Are we there yet?

There is your last night in a place. Your town, your apartment, your home. The last night before you move away. The literal last night, your last night in the room/bed you've been sleeping in for however long, your last night with your roomies, your last night with the familiar rhythms of the A/C, knowing so easily which moments the furnace will shut off and kick back on that your gut doesn't even flinch but eases into it like the touch of a mother's hand on your face as a child; you roll over and hug the blankets without even waking. It is on this night that you don't even think about the fact that the next night the furnace will wake you. You will wait for the air conditioning to shut off so you can fall asleep, but you won't be aware of the reason for your insomnia. You've taken your nightly rhythms so for granted that you never suspected that you would have to create and adjust to new ones. Just like everything else in life.

But there's a night before this night, that is your actual last night in your current home. This one pulls the rug from underneath you with even greater stealth. It's the final night that your routine is intact. The final night that everyone eats dinner together, the final night where "regular" things are discussed,

how was your day?
there's clean laundry downstairs
oh we're missing Wheel of Fortune

After this night the cat is sleeping in the wrong place, conversations are replaced with swappings of information as bodies pass hurriedly in hallways.

Did you remember to stop at the bank today?
Well then make sure you do tomorrow.
Could you hem this skirt for me before I leave?
Thanks, I love you.

I've passed this night. We could maybe say it was Sunday, but even then we had already passed the threshold that afternoon with a family meeting concerning the ins and outs of Bailey's move/Riley's drive back to college/Mom and Dad's visit to Grandma/Kelly's wedding. And the snuggle with Dibbs was less than stellar, which is our normal caliber for human-pet love.

When you pass the night, you don't go to your normal place in the morning for coffee. You make a pot at home, because you are crunched for time. You spend your days busy and sweaty, wearing the clothes that are nearest and doing emergency loads of laundry, flitting (or trudging, depending on the moment's energy level) around the house in your bathrobe while you wait for your undies to dry.

Hearing your boyfriend call you "beautiful" just a few more times before you leave becomes a higher priority than playing solitaire on the computer, so you spend more time with him, yet your day feels off without the mindless clicking of cards. Stacking twos on aces instead of paying bills; this is your normal schedule of procrastination. In the final days before a move, after you've passed the actual last night of your normal life, in your normal, intact home, you feel dirty playing solitaire. You no longer feel like you're spending innocent time putting off a chore that you know will get finished; you feel like someone is going to come around the corner and scold you for being so irresponsible.

And I feel sad when that moment comes! There's just something so mean about the disruption of one's everyday. We know that giving children an unstable environment is unhealthy and hindering to their potential growth, especially emotionally; in the most extreme cases it can border on being classified as child abuse. Yet we do it to ourselves all the time. Oh sure, I'll have another drink and stay out for dinner another hour. I won't be that tired at work tomorrow.

I am eating shortbread cookies and drinking V8 at 2am. This is not a normal combination for me, just to clarify in order to make my point, although I would not be offended if you suspected that I eat this way every Tuesday at 2am. I am eating cookies because even though Michael so dutifully fed me three pieces of pizza hours ago, I am hungry again. And I would drink milk, but we're out, because each one of us in the Daily household is preparing for a stressful weekend of travel and when the calcium supply ran out none of us jogged to the grocery store to replenish.

Plus I like V8.

So here I sit. I would like to take a shower, but it's pretty late. The practical side of me (which is really more of a tiny sliver than a side, really) says "wait 'til morning" for a shower. But the uncomfortable, tired, stressed side of me (that is, 99% of me) wants a piece of her daily routine, even if it is at the wrong time on the clock, because it is soothing. Showers are my reset button. When I shut off the water and dry off, I can move forward and tackle to-dos. Or I can spritz on some perfume and let Mike spoil me with dinner. Either way, it is not an activity that is usually piled amongst hundreds of others.

But I shall hit the sack instead. I told Mike tonight while we were taking a late night dip in the pool that I just need school to be started already, because once it's in motion that will mean that my stuff has already moved to my new apartment, textbooks will be purchased, all the major details will be taken care of. But until then I just have to grit my teeth, learn to sleep on a stomach full of tomato juice and cookies, soak up the moments I have to receive hugs from family and friends, and just trudge through until one night I go to sleep in my new place and wake up to my first real morning there. Not the literal first morning, with boxes opened and silverware unlocated. But the first real morning, when my hot pink coffee pot (thanks, Deanna and Joe!) brews the java, Dibbs gets a snuggle, the crossword gets some attention, and, without realizing it, my gut realizes ahead of me that I am home. The first morning when that last night, the sad night when all steadiness for a time ended, is forgotten and but a memory.

Prayers for me as I pack my way toward that memory are greatly appreciated in the next few weeks. Thanks, faithful followers, my apologies for the lack of quality posts as of late.