Moving House

      

This is what our house looked like just a couple of months ago. This is my least
favorite part of the whole homeowning experience.

          K and I recently shook the dust of Kansas City off our shoes and moved to another state. I had assumed that I would be able to continue posting regularly throughout the entire process, pretending that my life wasn't in boxes and chaos while telling amusing anecdotes about packing up a large house, moving it 600 miles and stuffing it into a much, much smaller house. After all, we've moved house a lot, K and I. We've upsized. We've downsized. We've moved across the country. We've moved across the ocean. We are pros. We know what to expect, how long it will take to find the power cords for all the necessary devices (two weeks to a month, depending on your unpacking speed) and where we packed the cleaning supplies. And yet, the eight years that we lived in Kansas City (eight years is a long time for us to live anywhere), erased many of the horrors of moving from my memory.

          I had forgotten that moving is a season in hell.

          I had forgotten how many things go missing.

          I had forgotten how even good movers will drop, scrape, dent, gouge, scratch and otherwise ruin your furniture.

          I had forgotten that, once you get the main paintings hung, you will spend the next six months arguing over where the rest of them go.

          I had forgotten how much stuff you need to buy for the new house, even though you just inserted a houseful of old stuff into it.

          I had forgotten the sudden impulse to burst into tears in the new grocery store because you can't find the cumin and the old grocery store was so pleasant and easy to navigate and they knew your name there.

Another perfectly good reason to burst into tears in the grocery store. Because, really—
an entire display devoted to a vegetable that is only rendered palatable by the application
of cubic yards of bacon? It is to weep.

         
         Sometime in early September, surrounded by partially empty boxes and up to our knees in packing, K and I made a vow. The moving van stops here. Permanently.