the advantages (or one of the most annoying parts) of moving is the way it forces you to deal with things that you've maybe been putting off for a while, for weeks, months, maybe years. You end up with appointment overload, not including your errands to the library and the dry cleaners or the late night runs to the grocery store to pick up more boxes from the produce lady with the curly hair and suspicious eyes. Also not including all the usual stuff you might try not to deal with, the conflicts, emotional issues, bad dreams, withdrawal.

To that end, I've had appointments with a dentist, eye doctor, regular doctor, lady doctor, etc., etc., all in the last week or two. My experience at the dentist was particularly important. However, this has nothing to do with the state of my teeth. I'll have you know, he thinks I have great teeth. Plus, I don't have any cavities. No, instead, for the first time in my life, my dentist was younger than me. For some reason, this feels like a very important milestone that needs discussing.

I don't know about you, but I'm used to dentists being, um, old. Perhaps a tiny bit crusty. Which is not to say anything negative about dentists--I have no idea why, in my mind, dentists are supposed to be older, even elderly. I don't think of police officers or lawyers or even opticians as old when I picture the profession. It must be that as a tween, I had a dentist who looked like Hal Holbrook. Or maybe when you are a tween, everyone over twenty looks a hundred.

Either way, my new dentist is so young.

I feel awkward saying this since I myself look crazy young (someday I'll tell you about how last year a flight attendant asked me if I was an unaccompanied minor--this means she thought I was younger than fifteen. I have since avoided wearing my glasses). I sometimes worry about looking old enough to be taken seriously by my students. No, I think what shocked me was not actually that there are unwrinkled dentists, but that I'm, gasp, older than I was before. People my age, people younger than me, are grown up, out doing stuff in the world like dentistry.

I think I missed it happening, though I'm not sure I mind it at all. It just seems like a big deal no one told me about. I feel like we should have parties for people when this happens to celebrate. Hurray, I'm old! Hurray, I'm old enough have to figure it out on my own and old enough to be scared and old enough to make it happen or not.

At play here in my delayed reaction is that part of being a graduate student means you get to (have to) keep becoming, keep becoming who you are/who you will be, without the distraction of regular hours or much of a paycheck to provide much stasis. I've heard those of us who still study described as "perpetual teenagers," thwarted and stunted and unable to grow all the way up. This is probably sometimes true for all of us.

Still, there is something about deliberately keeping your identity in flux, deliberately slurping up all the knowledge and dialogue available, of being that conscious of the learning, learning and the constant reach, reach. This continuing to become has its issues and its problems, but I like it not because it delays aging or I'm afraid of turning thirty or forty or have any desire whatsoever to be nineteen again, but because it satisfies. Much like a good teeth cleaning. Or moving on when it's time.

PS. Two more boxes packed. All Husband's doing.

Much, much, much!

Since the last, five more boxes have been packed.

They're weird ones, glass beverage pitchers stuffed with dresses and wrapped in university sweatshirts, silver bowls mixed in with my refrigerator magnets and plastic travels mugs. Also, a box full of sweaters, the stereo, and the alarm clock.

Husband, I think, is torn between thinking I'm brilliant, hilarious, or just plain odd. After I put the two dresses inside the glass pitcher, he marveled for a several minutes, mostly laughing, but not quite sure what to make of the whole thing. I think the way they just fell into the pitcher, all scrunched-up and tiny and smooth, like so much water, was what really got him going. My clothes seem to be more flexible or something.

We had a lot of fun packing these boxes, which was nice and unexpected. Change is weird, sometimes brilliant, sometimes odd, sometimes hard to place. Why not, if you're moving, put your dresses inside your pitchers? At least I know the unpacking won't be boring. It'll remind us to be more flexible (or whatever).

Making up for a missed post

I've been thinking about moving a bit too much. I want to get it done and I want it to go "smoothly," but I also don't want to miss the last few weeks of my life here. As Husband woke me up as he left for work yesterday morning, apparently I told him in my most dramatic and pitiful voice that I was having kitchen nightmares. Too much is too much, so no post yesterday.

To alleviate any more bad dreams, we reviewed a slide show of pictures sent by the new landlord. Where, in fact, would all of these things I was supposed to be packing go in a our new 700 square foot home, with its four kitchen cupboards and two small closets? The result: two more garbage bags to donate full of clothes, miscellaneous kitchen objects, the hat that makes Husband's head look especially melon-like, flip-flops, and the like, along with our exercise ball. I think we might just be on our way. Also, I slept well.

The Set-Up

My husband and I are moving for the third time in four years in five short weeks. So far, I have sixteen boxes packed. Six of these are tequila boxes donated by an elementary school. Husband and I are not sure why schools always seem to be using liquor boxes or how the schools get them in the first place, but they are the right size to fill with books and still be light enough to lift, so we are lucky.

There are nine file storage boxes (a gift from my lawyer father the last time we visited) waiting to be assembled in my dining room, and an unknown number of broken-down boxes in the basement from the last time we moved. Husband warns that some of these are moldy and/or have suffered water damaged. Just like us, I say. He laughs, even though we can't quite explain the joke.

There are two of us to pack up the house, though Husband is working full-time this summer, teaching music and art at the migrant education program in another town, so that mostly leaves my one set of arms with one roll of packaging tape, and the hundreds of things and forgotten things in the six or so rooms of our little bungalow. Plus the basement. Also, the garage.

There will be one moving truck, two hand-trolleys, and eight packing blankets in our driveway in exactly thirty-nine days. This blog is about how we'll manage to pack all our boxes before then. This is about how many dishes will fit inside a box that once held reams of paper. This is about how lonely empty bookshelves look in the glow of a lamp and the smooth satisfaction of spackle in a nail hole. How I'll find someone to buy our washer and dryer. How Husband and I don't talk about now or moving day, but what our lives were like before and what they might be like in six months. How sometimes we get angry. How we get grateful. How we'll decide what to take with us and what to leave behind, and what happens when we stop counting.