I have decided that moving is a lot like childbirth. If anyone remembered how painfully difficult it is, no one would ever do it again. Somehow, you forget. Somehow…though I do not know how.

As I sit here I am surrounded. I am aware that there is a possibility of bodily harm. At any moment the tower I created from various different household items I just couldn’t part with, may very well come down. It is a risk I must take. What choice do I have? It will, God willing, stay piled up until I can get to it. For now, I need a break.

If you’ve recently invested in a house you can just barely afford, as my husband and I did, you know there’s no way those unfamiliar people they call movers are coming in to help you. To me, these people are foreign. Like something you hear about and sometimes see but never actually have any contact with.

I cannot forget to mention my husband here. The man who’d like me to be a woman when it’s convenient, if you know what I mean, but somehow assumes that I’ve turned man, when it comes to lifting my Nanny’s china cabinet. My husband is a man who, when lifting incredibly heavy pieces of furniture, doesn’t count to three. He doesn’t issue a warning when he is setting the armoire down so a girl might take care not to crush all her fingers. As he mindlessly chooses his socks for the day he never considers that someone (that’d be me) found the best possible central location for the things only after three hopeful spots were tried. I shouldn’t forget to mention, how he swears studs are 16 inches apart despite all the holes in my sheetrock proving otherwise. He doesn’t believe in anchors. If he had his way, every piece of décor, including those lightweight framed photos, would be screwed directly into studs.

My husband does have his strong points. Just last night he and I sawed a table in half in our living room floor, carried it down the hall to its final resting place. I say final, because I had hoped to paint this room before we bolted all this furniture to the walls. Oh, and say bolted because I have a two year old whom I’d rather not see crushed by the computer desk or other heavy item. Yep, this stuff, including the giant chest of drawers, is getting painted around. I hope the giant rectangular oddly colored shapes aren’t too big of a surprise to the future owners. Oh wait, what am I talking about? I - am - never - moving - again. I already have the plans stored in my head for expansion. This will be the house the grandchildren come back to. Their parents will tell them stories of how they carved their initials on this tree or how they weren’t crushed by this piece of furniture because their mother bolted it to the wall 37 years ago.

The afore mentioned table, has seen many rooms in this house. Initially, we put it out on the screened-in porch thinking someday we will have time for brunch. Then, when reality sunk in, I decided it would suit the kitchen better. After a few days of contorting my body around it while carrying dirty loads of laundry, I decided to saw the thing in half and use a portion of it in our bedroom. Currently, the other half is sitting upside down in the living room floor.

There have been many unfortunate events along the way. I steam cleaned an entire room without water. You know, you really need the water for the cleaning to be effective. I asked myself how I could have let it happen. I am a fairly intelligent person. In my defense, I did add the water. I just added it to the disposal tank.

Just last week while I was painting, I wiped the excess paint off the carpet blade when it slipped and jabbed into my face. I could tell I was bleeding but had to finish up this one little area before I went to investigate. I have to admit I was also procrastinating because I was a little afraid to look. I wore a band-aid on my face that day. I believe it was a from the Shrek collection. Or, it could have been a fairy band aide.

I am remembering a time when my mother and I visited my overwhelmed and self-diagnosed ADD sister in California. She had just moved into a new place and was deeply distressed by the overwhelming chore of unpacking. I, the super duper organizing and situating woman that I am, quickly came to her aid. As I tossed empty boxes out the back door, I sang in celebration, “another one bites the dust, emm, emm, annnddd another one bites, annndd another one bites, another one bites the dust.” Man…how things have changed.