We still have boxes left in the in-laws garage from when we originally arrived; and recently my M.I.L. was kind enough to bring a few when she picked up the kid for Spring Break.
they were heavy and marked, so I had some idea of what was in there... but I wasn't positive. I suppose the Vanity Fair collection did not need to travel 2500+ miles and then sit for 2 1/2 years... but I was happy to have many of our photo albums/boxes. Lots of memories...
HEAVY
What is left of my old Vanity Fair collection (1995- 2010)
So... we are officially no longer new to Pittsburgh, at least I don't think so. We've now lived here for a full two years. The second year was a LOT different then the first year a few reasons why:
The biggest change is we moved into the city vs. being in a suburb. This was the biggest and best thing that changed. I felt like our lives in Pittsburgh really began with this move, since we were actually living in a city neighborhood: close to our friends, our favorite places to shop, having better commutes, easier bus access.... it gave all of us an opportunity to more readily explore Pittsburgh as a whole.
We were both employed steadily by the same employer during the second year. Which was nice; we like routine and this certainly provided some.
The kid and I took up yoga - which is amazing, and does wonders for our physical and mental well beings.
Socialized more (especially the kid, I feel like we barely see her on the weekends anymore)
We had more people visit us then the year before, but folks are welcome to break that record again this year.
One big thing for me was that I was able to do some traveling, which made me very happy. Although I am becoming a bit of a homebody, I do love to get up and go sometimes. So it was nice to be able to take some quick trips on this side of the Mississippi: My mom came down and we drove east to visit her friend in the quaint town of Bethlehem, PA (which also meant I was able to experience the QuakerTown Flea Market). I took a sketchy bus and met up with a Seattle friend in NY for two very full days of site seeing. Then this spring I took the train to Chicago for a short, but fun weekend to visit a friend from Pittsburgh who was up there. As far as big trips go I was also able to head west (although sadly not the NW), thanks to my job, and visit Colorado, where I grew up, and San Diego .
Since I couldn't imagine what this past year would be like, when I was thinking about our first year in Western PA... I won't try and imagine what our third year will be like. I am pretty sure though that life is going to be good, and I still won't be regretting our move.
I started this blog to capture my experience of moving back to my husband's homeland... but I could have been writing about moves my whole life. On average I've moved every 18 months of my 37 years of life! Most of which were just cross town moves, but there was a quick succession of out of state moves: CO - OR - CA - WA - ME - an 11 month stop over back in CO - and then back to WA for 14 years until we packed up our lives and begin the journey documented here.
I spend a lot of time talking about moving here when I meet new people... how one ends up in Pittsburgh is always an ice breaker conversation... other then those who never left, there are those who are boomerang Pittsburghers, those who came here for school and never left, those who came for a job, or a spouse... Pittsburgh isn't exactly a destination you just decide to move to and start a new life, although it should be.
But this post is not actually about all my moving - it's about other people and their moving. Because we've now been here long enough that we know people who lived here before us and are moving on; and we've met people who have recently moved to the city after us.
I will say that I can appreciate how my friends and coworkers in Seattle may have felt when I was preparing to move far far away. There really is only one person I was particularly close to in Seattle who moved away while we lived there, and that was also VERY early on in our time there. It is surreal to me that I have lived here long enough to get close enough to people and be sad that they are leaving. Although I will probably be able to see some of them in a few months (they will only be a MegaBus ride away); others are making a transcontinental move and I just don't know when I will be able to see them.
Then there are the people who have just moved here from away. Watching them transition and remembering what it felt like when I first got here I feel some sense of responsibility to share information about good grocery stores, mass transit, fun events. I am pleased that I actually have information to pass along... it reinforces that I am truly home here. It is also nice to be reminded how far I've come since first arriving in Western PA. I don't think I could have imagined then how grounded and happy I would be 2 years from when we first arrived.
