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This is how I Move

By Sarah Stodola

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Three weeks before the move, I get excited about it. I decide to get a head start on the packing. I pack three or four boxes. They sit there for a day or so, and then I realize there is something in one of them that I can't really go without for three weeks. This past time it was cinnamon. I wanted to make cinnamon toast.

After that one item is removed, the boxes are no longer organized. The cinnamon was not near the top of the box's contents, after all. The boxes then become a burden rather than a gleeful reminder of the pending move in to "my new place."

Two weeks go by, and I haven't lifted another finger in the packing process. I only have two days left before the big day, so I begin to feel overwhelmed by everything that must get done between now and then. When I get to feeling overwhelmed like this, I do the opposite of what that feeling should cause one to do. I don't snap into action. I do nothing, paralyzed by the thought of so much to do in so few hours.

So inevitably, the night before the move is a night with little sleep. My roommate seems to be just like me. So we get some beer and get to it. It's fun in a way, like in college when you had a huge group project due the next day and by 3 a.m. everyone was delirious and having a great time. We take a break to watch America's Funniest Videos at 8pm - hardly a break, since we don't start packing until seven.

We run out of boxes. We are amazed at how much stuff we have. There are dust bunnies the size of real bunnies under all pieces of furniture. The apartment is filthy. The cat is confused but having a really great time with it all. It's a good thing that I won't have time to go to bed because I no longer have a bed.

The next day, three of my friends and I pack the U-Haul. It's a matter of fitting something into every inch of space. One friend called it Tetris, which was a good metaphor.

After this the story becomes tedious, just like the process of moving itself. Moving the same things out of the truck that just got moved in, balancing boxes one on top of the other in your arms until you can no longer see over them, yearning for a shower, thanking your friends profusely for helping you out, yearning also for a beer, the last reminiscent look around the old, now empty apartment, sad to see it go even though you can't wait to get out of it.

This is one of the notches by which you will remember your life - "That was when I was in the Hooper Street apartment," is how it usually sounds. A closing, and an opening; this is perhaps the nicest thing to be said about the moving process. Anything that makes you want a beer this badly is something that is best when it's over.

After the move, I sleep. I unpack the things that make an apartment mine - like books and pictures - first, leaving the practical possessions - like pots and files - for later. Because of laziness, that process takes weeks. Moving out of the old apartment, I found a box that had never been unpacked from the last move. I wonder if this will happen again.

I don't know, because at the moment my priorities are a shower and a beer, and not necessarily in that order.

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Sarah Stodola is the Managing Editor of Me Three.  She can be contacted at [email protected].

© 2003 Me Three