Summer Lovin’: finding the silver living in a variety of unusual places
Hey everyone! You can usually find me blogging from MK in Wonderland, but I had to take up Couple of Crumbs when they offered me a spot as a guest blogger. I blog about everything – from money troubles, life as a twenty-something girl, online dating, to the adventures of being a new Mom. Since most of my recent posts have been consumed by the new addition to my life, I wanted to return to my “roots” and write about things I know well: moving, red wine, and finding at least one good thing about the most miserable of situations. Enjoy!
Moving sucks. There’s no way around it. And I can say that because I’ve moved 10 times since I graduated from college 5 years ago (5 years…shudder). Don’t believe me? In order: moved from my apartment in Burlington, NC back to my parents’ house in Lawrenceville, NJ then to an old, furnished one bedroom in Roland Park while my actual apartment was at the end of the previous lease. Moved into a shoebox sized one-bedroom apartment in Mount Vernon (Baltimore), then to my favorite rowhouse in the entire world on Streeper Street, then to one of my best friends’ parents’ house (last minute emergency/necessity), on to another apartment in Hanover with two of my girlfriends, then to yet another one-bedroom in Arlington, VA, back to Baltimore in another rowhouse (after sleeping on a few friends’ couches in between the move), and then here I am, right outside of Baltimore for over a year now, which – as you can see – is some sort of record for me.
There is one, teensy upside to moving and it takes a lot for me to admit that there is ANYTHING positive about moving as I have endured packing and unpacking as a second full-time job. Moving forces you to get reorganized, throw out the stuff you’ve been hanging on to for no reason, and just get your life back in order. I think it started in Virginia – my odd stash of mail and bills. I’m not a big pile person, in fact, piles drive me insane. So, I take what I think at the time is the “higher road” and do not put my mail in piles, but instead, shove it in my underwear drawer.
Yep.
And every house that I’ve lived in since I’ve lived in Virginia, I vow that I won’t start stuffing things into my underwear drawer and that, instead, I’ll form some sort of organized method like a normal person…but I never do. In fact, my underwear drawer is currently full of bills (as in…I owe money…not bills as in dollar dollar bills ya’ll ßnothing has sounded more unnatural than that statement coming from my mouth) and my sock drawer, for whatever reason, is full of office supplies. And it’s not like I take out the socks and replace them with office supplies…no, the socks and office supplies live together in the top drawer furthest to the left. In all fairness, I don’t carry one stash of bills from one house to the next. I take the opportunity to reorganize myself and purge whatever I need to/everything.
The storm this past weekend had a similar effect. Our basement flooded. To give you an idea of how the evening went, I had taken a three -hour nap earlier that day so when the electricity went out at NINE PM…there was no way I would be able to just fall asleep. So I did what any person (just me) would do…popped in a few melatonin and threw back a couple glasses of wine….the mellie cocktail, as I so affectionately call it. And then the basement flooded and I had to coherently fill up buckets of water and come up with some sort of logical game plan all whilst feeling a bit…wobbly…if you will. (Word to the wise…consider assessing your situation during a natural disaster BEFORE going into party mode.) The end result, aside from my miserable headache the next day, was that the basement carpet had to be ripped up and replaced…which has led into full blown overhaul of the entire downstairs level. B figured that since everything was already getting ripped up, we might as well replace the heinous tile by the back door and repaint over the god awful color selection on the walls (none of which were my choosing). The end result? Everything that he had wanted to do was getting done. Under the best of circumstances? No. But chances are, without a little water in the basement, it wouldn’t have gotten done anytime soon.
So the bottom line is that two things that are in no way fun – moving and flooding – have at least ONE positive outcome. A fresh start. Even if it just means having a meticulously organized sock drawer for one week…it’s still an improvement. So when you’re packing up your life belongings for the 11th time or filling up pitchers with clay water after red wine time…try to remind yourself it’s a blessing in disguise. A little one. But hey, two natural disasters in two weeks…I’ll take whatever blessings I can get at this point.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I have a Visa bill to pay and I believe I’ve misplaced it…and by that I mean…it’s probably in my t-shirt drawer…with all the old sorority t-shirts I swore I was going to throw out last time I moved.
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Finding the silver lining in a variety of unusual places is part of our Summer Series.