Voluntarily Unemployed (I've since had three jobs and he has had two, the kids even had a few: sewing, and cat sitting)
Homeless (we remedied that quickly, thankfully)
and some (okay, who are we kidding A LOT) of uncertainty
Certainly there are some things I would have had happen differently, but all in all NO REGRETS.
Viewing my life through my lens over the last 12 months, I am happy to see that there was lots of love: we connected with each other as a family, connected with old friends, made new friends, and spent a lot of time hanging out with family (one of the reasons we moved here). Explored a lot: both the city, and the surrounding countryside. Experienced some classic Pittsburgh: a hockey game in the Igloo, Kennywood, the Andy Warhol Museum (which on a tangent: I experienced more art here then I did in the last 5 years I lived in Seattle). And otherwise, despite the uncertainty of it all, managed to make it through our first year in tact and mostly happy.
A year ago I decided to document this journey of uprooting our lives from the Pacific North West and transplanting us in the not quite Mid-Atlantic, not quite mid-West.
I am grateful that I've made the effort to document every aspect from saying goodbye to long time friends, and the life we've known for so long to saying hello to family and making new friends, and creating a life for us here. Time has flown by so quickly and so much has happened. Emotionally it has been such a roller coaster ride: the sadness of leaving friends, to the excitement of making new ones. The fear of leaving a job I love and worrying about finding a new one, to the joy of being offered a dream job at the one place I wanted to work in Pittsburgh. The anxiety of HFG's transition, and how she was going to handle all of it, to the pride and amazement that she has managed to make the Honor Roll not once, but twice; make friends, and also continue to love her parents not hate them for taking her away.
We have 4 months to go until the one year anniversary of being in Pittsburgh, but I don't think our journey will end there. I look forward to writing about it, and sharing it with whomever finds my story on the interwebs; so that the next time I wonder what the heck we have gotten ourselves into I have documentation that everything happens for a reason and usually turns out for the best.
So.... I think everyone (who knows me) would agree I am the more social person in my marriage. In Seattle I had lots of friends, and liked to spend lots of time with my friends. Poor Michael would get dragged to gatherings and what-not more often then he liked; although for the most part I just went and hung out with my friends solo. Also... I had a friend who spent a LOT of time at our place, and when I say a LOT, I mean a LOT. If she wasn't hanging out at our place, or me at her place, I was often on the phone with her. This was status quo for years.
Well now here we are in Pittsburgh, and I have all of two people I would really consider friends, and they are busy with their lives and while I've spent some time with them it isn't comparable to my socializing in Seattle. Conversely one of Michael's good friends lives only a few houses up the street, which means he is either hanging down here or more likely Michael is hanging out up there. And of course because he is from the area he has LOTS of friends still in the area... and now I am getting a taste of my own medicine. I don't mind really. It's nice to finally see him socializing and enjoying time with someone other then me. There is a side of me that does like to sit back (be the wall flower, so to speak) and watch the hap's going on around me, and this does give me that opportunity.
Who knows? Maybe I will enter a new phase in my life where I am less social and more of a home-body, it was beginning to happen a bit in the last year or so in Seattle. I do imagine it will take at least a year if not longer for me to develop a handful of friendships here in the Burgh, regardless. Also, I don't see this as a bad thing, because having that kind of free time might also push me into pursuing things I've put off for a very long time.
We met with the landlady at the house with the previously mentioned For Rent sign, and while we liked it and thought "sure we can make this home" it was a little more then we wanted to pay, and when I asked if it was negotiable she lowered the price by $25.00, which was still out of our price range. But after much consternation and admittedly some arguing we filled out the application and dropped it off. Didn’t hear anything for a few days, so… we kept looking and lo and behold Michael came across a possibility on Craigslist.
