Moving Day

I'm moving this week. It started with just a few things that I took over Saturday when I went to pick up the keys. And enroute, I called a friend.

"I'm moving! I'm moving! I'm moving! I'm moving!"

I sounded like the audio version of a 6 year old on a pogo stick, bouncing up and down with excitement. Who gets excited about moving? Nobody. Certainly not me. I've never been this excited to be physically carrying my things out of one residence and into another. Normally, like most peoople, I dread moving.

What makes this time different? Well, one reason is an painfully negative, current living situation. The friends that already know about it have heard enough and the ones that haven't heard don't need to, right? Right.

Another reason is that almost all of my belongings are still in a luxurious temperature controlled storage locker in Los Angeles. I haven't acquired a lot of household goods on this coast and the things I do have with me are either very necessary or very inexpensively acquired. It's an odd thing, buying something that is so ugly you know you'll be glad to take it to Goodwill one day in your fantasy future. But that's what I've done.

I asked my mother for the ugliest, tackiest holiday decorations she could send at Christmas. (She showed an absolute flair for that, by the way! Thanks Mom!) A beloved niece handmade my miniature Christmas stocking sticked with a personal message. And I've picked up anything else I needed at thrift stores and out of the way places. It's been sort of fun.

I think once you've been through the whole mess of being able to buy whatever you really wanted and then having to carefully box, stack and store those things thousands of miles away, you don't need to feel sad that they're gone. I don't need anything more because my stuff is just somewhere else at the moment.

If you have heard part of that Carrie Underwood song out in the last couple of months, called "Temporary Home," then maybe you understand a little of how I feel:

"This is my temporary home.
It's not where I belong.
Windows and rooms that I'm passin' through.
This is just a stop on the way to where I'm going.
I'm not afraid because I know this is my temporary home."

I'm not sure how long I'll stay in the Washington area. It might be just a stop. It might be The Stop. But I do know this: Monday night, I am moving.

And today, three different friends all volunteered to drop everything and help me move. So for a temporary home, this is feeling pretty good right now.