Geeky Talks
Moving is making giving me the narcolepsy
My body has a funny reaction to stress. You’ve heard of “fight or flight?” Well, I have “Fight/Flight or Sleep” with the latter having a weighted pull. I spent most of college sleeping. I never made it through an “All nighter.” Hell, I hardly make it through an “All Day-er.”
I find myself walking around our new house looking at things I want to fix. I walk around the empty house in circles. Living Room - Dining Room - Kitchen - Family Room - Den - Living Room - Dining Room and so on… I wander and pretend that I’m calculating the next step, the next priority, but really, I’m sleep walking in an effort to shut out the ToDo list.
And then I curl up on the floor and go to sleep oh.my.god. in the middle of the kitchen between the cabinets I want to stain and the refrigerator we need to move OH.MY.GOD.
I’m comforted by the sounds of laughter from the children digging in the dirt outside and my husband’s whistling as he measures for the brackets in the garage. It’s a lullaby to me, the sound of my head spinning with THINGS.TO.DO and the sound of my family being in our new space.
The children don’t really get it yet. They ask, “Can we come back to play here tomorrow?!” “Yes! You can come here and play EVERY SINGLE DAY for the rest of your lives!” My five year old’s eyes bulge. “It’s true! Our stuff will be here soon! THIS is our new house!”
Then they ask again, “Can we go back tomorrow?”
Yes. We can.
I remember my dad giving me words of wisdom when my parents packed our family up in the station wagon and left sunny Houston and my 12 year old boyfriend (dude, my FIRST BOYFRIEND) and brought us all to this place with trees and wet and cold. I remember my dad telling me, as I bawled in the McDonald’s parking lot somewhere in New Mexico, that “home is where your shit is.”
Profound, my dad.
I try to explain this to Mr. Flinger when he’s perplexed at the children, “THIS is our new house!” He beams with pride. They look confused. “Are we going home now?” they ask. They want their lovies. They want their toys. They want their shit.
Saturday our shit follows us to our new house. Saturday we get the U-haul and, with a little help from some pretty awesome people who wouldn’t let us hire movers, we take our entire lives’ belongings and stuff them in to a new place.
And then, then it will be home.
And I will have a bed to curl up on and rock myself to sleep with the sound of the to.do.list.oh.my.god.
In a good way.
But for now I’ll go pack those boxes and the childrens’ closets and the rest of the kitchen and the oh.my.god… zzzzzZZZZzzzzzz
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Dude. It’s your forever home. So…you have FOREVER to get to that to-do list. Stop stressing and enjoy!
I am exactly the same way! A good nap fixes most everything. Until you wake up again.
lol…your Dad is quite profound. Sounds like something my Dad would say.
Why is it I sleep the best when I’m trying to avoid something? Oh the escape!!
Good luck this weekend. I’ll be thinking of you.
Stress? There’s a nap for that!
I have a disease. Because I feel sad I can’t help you pack. I’m kinda awesome at it. And I make little inventory lists and number and label all the boxes, making it easier to keep track of the last box to go on the truck and the first one to come off….
It’s really sick.
Moving sucks!! But think how wonderful it will be once everything is done. Keep looking toward the finish line.
Hate to break it to ya, but your to-do list will grow and recede over the years. We’ve been in our house for 10 years and there are somethings that were on the original list that remain there…
Congratulations!
Almost six years later I still pull out the to-do list the day we moved into our house. Then I go a rock back and forth in a corner for a day realizing we’ve got 3/4 of a list left to accomplish. But the most important item on that list was done on day one, make it our home.
I need a nap just reading this. Yaye and CONGRATULATIONS on the house and moving and great friends and your SHIT!!!
Isn’t that just the best feeling in the entire world? I feel that way every time I come home and we moved 6 months ago.
Dude! You have just explained to me why my husband is able to go to sleep just about anywhere. Like, even at the airport waiting to board with 3 kids in tow, leaving me in charge of entertainment and policing.
We moved to Ohio 6 months ago and my advice to you is to take your time. Once you have your bed and the kids’ bed and clean pillows, everything else can, and should, wait until you’ve lived there a bit. Otherwise you’ll regret decisions made too quickly.