So we went, we looked, we said we would take it… I think out of desperation, it was in our price range, it was clean, and it was ours if we wanted it. So we signed the lease, we filled out the check, we got the key and we waited. It wasn’t available for three weeks, which I don’t know what I was thinking considering I felt like I was dying inside due to our living situation, but it seemed to appease our desire to know that we would have a place to live at some point. We came back all excited, ready to celebrate and I called the other potential landlady and informed her; reluctantly she thanked me for my interest and I thought that was the end. I believe I even updated my status on Facebook to reflect this (which would later confuse many of my friends when I was talking about moving in, and unpacking before August 1st ). And then…
She called back… “Why did we rent the other place instead?” I told her mostly because of the amount of rent, and they were willing to sign a lease that day and she asked, “What if I match that? and you can move in this weekend?"... umm….internal dialogue: Okay, but when I asked if the rent was negotiable and you only lowered it $25.00 why all of the sudden… and when you had all that time to call us back why didn't you, and why, why, why? Why can't something just be easy for once? AAARRRGGGHHHH…. I explained that we had already signed a lease, I wasn't sure if they would let us out of it...
But (close your ears if you are opposed to foul language) F*@%ing Hell… I can move into the big house with four bedrooms, two ½ baths, and a fully fenced in back yard in the next week… for the same amount of rent,
or I can wait for three weeks to move into a two bedroom, 1 bath, back yard with no fence… I can sleep in my own bed, my dog can roam free without fear of being eaten, my teenage daughter can have her own bathroom, there is room for us to be without being all in the same room breathing down each other’s necks… and it can all happen like tomorrow… if only...
Let the negotiations (otherwise begging and pleading) began, with our barely day old landlords. Did I feel like an asshole? Sure, did I care, not really, because I knew if we continued to stay where we were for the next three weeks, I was most likely getting a divorce or killing someone, possibly myself… literally life depended on getting out of that lease and getting into the one down the street. It took some serious negotiating, even my MIL went into solution mode, but we finally wore them down … I think by the end they weren’t much interested in having us as tenants anyways.
Finally we could begin to really settle into this transition, and we could start at home....
Last I left you; we had arrived (barely) at my MIL’s, which thankfully offered some measure of comfort and solid ground. Crazy us though: we decided to drive into the city with Nick, my brother in law, and drop off the auto-transport-trailer and drive around and look for rentals. Get a move on so to speak, be motivated and OVERLY ambitious.
I should have known the day would not go as planned, when we arrived to return the trailer, the Customer Serviceman asked me who had hooked up the trailer to the car we were using to tow it. I said my husband and his brother and he informed us that any U-Haul agent who hooked up a Ford Explorer (of a certain year) to an auto transport would be fired on the spot for liability reasons. Great, good to hear; I’d managed to forget about all those Fords flipping over a few years back. Ah well… we dodged that bullet.
We then went to meet Chuck. Chuck was a man we had been in contact with prior to leaving Seattle about rentals. We had called him while still living in Seattle and neither of us was really sure what we should expect. He was a bit strange over the telephone. So when I had to call him again to let him know we were on our way… he proceeded to ask me a million questions, while being evasive himself. Eventually he provided us with an address, and we met him at his office, which was in a teeny tiny little township. After introductions and waiting for him to meet a contractor we finally arrived at a teeny tiny little duplex that was smaller then our Seattle place, dark, dirty, and honestly dreadful. During the viewing of the apartment Chuck proceeds to wink his little eye out at me while telling me where I do and do not want to live over and over. Of course this left me a bit trepidatious about the rental situation in P*burgh, especially as we had somewhat been bankin’ on good ol’ Chuck. After excusing ourselves from his attention and getting a bit lost in this teeny tiny township we did not want to live in we drove off forlorn. Since we had time to kill before picking up Nick at their Uncle’s, we met up with an old friend, who lived in a decent neighborhood, of which we had been warned against.
