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).
posted by raych @ 4:40 PM
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as you can see, i'm quite photogenic.
and i asked chelsea to drive me to work yesterday and hate to ask favors 2 days in a row. so benny boop (this is ben) 
says he'll drive me and we leave in plenty of time and get to the station at 9:20, and the ticket counter is CLOSED but the two guys waiting for their bus say i can buy a ticket on the bus, so we scrounge through ben's truck to find me enough change to buy a ticket, and then ben leaves to take amy to walmart, and i sit down, and the two guys ask me where i'm going and i say vancouver, and they say, that bus just left, like 5 minutes ago and i probably swear a bit at this point, and phone ben and amy who come back from walmart to get me. then ben offers to drive me to surrey so i can catch the skytrain in to burnaby, and amy comes too because she knows the way, and we stop at a gas station and amy buys a slurpee that she doesn't even want, and we get some free licorice. we talk about our lives and what horrible mistakes we make and how good God's grace is, and then they drop me off at the skytrain. the car is fairly empty when i get on, and i sit at the opposite end of the threatening-looking man, and then three polish guys get on and sit in my space, and they chat me up all the way home, which i don't really mind because the threatening-looking man keeps sending me threatening looks, and it's only we five in the car and if they weren't there it'd only be we two, and i'm not down with that idea. i get off the train and it's raining. hard. my parents got a new house number just after i moved out and i don't know it, and they both have new cell phone numbers (as in, new to this past year or so) and i don't know them either. in fact, the only cell phone number i know is my sister's, and she's in vancouver for the night (i know this because i phone her). anyways, i end up walking home, and it's only a 10 minute walk if you can cut through the mall, but the mall is closed because it's 11:15 by this point, and so it's a 20 minute walk in the pouring rain, and this guy follows me for probably 6 blocks, and i wish i had those polish guys back, but then my sister phones and as soon as following-guy sees me on my cell phone he turns around and heads away and i breathe easy. and i tell her that i'm walking home in the rain and she tells me that she loves me and then somehow everything is ok. and now i'm going to sleep on the couch with my dog (this is my dog)
