Seventeen Months

Soo... mixed feelings about this whole moving thing.

For those of you who don't know, I moved out of my apartment with my brother in Eden Prairie and into a new one in St. Louis Park, where Joanna and I will reside once we get hitched in, oh, what? 21 days? Three weeks? Yeah. So whatever, it's not like I'm "moving away"... it's only like 10 miles from where I was living, I still work at the same place, same church (for the moment), same friends... so what gives?

The truth, friends, is that I lived in Eden Prairie for almost a year and a half, twice as long as I've lived any place since leaving the house after high school. It's weird to me to have not moved in that time. The story goes: I moved to North Central in Minneapolis in August '02, lived and went to school there until May '03, when I moved back home to Mount Horeb, only to move to south Minneapolis the following September, where I lived until July '04, when I moved in with my friend Dustyn and his parents in Milwaukee until I found an apartment in September, where I lived until I moved back to Minnesota, again for the third time, in June '05 to Eden Prairie. And that's not mention moving from Iowa to Wisconsin when I was three weeks old, only to move back to Iowa 5 years later in '88, and then back once again to Wisconsin in 1993. So it could be argued that life has stabilized of late, though I hardly regret any of the moves I've made and envy not the person who's stayed put their whole life.

But let's be real. The thrill of the move is gone after about the third or fourth time. The sentimental stroll through your earthly belongings, the musty excitement of climbing into the cigarette-stained interior of a Uhaul truck, the charm of a new place to call home... these are all lost against the din of address change forms and new drivers' licenses, pay-in-advances on utilities and oh yeah, your whole body feels like those shapely Jell-o molds on an old Bill Cosby commercial, from all the heave-ho'ing of said earthly belongings. You're too tired to do anything useful, yet your brain knows you're not in your usual element, and continues the unrelenting release of adrenaline into your bloodstream.

I know it sounds incredibly overdramatic, but I feel like this is quite an accomplishment, seventeen months staying in one place after pinballing around the upper Midwest for 3 years. And now on to Christmas, New Years, a matrimonial ceremony, a week on the North Shore, and maybe just maybe, a moment to breathe, probably one similar to this one, at 1:30am.

We'll see how it all pans out, but after I pass out on an unsheeted mattress and wake up in a few hours to a living room full of boxes and scattered furniture, I'm going straight for my keys and driving for a hot cup of good coffee to start my day. So as you sip yours today, take a moment and raise your mug to Ian, Minnesota's own human game of ping pong, a game that has officially come to an end.