After visiting with Michael’s friends, we agreed to take them up on their offer of a place to stay, and store a small amount of our stuff. Plans begin to take shape: We would head back to Ohio for the evening, unload a significant amount of the U-Haul into the garage attic of my In-Law’s. Drive both the U-Haul truck (remember we’ve only given up the trailer at this point), and the Subaru into town in the morning, unload it at our friend’s place and the best option for temporary shelter. So… that is indeed what we did. It was a bit hectic, but our friends were so kind to clean up and arrange their basement for our stuff, and “prepare” space in the spare room.
Did I mention they have three dogs and three cats? Along with the family of four, two adults, and two tweens? We made six + little dog…. We were hoping that because their three dogs were big, and our little dog usually likes big dogs… that they would get along… but no. That was a pipe dream. We tried, but frankly Poppy was too much like prey for their youngest biggest dog, so there was a lot of rotating the dogs, and maneuvering of pets, because Poppy thinks cats are prey, and I’m allergic. Sound like fun yet?
It wasn’t… but everything happens for a reason and I think all these things did too…
I have been asked more then once how the actual trip on the road from Seattle to Pittsburgh was… so this is where I will begin my long-winded story of the events of the last three weeks…
Wednesday, July 1: We pulled out of Ballard some time (in fact oddly enough it was exactly that time) after 4:00, with Michael at the helm.I was a little anxious about hitting rush hour on I-90, but somehow we managed to miss it (like dodging a bullet). Our ride out to Spokane was fairly uneventful; at least I can’t remember any events, Michael may recall it differently. The plan to sleep in the car was thwarted by the gigundo TV being placed in the back of the Subie, along with all my large framed pieces. So we found ourselves a lovely Super 8 and called it a night.
Thursday, July 2: After a good nights sleep we hit the road bright and early in our home away from home, aka the U-Haul; Michael still behind the wheel. We did manage to drive right into Spokane morning rush hour traffic, which wasn’t too terrible other the cavernous ruts in the road along that stretch of I-90, thank heavens Michael was able to man handle the U-Haul and keep us steady. We departed WA state fairly quickly and headed up into the Rockies: Idaho? No, U da ho came and went, but that was probably because I was napping; I awoke just in time to see the Welcome to Montana sign (and not take a picture of it). I sent Robert (since Trent does not use a tele) a text to see if they could meet us at the gas station in Superior, but alas I didn’t hear from him until we were nearly to Billings. The rain came and went and came again, which was not really welcome considering the twisty turny up and down of the mountains, but again I wasn’t driving. By now you are thinking, “Geez Tirzah, why don’t you pull some weight around here”, I did offer, but Michael being the better driver stayed put. In retrospect, when he was completely burnt out the next day that probably was not the best idea, but what do you do when you realize that in hindsight.Eventually we found our way into Billings: hungry, and exhausted and not sure which route we were going to take from there we called it done and checked into a semi decent Motel 6, although I don’t recall anyone leaving a light on for us, nature sure did put on a show when rolling up the day and putting the sun to bed.We went and got some edible grub (which makes it sound unappetizing, but that’s because it was somewhat unappetizing, they didn’t even have cherry tomatoes in the salad bar), came back and scouted out routes / times, decided to stick with South Dakota and promptly fell asleep.
Friday, July 3, which also happened to be our 13th anniversary of the day we met: After taking showers which made us feel dirtier, rather then cleaner and packing up our overnight stuff we were back on the road and headed south into Wyoming. I finally put in some time behind the wheel, although not much. Fairly uneventful until we started heading east again and came across an over turned 5th wheel (thankfully no one looked to be hurt, as there were no ambulances, and the people were standing on the side of the road), we did not stop as there were already ½ dozen police and figured they had it under control, besides it isn’t like we could have done anything for them. Made our way into South Dakota and decided we didn’t want to drive far enough off course to see four big heads carved into the side of a mountain, and eventually I took over driving again, after Michael had finally had enough, and did my best. While he did a little snoozing I made the executive decision that seeing the 100s of Wall Drug’s signs was just as good as seeing Wall Drug and drove right past it. We also bypassed the Bad Lands, but ended up in our own version of bad lands when the rain came and pummeled us, at which point my love woke up and was kind enough to rescue me from the very scary driving (I could hardly see out the windshield it was raining so hard). After an absurdly long and difficult day of driving in the pouring rain and a quick anniversary kiss at the Welcome to Minnesota rest top we chose a Super 8 in Luverne as the place to stay. What I remember most about this was the lower then low couple with two little babies running around in the parking lot at 9:00 at night in the pouring rain with no shoes, full diapers screaming their heads off, and to top it off they chose a smoking room. I have many disparaging things to say about this, but will refrain from doing so here, feel free to call me if you want more juicy bits about the couple who should have stayed at the trailer park.
