Twas the Night Before...

It will soon be August 12 (in about 40 minutes) and there are boxes littered around my apartment.  Most of them are filled, ready to be taped and marked.  Four remain, waiting to receive those last minute things -- the bits and bobs of cupboard items, the bathroom things I need for the morning, the papers I needed to make final arrangements for the move today.  The moving van will arrive at my current address sometime after noon tomorrow.  It also has two other stops to make to pick up things that I have either purchased or have been given.  Then -- we are off to the manse in Armadale.


If only my stomach would fit into one of those boxes.  It is in a rather large knot AGAIN this year. This is the third move I have made in just over a year.  I left the US on July 23, 2009.  After a month in one flat, I found and moved into this one because they accepted my pets.  Now, here I am moving again -- and this time the move is open-ended.  I have told my brother I will be staying a while, because I Hate Moving.  Actually, I suspect the staying will be because things are going well rather than because I dislike this process of moving, but in the heat of stuffing things in boxes, one does get a bit exasperated.  I think I have joined the Monty Python "Society of Putting Things On Top of Other Things."


Though I have been in this flat just short of a year, I have put down roots of a sort.  I have made friends in this neighborhood.  Even that little bit makes it hard to leave.  I will miss them, miss knowing how to get around without thinking about it much.  I know my shops, my favorite places.  It won't be long until I have new ones, but this has been my first home in a new country and it will always be so.


In the meantime, my furkids know that something is afoot.  Asher undoubtedly remembers that the last time this many boxes and suitcases came out, we were separated for a long time and then that was followed by The Trip That Would Not End.  Timothy seems the least affected -- but he is a cat.  Anna, the newest baby, is frequently found with her nose on my ankle.  She stepped on the back of my slipper yesterday and pulled it off -- that's how close she is following these days.  I have tried to remind them of that lovely garden they have visited, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in yet.


Ah, well.  Back to the boxes.  Back to stripping my presence from this place.  I wonder if the walls will remember me?