Friday, April 28, 2006

my friend nat gets the gypsy itch.
i don't have that. i have the get-settled-in itch, the find-permanent-places-to-put-my-stuff itch, the same-view-from-the-window itch. i have not been well-rooted since the jurrasic period.
almost four years ago, i moved out of my parent's house to the girls dorms at cbc. i had one roommate, i lived there for eight months, and then i moved home.
four months later, i moved back to cbc campus, this time to live in the joan st house. i had six roommates, i lived there for eight months, and then i moved home.
four months later, i moved into the meadowwoods townhouses with my best friend robyn and two other girls. one of them left halfway through the year, and was replaced. the replacee and the other 'other girl' had given us the impression that they would be in the area through the summer, so robyn and i had counted on living in meadowwoods for at least a year. however, in late february the girls told us that they might not be around, but that they would find out asap so that we could locate alternate roommates to keep rent down. march flew by, and by early april they still had no definite answers, so robyn and i (with more spite than practicality) moved out ourselves. she had a place to stay with her boyfriend and his friends for the two months before she left for camp, but i was stranded.
luckily, God was on top of things, and my friend laura got married and moved out of the basement suite where she lived with kelly and marcy. elise was set to move in there in the fall, but for the summer it was just the two of them. and rachel makes three.
as the summer drew to a close, and i began to have thoughts of fall housing, nat (refer to first sentence) and i decided to combine our efforts and find a place. september 1st drew near, and we still had nowhere to live. nat was at a friend's place, but i was being given the boot shortly. my dear friend ashley offered me her spare room, and, tiny and public though it was (it boasted the suite's only bathroom, and no closest), i moved in until nat and i could find a place. two months and many headaches later, we were still homeless (of sorts), nat had the gypsy itch, and moved to edmonton, and ashley was moving to chilliwack.
at this point, two of the girls in one of my classes offered me a spare room at their place, to crash as long as i liked or to stay permanently if i chose. i chose. that is how i ended up at the mt waddington house, dump of all dumps, where the people are spectacular and the appliances temperamental, a rat lives in the walls and all manner of things call the garage home. i had four roomates (five, if you count derek, which we did), then three, then six, then an indeterminable number as our house became abbotsford's cheapest hotel.
this morning, i left the mt waddington house to move back in with my parents. with my sister, more precisely. for the time being i am sharing her room, her dresser, her closet space. it was a grumpy move. i threw out or gave away a third of my belongings, and packed the rest up in purloined boxes. joel, best of boyfriends, helped load it all into the van, but the reverse was my sole responsibility when we got home. if there's one thing i've learned in my excess of moves, it's always a challenge to move into a place where people already live. my sister, bless her, had cleared out two of her dresser drawers and a fragment of her closet, and moved the couch out of her room so that i could put my bed somewheres. my parents, bless them, gave me a closet in the hall to use as mine, and two shelves in the garage to store the rest of my earthly belongings. everything i own is cramped and tucked and out of reach. everything is the opposite of handy.
no lie, i was not as grateful as i should have been as i lugged and hauled and shoved and stacked each of my boxes and bins into a tinier-than-ideal space. i was sulky and worn, like a toddler after too much excitement. moving is not exciting.
i wanted my own room. i wanted to move all of my boxes into that room and leave them there, set up my bed and take a nap. i did not want all of my things in the garage, so that the book i want right now is buried beneath four tons of paraphanalia. i did not want to cram all of my essentials into two dresser drawers and one small closet, and have everything orderly when my sister got home from work. i wanted a glorious unpacking mess, and for it to be out of everyone's way but mine. i hate to be a bother.
at the same time, i am living, rent free, in a reasonably large and resoundingly vermin-free house, with a functioning dryer, a dishwasher (most blessed of appliances), a comprehensive decorating scheme, and my dear papa is cooking my birthday steak right now. all inconveniences aside, i am stationary. barring disaster, i will remain here for at least one settled, rooted year (except for the three months i spend in thailand).