Moving Day(s)

You never really know how much stuff you have... until you move.

Ah, boxes boxes. At first it looks like so many. But as you begin to pack and pack and pack and the dust and the sneezing - hey, didn't I just clean under here, yeah like last year! - and then you look around and it looks like you have done nuh-thing at all... then you look at your supply of boxes rapidly dwindling. Oi!

But this moving day reminds me of our last moving day. Moving days when you were a DINK or a SINK (that's single income no kids, not a slur) are not memorable anymore. The only good thing about packing up is the anticipation of the new house. And in this case it is actually new and actually ours. I thought at times we would never own a home and look at us now! But I still have a little melancholy. I am remembering as I pack all the very helpful girlfriends of mine who came and watched S.O.v.1 when he was a baby so I could pack up our Hollywood apartment to move out here. I thought of Demondoll putting her own little one - probably on her hip most of the way - and S.O.v.1 in the stroller and going up the hill by our house in Hollywood. About Cynthia watching him while the movers took all the boxes and furniture away. I remember going down into the courtyard and seeing her sitting there with him sleeping on her shoulder. And she, a normally Type A personality with an equal mix of hippy, who always looks happy to be where she is but ready to get to the next place, looked totally contented and not eager to get anywhere at all. I remember thinking that she looked really good holding a baby. Now she has her own little 5 month old tyke and I am so glad for her and her hubby.

I remember the lovely, bubbly Krishanti looking after S.O.v.1 and that laugh of hers every time he would do something cute. She looks really good with a baby too. Something about a woman laughing and smiling with a baby makes them so beautiful.

This move makes me melancholy because it also means we are staying in the desert for the foreseeable future. As much as I love my life here I miss LA and my friends there. A part of me really hoped that we would be buying a house there for the first time. A large part of me wishes it wasn't so hard to get back there more often. Thank goodness Shrub got on the phone to jawbone those oil barrens he's so close to or gas prices would be impossible, not nearly impossible like they are now.

But the packing reminds me too of just how endless stuff is and I kind of wish we had less of it. I have been trying to purge the stuff as much as possible and yet the pull to keep things... for sentimental reasons, for just in case reasons, for unknown reasons... I am having a hard time ridding myself of certain baby items. The wedge I made for S.O.v.1 for when he slept in our bed and had a stuffy nose, which he did often. My breast pump (stop it! don't be gross) just in case... and the co-sleeper that S.O.v.2 slept in not so often but would catch her in case she rolled off the bed sleeping next to me most of her babyhood. I know this irritates S.O. to no end because he really is done-done having children whereas I would, if he changed his mind, have another in a red hot second (stop it!) and although I do owe it to Al Gore for convincing me that there is no real need for me to populate the planet with more people just like me, and it would be for selfish reasons, I still can't bring myself to part with these things... Just in case. I give myself credit for purging most (if not totally all) baby clothes though. We can't say the same for S.O.'s ancient and smelly T-shirt collection however...