Moving Up and Moving On

This week has been, in a word, exhausting. It took me a while to figure out why, at any given moment, I want to lay down on the floor and nap for a week...but then I realized that maybe running a silent auction at school, buying a house, packing boxes, writing two papers for my master's class, preparing for Open House, being at school for 11 hours on Thursday--oh, and chasing after a toddler with an active social life of her own these days--might have something to do with it. Yawn.

There's lots of moving going on in our little corner of the world these days. I'll start with us, since I left the House Situation hanging a week ago: WE'RE GETTING THE HOUSE! The inspection went great, there's practically nothing wrong with the house according to the nit-pickiest, most thorough home inspector in the known universe, and we're set to close in about 3 weeks. Yippee!

This is SO me right now, because anyone who knows me knows I'm far too cheap to actually pay money for moving boxes:

"When you're moving, your whole world becomes boxes. That's all you think about is boxes. Boxes, where are there boxes? You just wander down the street going in and out of stores. Are there boxes here? Have you seen any boxes? I mean, it's all you think about. You can't even talk to people because you can't concentrate. 'Shut up, I'm looking for boxes!' Just after a while you become like really into it: you can smell them. You walk into a store: 'There's boxes here. Don't tell me you don't have boxes. Dammit, I can SMELL them!' I'm obsessed. I love the smell of cardboard in the morning." -Jerry Seinfeld

My parents are also set for a big move. My dad got a big promotion to be in charge of his company's location in Lodi, so they're moving up there, even though it's known for nothing except a song about being stuck there again! I'm going out on a limb and, even though I haven't been there yet myself, calling Creedence Clearwater Revival a bunch of liars, because a place that's within a short drive of San Francisco, Yosemite, AND Tahoe can't be anything but awesome as far as I'm concerned! I'm so proud of my dad and hope they'll love it up there, and that we'll visit back and forth often.

My so-called "little" brother is jetting off to Arizona for two weeks at a time until early June for an on-location job working on what Keira calls Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig Twucks, my grandparents are off to Connecticut for Uncle Nick's birthday, Jen's moving home with Ryan when Mom and Dad move up north, and Greg's sister and her family just got back from the Grand Canyon. Apparently, everyone we know has decided to take that whole "a rolling stone gathers no moss" thing to heart, and there are not enough suitcases and moving boxes in the world to satisfy the demand!

And, in the Sad News Department, Tara Belle (aka Terri-ble), our mean but lovable kitty of 19 years, passed away today. We got her when Ryan wasn't much older than Keira is now, and now he can legally drink and gamble, so she had a pretty long life and, as Jen said, had the joy of scratching many people over the years. We've all shed lots of tears this weekend, but hopefully she's up there in kitty heaven playing with Witty Bows (another beloved and oddly-named cat of ours). I'll leave it at that before I start bawling again...

We went out for a casual dinner at CPK to celebrate our 11-year dating anniversary this week, so here's a pic of Keira sporting her pigtails and chowing down: