Holy Hiatus, Batman!

Dear Blogfriends,

As you may have noticed, I ain't posted shit lately. And I couldn't tell you what's going on on your blogs.

Here's the thing: I'm moving in two weeks. And moving is kind of a clusterfuck even when you're not moving 1000 miles away from everything (okay, maybe not EVERYthing) you hold dear. For starters there's the packing, which if packing doesn't sound like a very big deal to you, it's only because A) you haven't seen my bookshelves and B) it probably hasn't occurred to you that books should be packed alphabetically by subject. So the packing is a bit time consuming.

It's not really the packing though, and it's not even so much the physical act of moving that has kept me from the internets. It's that I am consumed by the IDEA of moving. For weeks all of my mental and emotional energy has been devoted to what it means to move, and I have busied myself with a series of bittersweet lasts: my last weekend at the beach, the last time I'll make crabcakes, my last Cogan's Thursday, the last visit with my brother/sister/parents/friends, my last chance to tousle my pseudo-nephews' hair, the last time I'll see the Atlantic Ocean or walk down this particular street. You name it, I'm crying about it. Even the last rent check elicited a few tears. I'm obsessive like that.

I've picked up the phone at least 25 times to call my best friend -- a military wife who's moved five times in the past nine years -- and wail, "How do you DO it?!" But each time I've put it down because I know how she does it: by not picking the phone up all the time and carrying on about how much she misses us all. That and she has a husband who's just about as perfect for her as my boyfriend is for me, and when you find a guy like that you really have no choice but to follow him to the ends of the earth. Or at least to Michigan.

So the bittersweet lasts are tempered by an array of exciting firsts, none of which, I assure you, will involve jerky and some of which I may even tell you about.