i am chesapeake

1) After applying deodorant, roll up the bottom of your shirt several times before pulling it over your head; that will keep deodorant marks off the outside of your clothes.
2) Be immediately honest with people whenever possible.
3) If a bee, wasp, or other insect enters your home, shut all blinds and open the door. The insect will follow the light outside.
4) Naps are good.
5) Tacos are even better.
6) Travel is awesome.
7) Studying is overrated.
Reading isn’t.
9) Relativism doesn’t work.
10) Everyone should take basic logic.
11) Ayn Rand was wrong.

It went something like this:

29 December 2011: Get back to Utah from our double vacation (Tahoe and Vegas). Have 24 hours to vacate apartment because we terminated the lease in early December (long story there) and find a new apartment somewhere in Salt Lake City.

30 December 2011: Pack up entire apartment AND go apartment hunting. Find a place that would work.

31 December 2011: Finish packing up entire apartment, clean entire apartment, try to fit everything in Uhaul and end up with half of it spilling into parking lot. Get approved for new apartment. Walkthrough old apartment, fit everything in Uhaul, drive to eat at In-N-Out for the first time ever because I heard they served GF fries and burgers. Eat there. Sit down with husband. Look at each other and say at the same time “Are you sick of Utah?” Then nod and laugh, relieved. Sit there and discuss alternatives. “There is power in this moment,” the husband says. I agree. We are right back where we were seven months earlier: eating fast food while our Beetle is in the parking lot with all of our worldly possessions behind it. Make a snap decision. We’re going to Texas. Today.

It’s 1pm. Call new apartment guy, decline the lease. Knock on the window of the closed Uhaul place because we know what the owner’s truck looks like and he’s hiding in there. Change destination of trailer from SLC to SAT. Have small town Uhaul guy shake head in disbelief. Husband books a hotel in Albuquerque. Our favorite.

Collect mail from the Post Office one last time. Change of address form. Realize we left a bicycle back at old apartment office and stop off at the Mormon Goodwill (The D.I.) and literally hand them full boxes of our crap to take. Barely fit bicycle in Uhaul. Realize we can’t carry around precious, vintage, midcentury furniture anymore. Email a blogger I’ve never met nor contacted before with an offer to give her the furniture outright (I’ve been trying since before Christmas to sell it with no luck). Receive an immediate response. Drive to Provo. Unpack entire Uhaul in contents of lovely blogger’s driveway (who is getting ready for a New Year’s Eve party while her baby sleeps inside). Also unload a humidifier and fan (we won’t need them where we are going) and giggle at serendipity when I realize that the blogger needed both. Hand over my Jimmy Stewart poster, knowing it will go to a good place.

Hop in the car, wave to our new friend, and gas up. Look at the clock and realize that we’ve already booked a hotel in Albuquerque, and that it’s 4pm and we won’t arrive until 3am. Drive anyway. Call husband’s mom. Ask if we can stay with her while we figure things out. Get ecstatic yes and receive two months of hospitality.

1 January 2012: It’s 3 am and we fall into bed after spending the last hour blasting rap music that I change every 15 seconds so the husband stays awake at the wheel. We wake up at 10 am and realize that Trader Joe’s is closed. As is everything else. Because it’s New Year’s Day. Thankfully, La Madeleine is open. The local place makes gluten free waffles. Having eaten nothing but corn chips, bean dip, and canned chicken for dinner (slim GF pickings while on the road in BFE), devour 15 slices of bacon and a huge waffle. Head out around 1pm. Realize we’ll be rolling home around 2am.

2 January 2012: It’s 1:30 in the morning. We’re almost home. We stop at a gas station outside of town to fill up one last time. Look at the clock and the day and realize that it was exactly seven months to the freaking moment that we stopped at this place on the way out. Have a series of revelations for the next hour. We were sleeping at that hotel on this day at this time 7 months ago with our beetle and our possessions waiting for us in a 5×8 Uhaul trailer.

Here we are again. A series of closed loops.

Life. Coming home.

If you are reading this and you know me in real life and we didn’t tell you we moved back to Texas, or didn’t tell you until months after the fact, it was nothing personal, I promise. We needed some time to settle and figure out what we were doing.

It’s raining right now. I love the rain. It drops the temperatures, it fills up the aquifer, and it makes the air smell like fresh earth. The summer of 2007 was my favorite here in south Texas. It rained nearly every single day, and I don’t recall the temperature going above 85 degrees even once. It would be magical if that could happen again (you know, minus all of the flooding).

It’s been a dry few years here, and every single drop counts. I’ve realized recently that I’m a Texan in many ways: with no snowfall here, any time it rains I think to myself “Everyone should be at home. Let’s cancel school and work and huddle up indoors with the windows cracked open, a pile of books and knitting, and some pork slow cooking in the oven.” (Check, check, check, and check today).

I’ve spent the day cleaning and organizing and, I almost hate to say it, paring down our possessions. I know this makes people nervous; we hear all the time What could you possibly have left? but paring is not about numbers. At one point it was for me but now I’m all about getting down to what is most important. I haven’t made it there, so I carry on. I’m enjoying tidying up the room we have been generously loaned at my parents’ house. Cozy wool bed, a bit of closet space, and a six month countdown to moving into our tiny home.

Life is good, folks. Good and rainy, the best kind of good there is.

Impermanence. Becoming.

The one that’s been pulsating through my brain isbeginners.

What it means to me is this: we are all beginners. At something. Beginners at life. It means I need to be kind and patient with myself and with others because we’re all here together on this earth learning.