Saturday, July 4: While the rest of the country was waking up to the idea of celebrating freedom by eating hotdogs, drinking copious amounts of alcohol, and shooting off colorful rockets… we were shackled to the U-Haul and the dream of making it to Ohio (destination: Mother in Law’s)… We crossed through Minnesota, and Wisconsin fairly quickly and easily, nothing exciting to report, in part because I spent much of it napping. We stopped for both auto and human fuel and I took over driving, finally for a significant stint, which included some horrendous traffic in Chicago and a bit of a meltdown (on both our parts), but we pulled through only to find ourselves needing gas (as in the light came on) badly. So when the GPS told us to exit for a gas station a mere ½ mile away we did. Here is where we found ourselves: Gary, Indiana (birthplace of the very recently deceased Michael Jackson), and the scariest hellhole of a miserable place I’ve EVER been.
The gas station the GPS suggested looked as if it had been torched with a Molotov cocktail and the fire put out right before the whole place fell to the ground, the next gas station seemed to be in working order, except for the first pump I pulled up to was cash only, and this is where we should have known this would not be the last of the issues in this forgotten place, so Michael maneuvered the 27’ of massiveness to another pump. Once filled up we did our best to find the way out, but there was no yellow brick road to be had: only an exit ramp that ended at the top of a giant sinkhole. So Michael used his mad dad skills and managed to back the U-Haul and trailer all the way down the 180-degree turn ramp and get us back on to the road, which sadly didn’t take us anywhere, and again we found ourselves turning around, thankfully we were able to actually turn around and didn’t have to back up. Having faith in the GPS led us to the next on-ramp choice, but Michael being savvy to the ways of Gary, Indiana’s construction zones realized this too was not a likely exit, and got us turned around one last time, at which point we asked a homeless man where might we find the exit, who pointed to the one we just left and decided to just keep heading east, and eventually maybe we would find our way to the turnpike.We were right, after ½ an hour of driving through and around a burnt down, run down, sad little place of a town we found our way back on the interstate, and immediately passed a service plaza a mere 2 miles past where we had exited in the first place and probably could have made it to before our little adventure in the sorriest place in America. Oh well.
Of course by the time we were back on I-80 and realized we had just escaped with our lives, we realized we weren’t going to have enough energy to go the next six hours it would take to get to OH, and we chose the Home of the Fighting Irish (South Bend, Indiana) as our destination for the evening. Staying with the pattern of Super 8, Motel 6, Super 8… we stayed at the you guessed it: Motel 6; which was right next door to the fireworks store. Thankfully we were all so beat that even Poppy only barked once or twice and then it was off to the Land of Nod for all of us, despite the fireworks going off well into the morning hours all around us.
Sunday, July 5: Awaking to the knowledge that we would most certainly be making it into the arms of family on this day, we departed with renewed energy. It was a fairly low-key drive and thankfully the only tolls involved cash. We arrived in the early evening to brothers, and in-laws and lots of love. Poppy met some of her canine cousins at Nana Rita’s and enjoyed the big grassy yard in the back, she stretched out her little legs and did lots of running this way and that.
