Where The HELL Have You Been?

If you are asking yourself this question, and are really (understandably) tired of reading back through old recipes and stories, then you are in luck.  I am going to tell you.

In just under a month now, Don, Lucy, Boss and I are moving back to Indiana.  South Bend, Indiana to be precise.  This is probably not shocking news considering we have know this for some time and have been talking about it all the time, although we never made an official media announcement.  Because we are not pregnant nor have either of us cured a disease or done some insanely awesome thing, which is the only reason anyone should announce anything.

So for the last month or so, basically since my last post, we have been busy.  Don finished all of his many requirements for graduating from his residency program: research project, several other projects with acronyms that I don't know what they mean, Grand Rounds presentation, etc.  Horay!  We drove to Indiana, bought a house (post on that coming ASAP), and then drove back to Minnesota for possibly the last time.  Don't worry my MN loves...this just means that hopefully from now on we can fly instead of drive!  And now I am...packing <<insert picture of me looking like a deer in the headlights here>>.

Most people find me a reasonably organized person.  I usually have my shit together, papers in proper file folders in the filing cabinet, several copies of important documents tucked into safe places around the house, computers backed up online and on a hard drive, etc.  I like to be prepared for things.  One of the major "discussion topics" D and I have in our marriage is my obsessive level of preparedness.  If we have a conversation in which several possibilities for dates or plans are mentioned, he will check back with me in a few hours to find I have secured a babysitter just in case we go through with one possibility.  I have learned now that is just helps to get things in writing when possible.

As organized and prepared as I like to be, when people start talk about packing and moving, I have a very marked physical reaction.  My palms get sweaty, my eyes widen, and I literally start looking around me for exits.  Because when it comes to packing, it takes me about 2 seconds to get completely overwhelmed with the idea of putting everything I own into boxes and then physically moving them from one place to another.  How can life be that portable?  Where the hell did I get all of this stuff?  Why  do we have so many heavy books?! 

In fact, I will do, and have done, just about anything I can to get out of actually packing myself.  Get drunk the night before moving day in college and pass out on the porch swing in front of my dorm, leaving my roommate and her parents to pack up my stuff and load it in their car?  Check - Junior year of college.  PS I love you Christine, George and Marilyn!!!  And yes, I know that is a completely heinous thing for me to have done, especially considering they were graciously letting me live with them that summer.  So horrible.  All I can say is that I learned something from that experience.  No, nothing about packing.  I learned that you cannot trust the Long Island Iced Teas at the Linebacker in South Bend, Indiana.  There is a two Long Island limit at the Backer.  I suggest you just stick with one.

A couple of years after that I was moving from Tacoma, Washington back to Indiana and had a complete mental shut down when it came time to pack my measly one room of worldly possessions.  Thank God D was there.  He put me in a corner, said "pack everything in this corner into this box and do not leave the corner until everything is packed unless you need more boxes."  Even with those simple instructions he would walk into the room every now and then to find me wandering around, seeing if the piece of driftwood from over the closet door would fit into the box of dresser things, and would have to reorient me.  Several years after that it took my entire family swarming my bedroom the day after D and I got married to pack my things, load them into a truck, and drive them down to Indianapolis where D and I moved into our first little love nest.

My history of moving doesn't include horrific amounts of things.  The most Don and I have ever moved was a two bedroom house, when we moved from Indianapolis up here to Rochester.  And I was lucky and peaced-out of most of that process because we had Joyce with us, and I was taking care of her.  Which is what I told everyone.  Before that, at most I had a room full of things and no more to move.  One room.  And still I would totally shut down and be unable to deal with the situation rationally.  Complete and total panic.

Now, we have a three bedroom house and seven thousand pounds of book and five million toys and a basement full of beer.  So in order to stay sane, I have come up with an excellent plan on how to pack a larger house without going insane or melting down or becoming catatonic.  It involves a series of cliches that I repeat to myself like an extended mantra whenever I think about packing, moving or attempt to actually pack.  It goes something like this:

Start early.  Slow and steady.  Keep calm and carry on.

I am considering asking one of our friends to borrow his awesome British WWII morale boosting poster to be a visual aid for my packing experience, but bringing a large framed picture into the house in order to aid me in removing other large framed pictures from the house seems a little too insane even for me.

I addition to delving into the horrific and exciting adventure of home ownership and thinking about the logistics of packing and moving, Don and I are now entering the last month of his residency, and the last month we have in the foreseeable future with our amazing Rochester friends.  Don't become hysterical, Rochester people reading this post.  We are not there quite yet.  So what we have been doing, when we are not packing and Don is not working (which is actually almost never this month) is sucking the marrow from this Rochester life.  That's right, lets get visceral about it.  Life in Rochester is a big juicy beef bone, and we are going to crack it open and suck out every fatty, nutritious, delicious drop.  And then spread it on some crusty bread and eat it.

Play dates, picnics, trips to the zoo and the park and impromptu pot luck dinners and moving parties and birthdays and walks.  Yes.  That is my answer to any invitation I get in the next thirty days, barring vomiting or fever, of course.  Unless its a really low fever.  Just kidding....?

And now, with that, I am off to suck some marrow from the bones of the Mayo Clinic, getting every doctors appointment out of them while we have their ridiculously excellent insurance coverage.   Maybe I can get Lucy's pediatrician to throw in some anti-anxiety meds for me while I'm at it....or at least a "Hang In There, Baby!" sticker.