Oh, to no longer be transient...

If you wonder if moving a bazillion times and living out of boxes is fun, the answer is, "no it's not." Don't you remember the Israelites and how whiny they got in the desert? And they certainly didn't carry as many books around as I do...so...I'd be like, premiere numero uno whiney Israelite. Even with all that great manna and quail.

Because truth be told--packing up all of your worldly belongings, moving them across the country, unpacking them, settling in, repacking them, moving them across town, unpacking them, settling in, repacking them, moving them up the highway, and unpacking them is not fun. At all. Well, I mean, it's fine for about 7.5 minutes, and then it's annoying.

Yet--if the end result is that you get to live in the promised land doing a job that you love and sharing a house with one of your favorite friends...well...then unpacking and repacking is just a side effect of that perceived happy life.

But just so you're prepared--these are a list of things you should know in case you try to move several times in a year--so that you're not caught off guard during your 40 years--err--several months in the desert: (I will not include the previously mentioned issues that took place during "night one in new house.")

1. When you get out of bed, you will step on stacks of books that have made it out of the box but not onto the bookshelf.

2. You will not dry your hair for two weeks, because you have yet to unpack the box with extension cords and surge bars.

3. You will have a hard time hearing movies through your stereo, because you will accidentally reverse the wiring for the small center speaker and the subwoofer. It's hard to hear dialogue that's resonating through a subwoofer and hard to hear bass that's resonating through a tiny center speaker.

4. You will get reeeeally tired of manna and quail and refuse to eat until the refrigerator is delivered on Thursday, because you will discover your easy-fix staples of macaroni and cheese or broccoli/chicken/rice or cereal do, in fact, require a refrigerator even in their simplicity.

5. You will discover that kitchen tables cannot be carried into storage rooms by one person unless you intended for there to be large gashes in the plaster walls (don't tell Heidi!)

6. You will keep half of your furniture in the carport because it's easier to move it inside once there's a place for it--only to discover that the neighbor's cat has peed on it.

7. You will move your beautiful cedar chest into your bedroom and place it directly on top of the heating register saying, "I'll move it when we turn the heater on." Two days later, when you move it back out into the living room when you turn the heater on, you will rip a gash in your bedroom door.

8. You will curse the day you decided to drag so many books everywhere, and then of course, trip over them as you get back into bed.

9. You will receive no more mail on time ever because your mail is being forwarded through two addresses already, and no one that sends you mail actually knows where you live.

10. You will realize that your driver's license and checks claim you live at an address you haven't lived at for six months and wonder if anyone cares.

11. You will keep getting refused the opportunity to buy gasoline, because you keep messing up the zip code on the auto-pay machine. You get annoyed with yourself, only to ease up when you discover the striking similarity between the three zip codes: 98223, 98233, and 98273. Right.


But--on the nicer side of things, you may end up, for the first time in recent memory, with five friends on a saturday afternoon, gathered around your kitchen table and eating cereal (which were prepared thanks to the refrigerating skills of a fine Coleman cooler.) Your roommate may call you back into her room, where she will exclaim with glee, "Isn't this exactly what you've wanted!" You will hold back tears and look around the room at stray curtain rods, unplugged appliances, and linens, and say, "Mmhmm!"