While we hadn't exactly arrived at our final destination, we were close enough for the moment, and it meant we would no longer be spending hours upon hours by ourselves in a very large moving contraption with no end in sight. Thankfully I was blissfully ignorant of the uncertainty, discomfort, and discombobulation that was lurking around the corner....
since I am on someone else's computer I dont have much time. We should hopefully be back up and running on-line early next week, and then you will get the novel of an update... check back a week from tomorrow.
So the short of it is: We have a home, Michael has a job, I have an interview for a temp position next Monday. Poppy doesn't know what to do with her big fenced in back yard, silly city dog. Huntyr is still in Maine, I will probably go get her next week. We don't own a home, but we do own a fridge, because the east coast is a little different like that (most rentals you have to bring your own appliances) weird, but I love my fridge, and we are going to pick up our washer/dryer on Saturday. So when we do own a home, I will be prepared.
That's it for now. Gotta run. Expanded stories will come soon enough...
I hadn’t really had any expectations or plans for the weekend, it had been a difficult week and I was worn down enough that I hadn't given much thought to what the weekend would entail other then some effort at packing.
It started off a little tense on Friday night with a certain hockey game. Many thought it would go one way, but I believed it was possible it could go the way I was hoping; and lo and behold it did. (As Lance so eloquently texted) Da’ Gwinz!! Stanley Cup Champions!! This of course means Pittsburgh has two national champion sports team, and not many would consider me into that sort of thing, but I will love football because it is the Steelers and I will love the Penguins because they are hockey.
Later while taking the dog for a w-a-l-k [sic] after the game I had a “stoop-side” chat with Granpa Lee, our neighbor; which ended with an invitation to breakfast in the morning. I even managed to coerce HFG into this early morning outing! We each dined on waffles “because that’s all they have at that time”; although the gentleman had blueberries with his; like someone else I know. The adults had many cups of diner coffee as we enjoyed the food before us. We spoke of lives lived long ago and yesterday; of adventures to come, and the job at hand today. We touched on war and peace, rights, and responsibilities, Reagan and Obama.
Back home we said farewell to our friend and proceeded to watch Empire of the Sun. Something we’d been meaning to do, ever since we both became fascinated with a certain Christian Bale. We even enjoyed the appearance of Ben Stiller (another of our favorites) in this sprawling movie about a British boy during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai during WWII. Interestingly Lee, and both mine and Michael's grandfathers were enlisted man during the war.
Upon completion of the movie, I resigned myself to the packing which I had been dreading most... the packing of our framed family photographs (grandparents, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, of course little HFG and Poppy). In so doing I was given to examining them and the culmination of ours and other’s life decisions which had either reinforced someone’s expectations or rebelled against the choices others had made, including instances of my own. I didn’t get it all done in one day, but by Sunday night I only had a few frames yet to be boxed.
I suppose I dreaded it for nothing; although now my walls are bare and just like that it doesn’t feel like home to me. In a way having all those images conjure up understanding, faith, pride, strength, love... for me = home. In two weeks I will be homeless, but I know that when I need understanding I can call or text my friends… when I need faith I can pet my puppy dog, when I need pride I can look across at my husband, when I need strength I can feel it within my body which packed up all my belongings, and when I need love I can feel it in my heart… and as they say home is where the heart is… and sometimes it has to be packed up, wrapped in bubble wrap and safely tucked away.
I started out the weekend, truly saying goodbye to my teen daughter’s childhood, by way of her first semi-formal dance and looking very grown up. Then I picked up my friend Jill and off we went to Spencer’s small gathering of co-workers for his goodbye…
Saturday the only goodbye that was said was to our Costco (I don’t think we will be buying much in bulk prior to leaving in a month).
