February 14, 2011
Windy morning.After I wake up, stumble down my carpeted stairs that I feel I should have mastered by now, I open the blinds to my eight-foot tall windows and look outside. I always look across the street at Dave's Restaurant -- the first place I visited with my father on my maiden voyage to Waukesha half my life ago. It must have been 1996 or 1997, just before I graduated high school, when we first embarked upon this city to scope out Carroll College. 15 years ago. Who knew then that I'd be living here, going to school here, falling in love here, basing the second half of my life about this sprawling city...
A week ago I moved into my new home here downtown.
It took two trips in a Ford F150 to move all my things. I cannot help but joke about how easy it is to move everything you own when everything you owned was lost in a fire. It eases the severity of it all -- although I've not been so very remiss in having lost all my things. I'm more elated to have made it out of that burning building alive, with my kitties, than I am sad to have lost my home. Hell, that place should have been burned down years ago considering the history in that one small space I called home.
Time to move on.
And now I have a new home. A loft. And yesterday I moved the kitties from the 'rents to this new place. It was a difficult car ride in with Mac bellowing in the back seat from within his carrying case and Pumpkin, uncaged, beside me getting rather sick. But it wasn't as bad as I thought and after a half hour, Pumpkin eased herself onto my lap to relax. Once home, Mac hid in the small space between the stairs and my kitchen wall for the greater part of the day but Pumpkin strutted about as though she owned the place. She was just happy to be rejoined with her Momma. Mac, however, having adopted my partental units, seems rather sad to have been displaced. My mother cried when exited through their front door.
But now we're home and today will be the first day that they're left to their own devices.
I worry that they'll attempt to jump from the loft into my living room or that they'll fight over the space underneath my bed. I worry that they'll miss me while I'm gone for eleven hours of the day and think that I've abandoned them again. I worry over whether or not I should close the child gate to the loft or let them have run of the place. I worry that they'll mess up my new carpeting or that someone will have to get into my apartment and accidentally let them out.
I still worry when I hear fire trucks passing by.
But I'll get over it eventually. I'll move on from these fears and settle into my home. Every day it feels more like home.
And, right now, there's nothing more comforting than to wake up in the morning and look across the street at Dave's Restaurant which is always open before I'm awake at 6:15am.
For the move was a much needed change in my life but it's still nice to know that some things have not changed.