one hundred sixty-one

My life has started throwing up on my house.

To make myself feel better about how quickly things are moving, I've started packing. More accurately, I've started throwing things in the trash or onto my roommate's big round chair that hangs out in the dining room.

If I actually took some time to fold the laundry I washed at the beginning of the week, I would have the storage tub I need to pack these things away. I would pack up the dishes that the house doesn't need to use anymore, the espresso machine, the serving bowls, the spatulas. I'm packing away all of my "extras" and living off of my roommates. It's a nice switch, and I'm giving myself two months of it.

Added bonus: no mixer lying around by the sink, no sudden urge to by ingredients for a new cookie recipe... which reminds me... I really want to make some more apple-apricot bread.

The landing at the top of the stairs, which separates mine and Rachel's rooms, is currently housing a set of folding doors (used as a partition in my room until two days ago), a wire "bookcase," a basket of trash, a stack of books that don't fit on my three bookcases (this is a problem I have), a folding chair and all of my laundry equipment.

My room feels open. When I open the door, I am claustrophobic--but it's progress, I tell myself. They're baby steps to the next phase of life, and I just realized how complicated that phase is. My packing is split between four lives I'll be living:

1. my life in Muncie after I move all of my furniture home
2. my life with my parents for the summer, which splits packing between things I need
1. while I'm with my parents
2. when I get set for France
3. my life in August, where packing for a honeymoon, a week with Joe's family and a year in France, all happen in about 10 days
4. my life when we return from France and start being an American married couple

I'm sorting boxes for our future homes. Labels read like "Stuff for walls," "Kitchen appliances," "Shit we don't really need in the kitchen," "Projects for France," "Stuff for living room," "Domestic Supplies." My favorite box I've started (again, not so much a box as a pile) is the "SELL THIS" stack. Currently, it's holding a small video camera, but when I sit in my room and panic about which school project to start, I scan my room looking for things that other people may find value in.

Would they buy a books that a local author signed to me when I wrote a feature story on her? Oh God, how horrible of a person does that make me?

Would they buy the 1950s fan that my boss helped me steal from the History Department? Oh, but I love the teal metal--can't let that go.

Would they buy my trashcan? Ok, really? We're grasping at straws here.

The small moves--from my room to the landing, from the landing to the living room--remind me how close we really are to being together. Each night when I talk to Joe on the phone and we dream about the weekends of our graduation, we realize that our life is getting started. Now is when our potential energy becomes kinetic and we start moving through the world.