Just Around the Corner

I am so exhausted. So what am I doing, writing on this blog?, you ask. Well, I'd rather whine to whoever may be reading this than to myself. Call it whatever you will.

I've spent all day unpacking and I still have so much left to do. Why is it that I never recall just how much work it is to move? One would expect that I'd be ready after all the moves I've done. I have an excuse this time: the short notice.

Now I'm thinking of something John, Millie's husband, said as we were returning the van. "If I could sell my house for about a million and a half, I'd just leave everything behind and start over." I can say that if I were made such an offer, I'd probably be tempted, too.

The bruise on my left side has grown. I guess that's to be expected, given all the bending and lifting I've had to do. Dang, it's ugly!

Millie called tonight, as she did last night. She reminded me that since she still has visitation rights to Max and Charlie, she'll be over this way sooner or later. And I'll be at her place again, probably for Christmas.

It's been weird, spending three days with no background music. I still haven't unpacked the speakers. They're in one of the hardest-to-reach boxes. I'll get to them sooner or later.

Now I'm living right around the corner from many of the stores in which I shop and restaurants and cafes in which I eat. I can't help but to think of my first visits to those places, some seven years ago. That's when I first moved onto the block from which I just moved. I'd just met Millie; I hadn't met any of her family members. I didn't know anyone else in the neighborhood. In some way, I felt even more like a stranger among strangers than I did when I first went to Europe.

When I first went to Europe, I'd just graduated college. But I toured on my bike, so I felt I was, in some way, a peer of many of the people I would meet, however briefly. Plus, I felt no special attachment to the college from which I graduated--or, really, to almost anyone. About the only people with whom I made any real effort to stay in contact were my mother, my maternal grandmother and Elizabeth. If I hadn't had them in my life back then, I probably would have stayed away even longer than I did.

When I first moved to the block I just left, Tammy and I had just broken up. We'd been living together for four years, and during the last year, I became a recluse. I was even distant from Tammy, even though we were sharing the same bed. When I moved out, there was really no reason for me to see her again, much less to return to the neighborhood in which we lived.

Now I am on another block where I know no one. But just around the corner, there's so much that's familiar to me.