Just keep moving

It seems like we've been moving for months, probably because we have. Between Andrew moving into the apartment in February, to moving half of our stuff in a storage unit in April when we thought we'd be moving to Atco/Palmyra/the moon, to moving things graciously given to us by friends and family into spare rooms of other gracious friends and family, to moving all of said stuff into the house, plus all of the things we've acquired along the way, there hasn't been a Monday morning where I answered a co-worker who asked about my weekend with anything other than "packed some more stuff, moved some stuff out/in/up/down."

This weekend should be the last of it for a time (I hope), as we're emptying out the apartment that we shared for the first few months of our marriage.

This brings me to a list of the top 3 things I like to move the least:

1. Andrew's weight bench. After carrying heavy items down to our cars over and over, it seems silly to move an entire weight bench with weights. These things are simply heavy for the sake of being heavy. As I struggle with a box of pots and pans, I can think, Gina, don't throw these out the window, we need something to cook on! When I almost drop a 20 pound dumbbell on my foot, I think, this thing is only in  my life because of its heaviness. Moving has revealed plenty of other heavy things that could be used in its place. In the future, you will see me doing bicep curls with our cast iron skillet. 
2. Gina's treadmill. What kind of lunatic buys a treadmill (answer: me, thank you tax refund).  All of the dismantling, the grunting, the careful maneuvering of this device has also caused it to morph from one of my favorite toys to a torture device. I just bought a bunch of land and now I'm moving a device that moves fake land underneath my feet onto that land. And it weighs about the same as my house. But never mind that, hold the door while I walk like a duck and rip some internal organs moving the control console which houses buttons and more buttons, some of which create a fake hill for you to run up, a experience I am quite familiar with. But with a real hill. Made from real land. While carrying a bird cage full of parakeets. 
3. Living Things. Plants, pets, a case of V-8 juice. For obvious reasons: you can't stack them, you can't put them in totes with labels on them, you can rest them in the parking lot while you find a shaded area and text your mom, you can't leave them in the car while you make a trip to McDonald's, you have to sing to them while you drive and hope they don't pee/leak all over. 

Moving, even the 35 minutes from our apartment to the new house, is like going on the Oregon Trail. The trail will change you. You won't be the same person on the other end. You know you're going to lose some along the way. A succulent loses its head, a V-8 can finds its way into a long lost crevice of your car, and a cat morphs from a snugly friend into a rabid beast as a result of being in a carrier for too long. But just like Oregon Trail, when the journey is over and the survivors feet hit that real land, the fun really begins: unpacking!