A room with a view

Sunset

The river flows north, no wait south, no wait

I have arrived safely in New York City to my new apartment with an amazing view of Manhattan.  I will try to take a picture when I unpack my stuff which arrives tomorrow, and I find the good camera.

The river outside the window flows both directions.  Weird, right?

Something for something, or a mishmash

After not feeling ready for the move, I am finally ready.  In fact, in true me fashion, I am sitting around waiting for the movers to get here because I am actually done earlier than I thought I would be.  I have two things left, besides this computer - scissors for cutting tape, and a sharpie for labeling the boxes.  I'm not sure what to do with these two things since I have already closed up the last box of miscellaneous items.  So here I sit, waiting.  So I will just ramble for once.

Last weekend as I was packing, I felt really sad to leave Chicago.  But it's not like I am leaving a whole lot behind.  I just felt sad to leave particular people.   Though it's not as if I will never be here again since I will come into the office periodically.  Sooner than I would like to actually at the end of August for a meeting.

It still feels surreal that this is probably the last time that I will make the drive from here back home.  I am stopping in Michigan over night and then making my way to New York on Sunday.  I am mostly worried about the cat of all things.  He is sitting here staring at me right now.

My last day in the Chicago office was uneventful.  Neither of the partners were there to say goodbye to and no one else seemed to care much that I was leaving anyway.  So I guess I don't feel that bad about leaving the office after all.  A major problem at work is messing up this move a bit, but well, work is going to be there no matter where I am.  It's hard to argue that me being in New York won't work - my colleague lives in North Carolina.

I wonder if I will ever feel like I belong in New York, or whether I will always feel like an outsider looking in like I did here in Chicago.  I hope not.  I hope I am able to change that and that New York will agree with me.  I have had a couple of those - oh my god what have I done - freak out moments.  But I suppose that is natural when you completely uproot everything and move on.

I recently reconnected with my favorite college professor on Facebook.  He is an English teacher, a writing teacher.  I hate english classes, but his class I loved.  It was persuasive writing.  It was about how to live life as much as it was about how to write.  He said if we remember only one thing from his class, remember, "something for something."  And what he meant by that is that you get out of life what you put into it, and that that applies to everything.  It is in fact the only thing I remember from his class from so many years ago.  He used to tell us it would save us a life time of misery if we could just remember that one thing and apply it in our lives.  How easy it is to forget.

We made it folks

Although my five year breast cancer survival anniversary passed on May 15th, a huge milestone, I just wasn't comfortable saying I had made it five years, because what if I hadn't?  I just wasn't going to be comfortable until my annual mammogram.  Well, my mammogram was yesterday and I am happy to report that we made it.  We made it to five years.

I feel - a little lighter.

An ice cream maker a lamp shade and some jewelry

When I started the packing process I was meticulous about it.  Things that go together got packed together. And I have managed to get rid of a lot of stuff in the process, although some of it is not being picked up until Thursday which makes me a little bit nervous since my movers come next Saturday.  Yikes - next Saturday!  Now I am down to the last of what needs to be packed it seems.  Having only left out what I need to get through about a week and a half clothes wise and the few bathroom products that I will really want until my stuff gets delivered a week from Tuesday.  I thought I remembered what was packed where and now I have no idea where anything is.  I am down to the very last few things, getting haphazardly packed.  My boxes are labeled of course with what is inside, but perhaps my labels are not specific enough.  I labeled the box with the ice cream maker, the lamp shade and the jewelry as "Master Bedroom."  Huh.  That might mean that unpacking will be like a surprise!  My only real worry is that I won't be able to find the box with the sheets (yes it is labeled "sheets").

Many years ago when I moved once locally in my home town, I was very careful once again to label the boxes with their contents.  One of my boxes was labeled "Important Stuffed Animals."  As opposed to the box of unimportant ones.  I got made fun of for that.

Let me just say duh

You can't order chinese take out when you have packed all the dishes.

My life in boxes

Cursed

I am cursed with an inability to sleep in.  It drives me crazy.  Even on the weekends I wake up between 6:00 and 6:45.  You might think it's great because generally I get enough sleep, and I get to have a lot of day to be productive, but on Saturday morning, it sucks.

1/3 packed

I would say I am about 1/3 packed.  I made quite a lot of progress today towards getting rid of things and figuring out the list of things I would like to donate to the salvation army.  The list of things I am trying to donate is long.  I don't think I will feel like I have this placed packed up until those things get picked up and that's not going to be until right before the move.  Anyway, I am getting there.  It hardly seems real.  I am glad I started packing when I did because I realized as I got going that it was going to take me a lot longer than I thought to get things together.  It seems like I have a lot of time left, but I really have 19 days. And I have a lot to do in 19 days.

Also, my mammogram is coming up between now and when I move, and that of course complicates everything.

This is harder than I thought it would be

So I started the process of packing for my move today.  I got some boxes, some bubble wrap, some packing tape.  I set out to throw things away and make piles of things to donate.  Things I don't use, don't need.  I have to save space.  I might be gaining a bedroom but I am losing closet space.

I have managed so far to decide what to donate.  And I have produced one and half bags of things to throw away.  But mostly I have just been wandering around my condo looking at this, looking at that, and putting things back in their place.

I have lived here for five years - the longest I have lived anywhere since I was 18.  My life until this point had always felt transient.  I was constantly moving for school etc.  But here, I actually live here.  I have lived through a lot here.

My oncologist told me about 3 years ago that maybe the best thing would be to move away from Chicago.  She said that some people just can't move on until they get out of the place where they lived through breast cancer - because it is hard not to associate everything about the place with the hell that you went through.  I thought that made a lot of sense at the time.

But I have moved on here, to live a life that wasn't really as bad as I probably thought it was.  I just didn't make the most of it.  I never came here with the intention of staying forever, but I'm a little sad to leave.  I'm having a hard time putting things in boxes.  Mostly I just keep putting things away.    

Rinse, repeat

Get up, go to work, work late, go home, go to bed.  Get up, go to work, work late, go home, go to bed.  Get up, go to work...you get the idea.