Packing sucks

It really does. Of course, I realize my four loyal readers will all have the same reaction to that statement ("Well, duh, Karen") because they have all packed their crap and moved once, and sometimes twice, very recently. But I haven't moved in nearly 9 years, so I guess I've forgotten how annoying and stressful it is to get everything packed up. And as it gets down to the nitty-gritty of the packing, the stuff I really don't want to deal with (like the 9 million pieces of paper in my office), it sucks even more. At least I have been lucky enough to not have to worry about wandering the streets looking for boxes - friends have volunteered them and my mom very kindly brought me a bunch from my parents' move not long ago. A move that should make me quit my sniveling about my own because they had to pack up 30 YEARS (!) worth of junk. How they did it without going mental, I can't quite imagine. But I guess I can use that as inspiration and go throw some more stuff in a box.

Songs from the seventh grade

Oh, the agony and embarrassment of uncovering the past. Tonight I stumbled across some "songs", written in my 12 year-old scrawl. I wrote this stuff when I had a mad crush on a boy called Raymond, a kid with the oddest fashion sense for a seventh-grade boy probably in the world - think turquoise and yellow slacks with corresponding sweaters. But no matter to me - I saw beyond the clothes, saw straight through to the boy of my dreams that I created in my head. Because, of course, I didn't really know anything about him at all and had probably only ever said 10 words to him total. Such was my early adolescence. Hence song lyrics with titles like "Love You From Afar", the sappy, sloppy melody of which I can still remember. The idea that I wrote pages and pages of terrible lyrics about someone who wouldn't look at me twice is pretty funny; that I composed music in my head to go along with the lyrics is even funnier. And astonishing. Where the hell'd all that creativity go anyway? Was that my lifetime allotment and I wasted it on songs of awkward longing about a kid in yellow trousers? God forbid. At any rate, as requested by a member of my vast readership, herewith a sampling from one of my masterpieces, "Give Me Your Hand". Let the laughter ensue...

Give me your hand
your wish is my command
do I look like a fool
I follow all rules
but how do you feel
do I make your heart real

Give me your hand
whisk me away to your land
I see no problems with this
I don't want to miss...you
So just give me your hand
let me know where I stand

Give me your hand
but not a wedding band
I'm not ready for such a commitment
don't make it a predicament
just let me be
don't you see
I will finally see the light...

Eight and a half years

That's how long I've lived in my apartment. And that's about how long it feels like it's going to take to pack up all my crap. Except, I only have two weeks to pack the crap. Guh. So begins the task of going through the accumulation of nearly a decade. I'm finding myself on a bit of a roll at the moment, after madly scrubbing what seemed like several years' worth of grime from the bathtub tiles. Now I'm on to the piles that I haven't looked at in forever, that have sat and become just another part of the coffee table or whatever surface they landed on in the first place. And the result of not looking at piles? Realizing I have at least 15 videotapes with nothing to indicate what it was I recorded and thought was so vitally important that I needed to keep it for who knows how long. And the other thing, unearthing the junk with the emotional heaviness - a happy photo taken long ago, the book that belonged to the ex, something with his handwriting on it. The stuff that makes you think, thank god I'm finally moving.

Movin' on up...

....well, maybe not to a deluxe apartment in the sky, but a place at least one floor above ground level. Baby steps.

Here's to non-mole-like livin'!