It is the last Sunday morning that I will wake up and pace
the floors of this apartment. It is the last Sunday morning where I will make
my coffee and then write something for the Coffin in this place; the last Sunday
morning I will turn the volume on the television way down and play video games.
It’s not the last Sunday morning where I will grind my teeth at a Souls game,
that’s for sure, as last evening I started up Dark Souls II and in two months
the Dark Souls remaster is coming out. Some things are forever, after all.
But next Saturday morning, we are moving. This week promises
to bring a lot: we’ll be getting our new keys some time, and have some new
furniture being delivered this Friday ahead of our move, so we will be able to
bring some boxes over beforehand. Two of our three schools are on break this
week, and the third next, so this week we have Tuesday and Thursday off,
although they probably won’t be restful days. Things to do, a box of stuff to
take to Half Price Books, the rest of our clothes and kitchen things to pack
away. It feels like a lot still, but my wife maintains that it isn’t. It looks
like it to me.
I just want to be finished. I don’t care if that means
everything is in a box for the next six days, or if I only have X amount of
usable clothing. I just want to be done.
I am at that point in the moving process where I’m starting
to think more and more about our new home as a new chapter in our lives. I
subsequently find myself looking back over the things we’ve done while we lived
here, and it is pretty impressive list. We left this apartment one morning and
came back the next as husband and wife. Officially, at least: I’ve often told
my totally non-romantic wife that, in my mind at least, we’d been married since
our third or fourth date. We came back from Canada and Colorado and Minnesota
and Germany twice to this place. This is the apartment we lived in when my wife
graduated from graduate school and where we lived when her first book was
published. This is the place our cat came home to for the very first time,
where he protected his dad from mice and generally wilded out. We have had
friends who are more like family over, and managed to avoid having any actual
family here for five years. I’m getting rather nostalgic just thinking about
things in a vague sense, as in my mind the memories are growing rather specific
and minute, the type of things that I remember as if they just happened and my
wife may vaguely recall, but always says she remembers because she knows that
they for some reason matter to me. But I am starting to think more and more
about what our new place will be like, what having so much more space to live
in will be like.
For the time that we have lived in our current space, there
have been more positives than negatives. Our rent was always manageable, and
the location has always been pretty good. We live kind of a block away from
everything: a CVS, several eateries, a liquor store, a bank, an L stop, a
university. Our new place is a little more removed from those things, but not
terribly so: we’re moving two miles away. We’ll still be in the same Ward of
the city, for cryin’ out loud. Years ago I made friends with the maintenance
man, and that’s probably the only reason that concerns and problems were ever
addressed around here. Our landlord is a real absentee and I have developed a
very antagonistic relationship with the guy who’s showing the apartment to
other potential renters, none of whom seem to be very enthused once they see
the place. The agent wants to raise the rent on the unit by almost two hundred
dollars, which, my wife and I are completely baffled by, as despite the place
being in mid-move disarray at the moment, anyone with eyes can see is not worth
the new asking price. And I’m not sure why the rental agent won’t just wait
until after we’ve moved out to show the place, as aside from a family moving
out of it, he has to know that the place needs work before anyone new can move
in. But he keeps trying to parade people through here, like it’s going to be
move in ready the day we leave. The newest development is that he’s hoping to
show the place the afternoon that we are moving out. Honestly, I feel like it’s
some kind of psychological warfare tactic, like our soon-to-be-former landlord
is attempting to punish us for leaving.
But we are at the point in the moving process where things
are becoming more and more exciting. Set a time to get our new Internet
connection set up. Got confirmation on some (but not all) of our new furniture
being delivered on Friday. Changing addresses on all manner of accounts. We
also just found out that we can pick up our keys on Wednesday evening. We are
down to clothes that are drying and a few kitchen essentials to be packed away.
We are starting to enquire about avenues to donate some unwanted furniture.
Picking up our new keys on Wednesday will allow the two of us to start moving
some things on Thursday, and also Friday as we wait for furniture. Maybe, just
maybe, we could get a whole lot of things moved those two days, and then have
only furniture for Saturday. Maybe, just maybe, we could be done Saturday in
only a few hours. Maybe. But maybe this is just me getting overly excited for
the future.
We have come a long way to get to this point, as we have
spent our days at work and our nights and weekends packing for a solid month
now. It has been exhausting and maddening. But it is almost at its end. A few
more days, and we will begin the marathon of unpacking and putting a new home in
order, but that is always fun. Packing to move is fun as well, for the first
few days, before it becomes another daily grind. We ordered food Friday night
for what may be the last time at our current address. This apartment has been
really, really good to us for these five years, and some part of me is sad to
be leaving it. But I am super excited to move to our new home, and now that we
know the keys are a few days away, so is my wife. Officially.
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