the nesting process

Furniture assembly is an activity best done with people who will still love you afterward.

I tweeted that observation this weekend as my parents and I cursed blue streaks at a dining room table, four chairs and all of their associated dowels, bolts, washers and wood screws as they protested mightily being assembled in a manner that resembled even slightly the illustrations in the instruction manual. We eventually forced everything together and now the table is totally serviceable and I'd say it's safe to sit on at least three of the four chairs. We'll mark that one in the victory category.

I signed my lease on Sunday and we moved the first big load of my stuff into the apartment, mostly books (dear sweet DEITIES, so many, many books) and music-related items. Then yesterday my dad met the fine delivery people from Crazy Mike's Discount Mattresses so that my brand new bed could be set up in my big, empty bedroom.

I haven't spent the night there yet, mostly because I'm still waiting on my shower curtain to be delivered from Target.com and showering without a shower curtain gets a little messy. And since I'm also waiting on my bedding to hit the door step from Target.com, it'll probably be Friday night before I'm well and truly on my own in the new place. Part of me wishes that it could be sooner, so I could nest and arrange and re-arrange my books and art and stuff and just generally nest to my heart's content. But the other part of me knows I'll be sad when I'm gone from my parents' house, even more sad than I've been to leave it all the many times I've gone off before. I've left for London and for New York with my bedroom -- the shrine to me, as my parents call it -- still mostly in tact. This time, that'll be changing, and it will be very hard to see it all come down.

Somehow the shortest move I've made away from home to date has become the longest -- or at least, the one that feels the most permanent. I don't know quite why. Perhaps it's because though the physical distance from me to home is the closest it's ever been, the steadily sinking-in reality of adulthood makes the mental distance seem like thousands of miles.

It's hard to leave, that much is certain. But I think up til now I've proven that you can always go home again. And I like it that way.


cheers,
elizabeth