Then on Sunday was our big “goodbye” event: a potluck brunch. It was so lovely to see the many who came to remind us that we will always have a cheering section in Seattle. I would have liked to have a lil’ more time with each of the those who spent their Sunday morning with us, but I have fond memories of the moments we have already shared, and look forward to all the hellos we will have in the future. Same goes for those of you who were unable to come… trust me I understand… life is busy. I apologize for those invites I will decline in the coming days; I hope you too can understand.
and so it is... let the goodbyes begin:
Goodbye HFG's childhood, goodbye Spencer, goodbye Costco in Shoreline, goodbye coworkers of yesterday and today, goodbye last May 31st I will live in Seattle, goodbye first day of the last month I live in Seattle. goodbye.....
Easter Supper that is, here in Seattle. While everyday is the last this day (March 16) or that day (second Tuesday of the fifth month) of living here in Seattle; it is of course much more meaningful on those days that in general are just more meaningful: ie. Easter. Today we celebrated our LAST Easter in Seattle, for a while anyways.
We haven't really done anything more extrordinary then any other Easter and in fact most likely a little less. Instead of a full spread breakfast, Michael just made Egg McMikey Muffins with bacon; it was filling and tasty all the same. HFG didn't get to find her Easter Basket; the Easter Bunny couldn't find it either amongst the holiday storage crates (I am desperatly hoping it is just packed away very well or I will be sad); but she was still surprised and thrilled with the Easter spread she found instead. We spent more of our time doing chores / projects then Eastery things... but then what are Eastery things when you aren't a church goer? It was a nice enough day: a fire crackled in the living room, sweets and savorys were there for the pickin', and we all knew we were loved.
In a way some of these "lasts" are also the lasts of HFG's childhood, Easter will be different next year, it won't be just the three of us having a mellow day all day together in our little cocoon. There will be family on both sides, we may even be the ones hosting. HFG will nearly be 15 and most likely wanting nothing to do with us, the Easter Bunny, or any of the family in the living room.
But today is ours, just the three of us... the sun has come out, we went to one of our favorite places and it is good. I will always remember today...
Moving annually is not uncommon for me, even within the same city. Until the year Michael and I got married; at which point we moved into a place where we ended up living for the last five years. In fact where I live now is the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere in my entire life (another entry I’m sure)!
For this reason I normally hang on to boxes from a move, which Michael finds completely irritating (until he needs a box); but this last time I was only allowed to hang on to boxes for so long until it was clear we weren’t going anywhere soon. And of course Michael never let me keep any boxes when we purchased something that came in a box (IE. the flat screen - he's going to regret that when we have to box that thang up).
So here I am three months before the move hoarding boxes… in fact my office is beginning to look like a U-Haul store or the shipping dept at work; and there is a tall towering box version of Jenga in our living room. Everyone knows the best boxes come from office buildings (not liquor stores): there’s the copy paper boxes, computer boxes, and monitor boxes, and there are always just random boxes people leave laying around from shopping they've done on the internet and had shipped to work. Of course, I’m claiming these with neon post-its, and people are randomly throwing them in front of my door when I’m not around.
Now I just need to start packing all those boxes... giant sharpie, tape gun here I come!
So I've recently struck up conversation with someone living in the Pittsburgh area, whom I haven't actually met in person only through email, a blog, and Flickr; and I realized...
It's not that I am afraid of no one liking me, because really what if people don't like me? I'm not going to argue with them. It's that I've been very socially independent from my husband for our entire relationship! What I am afraid of is losing that independence.
I will have to mull this over more, but the more I think about it the more I realize maybe its okay if I become more dependent on Michael for companionship, and social interaction. As HFG gets older and spends less time with us, we spend more time just the two of us (along with the furry faced one) and I find that I quite enjoy it. I am pretty lucky that I have a life partner I like as a person, I enjoy spending time with, and that makes me laugh a LOT.
or I can wait for three weeks to move into a two bedroom, 1 bath, back yard with no fence… I can sleep in my own bed, my dog can roam free without fear of being eaten, my teenage daughter can have her own bathroom, there is room for us to be without being all in the same room breathing down each other’s necks… and it can all happen like tomorrow… if only...
