We have lived in our present location for almost nine years. That, my friends, is the longest we have lived anywhere as a family…and even the longest that I have lived in any one place since moving out of my parents’ home. Well, actually, we have only lived in this house for six years: we moved about a mile down the road into our current home after renting one for three years. Though I would definitely say that every move has had its challenges, that in-town move was our least traumatic to date. We did not have to juggle buying and selling a home and when we had a little time, we could drive things from one home to the other right up until our very last day of rent. Not only did the kids not change schools…they did not even have to change school buses!
I suppose, if I were to try to give you a fun description of the degrees of difficulty of our various moves, I would say the in-town move was kind of like stepping off of a carousel onto terra firma and continuing on ones way. There was a bit of a jolt, but no need to steady ourselves afterwards.
Following this same upbeat carnivalesque spirit, I would say that our out-of-state moves thus far have felt more like stepping off of a moving carousel onto another moving carousel…with the carousels moving slightly faster at the addition of each child. Not only was the actual, physical move more complicated to arrange (I absolutely despise haggling with movers. SURE you can move me for half the price…but I kind of want my stuff to come, too…preferably in the same number of pieces it started in…) but there were the children’s records to gather (both medical and school records), registrations to figure out, old friends to leave and new friends to find. Our last big move involved elementary school registration (during which my Sun was out of her freaking mind and TOUCHED EVERYTHING that it was possible to touch in a 700+ student building…spurring the principal to mention that “not all children are ready for full-time kindergarten”. He likes to remind me of how far she has come…) and emergency, oh-crap-I-have-a-kidneystone-and-we-don’t-know-anyone daycare registration.
This time, our move will involve juggling the selling and buying of homes several states away from each other (we have thus far moved from rental to owning…or vice versa), and… TEENAGERS, which makes the whole elementary school thing seem like a cake walk AND makes the entire moving process feel more like stepping off of a moving carousel (at full speed) and onto a moving Ferris wheel! …or, perhaps, one of these:
Don’t get me wrong. I love an adventure and am totally up for the challenge…I think… (which happens to involve the happy abandoning of the snow shovels and rock salt for salty beaches…ahhh), but I also know that the next few months are going to be an emotional roller coaster (and thus we complete our tour of the carnival). So…as we try to successfully move The Moon, The Sun, and Little Man…along with our huge furry dog, our supposed to be 50 lb. but actually 80 lb. dog, and two cats named after Italian alcohol (and NO the pond bullfrogs cannot come), I will attempt to hang onto my sanity with the tenacious grip (if not the grace) of a blindfolded trapeze artist in full swing toward the unknown…
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