Third night

Last night was our third night sleeping in our new place.

The kitties are slowly settling in, though they are acting differently than I would have expected. Loki, always the alpha kitty, so sure of himself, has been slinking around and much less outgoing than usual. Petra, perpetully beta, has been playing and running and flopping over constantly on our bedroom carpet saying "Pet me! Pet me on the largest flopping rug in the world!" (Our old place is all hardwoods/tile and we had a lot of throw rugs around. Petra would flop on a throw rug to ask for pets. Now she just flops on our bedroom carpet or the other bedroom carpet).

Oh yes - we have TWO bedrooms. And there are hardwoods in the living room and dining area/entry way and clean, nice-looking linoleum in the hallway, kitchen, and bathroom - not misinstalled cracking grout-coming-out shows-all-dirt white tile. At Tarjay last night we were contemplating buying a vaccuum. It's so weird, that the idea of buying a vaccuum makes me feel more grown up than anything else I've done, kind of.

It's been so long since I moved (January of 2003, to be precise, when we moved my worldly goods from Berkeley to Denver in Hulk's late, lamented Pontiac Sunfire) that I forgot a lot of things about it. I moved approximately 10 times while I lived in Berkeley (4 of those times within the same co-op but moved rooms) and had it all down to a science. But this place that we are slowly but surely abandoning is the place I have lived in the longest since I moved out of the Ancestral Manse at age 17 to go to Cal, and I've been in there for nearly 3.5 years. Though I only had a carload of stuff when I moved in, combining my stuff with Hulk's when he moved in 6 months later - and the 3 years since then - has added up to a LOT of stuff. I have no idea where some of it came from. We've already donated about two trunkloads of clothes and STUFF and there is more STUFF to be donated before all this is done. Some of our unwanted furniture will be abandoned to the alley, to be snatched up in an hour or two by another resident of the neighborhood.

This whole process has been wonderful if only for the purpose of making us cull through our piles and boxes and closets full of STUFF, thinking hard about what's really worth moving and what we don't need/want/have room for. I used to do this every semester or every year or every 18 months when I'd move into a new place or a new room in the co-op and only moved what I wanted to keep. I had to get rid of a ton of stuff when I moved to Denver (see aforementioned limit of space in car). But nothing has made me go through the letting-go-of-stuff process since I moved here, and I think it's about time. There is some stuff I haven't used or looked at or even remembered that I had that followed me from California, and I decided that if I hadn't thought about it in years, it wasn't worth moving.

I will miss our old place, or at least some things about it. I will miss living two apartments down on the same floor as our good friend/neighbor, who is currently in Atlanta for a couple of months. I will miss the industrial toilet and the fabulous water pressure and the enormous windows that let in sun all day long.

I will not miss the tow trucks towing the idiots at 7 AM every morning who were dumb enough to park overnight in the "6 AM to 7 PM traffic lane" right outside our bedroom window. I will not miss our wee kitchen or the windows that have those stupid hand crank things or the window in the kitchen that wouldn't open at all. I will not miss the sirens and the noise of drunk people on the weekends or the person who lives above us having sex really loudly and thumpily in the middle of the night.

I will be really really glad to be all done with this whole process. We moved 25ish boxes of books and other stuff in the state car I had a week ago, and then we did 5 giant truckloads on Sunday (spent 10 hours loading the truck, driving 6 blocks, unloading the truck, driving 6 blocks, rinse repeat) and another truckload last night. Tonight we are moving the last of the furniture and "stuff" and after this it will all be donation and cleanup. And I am bone tired. Having everything in upheaval, plus the actual physical part of hauling armfulls of stuff up and down stairs for hours, is TIRING. We go to the cabin on Thursday evening and I can't WAIT to get out of the city and just be still for a couple of days. And then we will come back Sunday night, and Monday at lunch and after work I'll be back at the old place cleaning some more. It's gotta be spotless on Wednesday when I do the walkthrough with the property management company and give the keys back so I can make sure I get my whole deposit back. It's got to go to the new landpeople.