Moving...on

The last few weeks have sucked some serious monkey balls.

There have been a number of contributing factors here...planning for a move across town, without a car, and apartment hunting in an overpriced, pet-hostile housing market...these are not experiences that people tend to treasure and immortalize in scrapbook form.

While I am confident that my decision to move was a good one, and that my new apartment will be absolutely great once I’ve settled in, I am also secure in the knowledge that the non-monetary price for my beautiful new apartment will be one, maybe two more months of pure, unadulterated stress. Because i) I have very little furniture, which mean until I buy a mattress I’m sleeping on my yoga mat, ii) what little furniture I do own, I have no way to transport, which is the case for my dresser, TV, and my dearly beloved couch of comfiness, whom I fear I may have to abandon, and iii) Life is hard.

Every time I move,I have a distinct feeling that all of my possessions have been forming couples and reproducing...which disturbingly implies that my SAD lamp has a better sex life than I do, which may or may not be true. Nevertheless, stuff does, always,  accumulate... heavy stuff, like text books, and the notes from that class for that degree I dropped out of, and fabric from when I was going to teach myself to sew but never did.

“Hoarders” is currently on TLC, which sends me into chills, because on some level I think I do have hoarding tendencies. I certainly have anxiety that what I throw away will be sorely missed...that, and I’m incredibly cheap, as well as a budding environmentalist, so the whole idea of throwing something away, only to have to buy a new something later, seems absolutely abhorrent to my very soul.

But really, I guess I’m more of a bulimic. I go through bingeing and purging cycles with my possessions, giving away far too many of my clothes to charity, and then realizing I have no clothes and holding onto a broken pair of running shoes for months, if not years. And today, like it or not, I must purge.

So, goodbye, slightly broken Hungry Hungry Hippos, whose marbles have almost all been chewed beyond recognition by a certain dog named Toby. And goodbye, scented oil candle thing that I was given during a gift exchange and knew I would never use but held on to all year out of guilt. Goodbye, can of creamed broccoli that apparently expired in 2007.

...I will miss you.