moving day

Today marks my sixth move in a year and a half.

Packing to move always involves taking stock of where I've been, where I'm going, and what I'm taking with me. Every time I move, I end up with less than I started with. Yet, as few possessions as I feel like I have, it is always startling to see just how much it adds up to when it's all stacked up together. The bulk of it is books, bedding, and clothes. As far as kitchenware, all I have is one plate, two mugs, a bowl, three plastic cups, and two french presses. My electronics are limited to a printer, an alarm clock, and a laptop. I'm leaving all my furniture, which is only a small end table, one old lamp without a shade, and a set of drawers. The loft bed is staying too, but it was already there when I moved in. I don't need my mattress, either.

I'm subletting a room in an apartment for the month of July until my roommate-to-be returns from California in August. Truthfully, I'm looking forward to the quick turn around. I get restless when I live in one place for too long. When I was a kid, my family moved about every three years, so I never really had one neighborhood I belonged to. Before I moved into this apartment, I was moving every 3-4 months, which was terrible in New York without a car or friends with cars to help. You have to experience it to really fathom it. Try paying $60 in cab fare to transport your life, with a cabbie who does as little to help you as he possibly can. And that's if you're lucky enough to be moving somewhere in the same borough as you lived before. Try moving from Manhattan to Brooklyn or Queens or from Downtown to Uptown. Of course, there's always U-haul, but try driving one of those things in Manhattan, I dare you. But I am lucky this time. My good friend is driving all the way down from Westchester to move me. I have to pay her for the gas, but we'll also be hanging out afterwards, so it will be all right.

Anyway, the situation being what it is, I'm going to leave most of my stuff in boxes while I'm there, so repacking will be minimal. I suppose I've paid some of my dues as a New Yorker, because not only is one of my friends work for Rapid Realty and hooking me up when Andy and I have to apartment hunt, but there is a chance my family will roadtrip to the city at the end of July for my brother's birthday, so I very well might get moved for free with extra man power. Today it will be just me and Allie, hauling it all up four flights into a stranger's apartment. I've yet to have an apartment that was fully mine. I've lived in dorms, sublets, and I've filled a vacancy in a friend's apartment. All of them were already furnished, already decorated, and I had to accomodate my needs to my roommates'. All I have to do is put in my time for one more month and I will finally have the blank slate I've been longing for.