Move Month-Ish
The Man and I are in a debate. As per usual—there are days when I’m pretty sure we married each other just so we could keep cheerfully arguing for the rest of our lives.
He maintains that Move Month is only the month in which you are actively moving. In this case, July. That is the month in which we leave the old base and check into the new one. He’ll give me a little wiggle room since the week of the pack out technically falls in June, but that. is. it.
I, on the other hand, like to blithely refer to the 6-8 weeks prior to the departure date and the 6-8 weeks following the departure date as Move Month. I recognize that this—in no way, shape, or form—actually represents the typical 30-31 days of a literal month (sorry, February), but to me: Move Month is more of an emotion. Or a state of mind. Move Month begins when I can no longer sleep through the night because I’m waking up making lists in my head, and Move Month ends when I no longer have to take a nap in the afternoons. Or some kind of spiritual equivalent of that estimation.
In that vein, here are a few more things that Move Month is.
For the record, HRH did not enjoy her stint in the wagon. She immediately jumped out and tried to eat the wheels off the wicked thing, but Littles enjoyed giving it a shot.
Move Month is:
Wiping dirty hand prints from the tops of the door frames (thanks, teenage boys, who like to hang from their fingers while airing out their pits and stretching their height as far as it will go).
Taking a load to the base thrift store only to immediately start yet another give away pile.
The girls playing dress up with the dog instead of sorting through the dress up bin to see what can be given away.
Cutest Little Red Royal Hood you’ll ever see.
Thinking longingly about just straight up burning the house/garage to the ground so that I don’t have to think about packing any more…and don’t have to deal with all the spiders that have taken over the garage while I was pretending it didn’t exist with its entire fleet of out grown, dead-tired bikes. Sit with that sentence for a while. I can’t be bothered to rewrite it.
Testing all three air mattresses for leaks and finding that two out of the three had punctures that were thoughtfully (and uselessly) duck-taped over by my helpful (but not terribly forth-coming) daughters. Let the jury know that the third air mattress had a very slow leak. I left it on the guest room floor while I meditated for several days on how much I wanted to pay out for a new one versus how annoying it would be to have a kid grousing about the gradual deflation of their temporary bed every night. Thankfully, the geriatric cat decided to put me out of my misery by going diarrhea all over it. Please note that for those who ascribe to the Poop Rule of Decluttering, it’s supposed to be imaginative poop, not literal poop, but the literal poop got the job done just fine. If you’ve never heard of the Poop Rule of Decluttering, this your opportunity to pause and google.
Saying a permanent goodbye aforementioned geriatric cat, unfortunately. Thankfully, this isn’t indicative of every Move Month, just this one. The worst part of putting Oswald down is obviously that we miss that crazy old bag of bones, but the second worst part was that the face Os made when they sedated him was the exact same one he made when we got him out of the dryer that time he accidentally got fluffed with the towels, and the Man had to try really hard not to laugh in what was supposed to be (and truly was—we’re not heartless) an emotionally weighted moment. Dark humor gets us through a lot.
Seventeen years was pretty impressive.
Never having enough energy. Which is not counteracted by my tea/coffee intake and makes all the obligatory social events far more challenging. Me: I’m so sorry we were in the middle of a conversation and I totally zoned out on you and now have no clue what you were saying. It’s not you. It’s not me. It’s Move Month.
Resisting the Irish Goodbye. Look: everybody loves everybody. Can we go now? (But I try hard to resist the urge and model for the kids saying goodbye well. I promise. Closure is important and all that.)
Repainting the front door mat so it’ll be so fresh and so clean for the next place. And also because it’s always good to remind myself (in a doomsday voice) to “PREPARE YOURSELF”.
Our welcome mat will never get old or stop being funny to me.
Barely resisting the urge to wear my “Don’t Stress Meowt” shirt on repeat. If I hear one more “the movers cancelled on us at the last minute and now we’re doing a full DITY” story, I’m going to track down the student who gave it to me and force him to give me another six of them in various colors so I can wear one a day for the next however many years until the Man retires.
My ongoing debate with myself about how early is too early to start deep cleaning. At what point am I saving myself time once the moving truck pulls out and at what point is the box grit and move dust and sheer number of bodies in and out of the home just going to undo whatever work I put in?
Yes, I even scheduled in a bath for HRH by backwards planning.
Figuring out when to say yes to our kids before we pull them up by the roots and make them start over again and when to say no so that everyone maintains their sanity. Sometimes this means sitting with a hysterically crying child for a solid half hour and then playing Wordle with her at ten o’clock at night.
Acknowledging that the Bigs’ math books are coming in the car with us because I wasn’t meaner earlier in the year. What was I thinking letting my kid recover from major surgery like we weren’t going to be moving nine months later? (This is a joke. Just for the record.)
HRH is much happier about doing math in June than Tiny is.
Trying to figure out who needs thank you notes and who needs going away gifts and how to make sure everyone really does know how much they are loved and appreciated and treasured. (See: Irish Goodbye above for more information)
Really wanting a bubble bath, but the bubble bath bottle (say that five times fast) ran out and I didn’t want to buy another because moving. Also, it’s figuring out how long, as an honorary Asian, I can go without soy sauce. If it runs out two weeks before the move, do I buy another bottle? Or do I risk throwing away a half full bottle of soy sauce? These are the things that keep me up at night. (See: Lack of Energy above for more information about that)
Anyway, Move Month: it’s a whole thing. If I wanted to get on the Taylor Swift bandwagon, I’d go so far as to say that I’m in my Move Era right now. And honestly, if I keep stretching the definition of “month", soon enough this move will reach out its hands and clench pinkies with the move that came before and the move that comes next, and before I know it, my life will be one long and lovingly linked chain of moves…and that is neither representative of reality or a healthy thought, so I’m sticking with Move Month, no matter what the Man says.
Okay, fine: Move Month-Ish. On which note, let’s do this.
