I’m mighty sick of moving.
There is always a bit of a thrill in relocating to a brand-new place, especially one ten times larger than the largest city you’ve ever lived in, where the few people you do know are scattered throughout its boroughs so thoroughly that there’s not a chance in a million you’ll see them on an average day.
It’s also terrifying if you stop and let yourself think about it.
Then there’s the endless furniture search, further complicated by the city’s sprawl, one-way labyrinths and, in the case of
That’s fine. I’m better off anyway, for a laughably narrow third-floor stairway wouldn’t have allowed a mattress through its bends in the end. My futon will work just fine.
While undergoing the rituals involved in moving, I've had the opportunity to start up a local bank account (I’ve told so many people in so many states over the last two weeks that I’m NOT married, my name has been hyphenated since birth), get that “saver” card at whatever no-name neighborhood grocery store is down the block, trek to campus for a student ID (see hyphenated name complaint), meet the recluse poetry PhD student on the second floor with oddly dull eyes and an eerily wide grin, test the sensitivity of my smoke detector, get thoroughly accosted by GreenPeace, MassPIRG, the Catholic Church and the Northeast’s breed of homeless on a daily basis, and misplace my cell phone at one of the many homes I visited to pick up some scraggly Craigslist-won furniture item.
And finally, there’s the never ending Change of Address, and many, many resulting headaches. Like one I received today: a forwarded letter from Wells Fargo, thanking me for my continued banking and confirming my change of address, SEND TO MY OLD ADDRESS. It’s no wonder my replacement ATM card (a further headache and roadblock to the completion of my moving-in) hasn’t arrived yet.
Though in all honesty, this is a lovely little apartment in a quiet, working-class neighborhood, absent of the drunken wails of freshmen in
