Phase 1

The first stage of our move happens tomorrow!

The apartment is mostly packed up right now, with a special pile set aside to be stuffed into my car tomorrow morning. Tomorrow we begin the drive out to Chicago with the essentials for summer, to live with my parents while I do CPE (and to save money before Matt starts law school). The rest of our stuff will sit patiently in our apartment until the last weekend in July, when Matt will fly back out here, load up a moving truck with all of our furniture and boxes and everything, and drive with his parents back out to Chicago, where we will move ourselves right into our next apartment. Our home sweet home for the next three years or so.

I should be excited - by Sunday evening, I'll be back to that place that I call home. But honestly, I'm too stressed out to enjoy it yet. There are still enough unpacked odds and ends that I feel terrible about sending Matt back out here alone to finish up. (I'll still be doing CPE, so I don't have the time to help with the Princeton end of the move.) I'm paranoid that I've forgotten something essential for the summer, or that I'll forget to do something in the morning.

The morning plan: get up, shower, get dressed, load the car, clean out the refrigerator and the pantry, pack my computer up, drink some coffee, head out...

Moving is terrible. I hate the stress of the overwhelming nature of packing up your entire life. The truth is that everything in the apartment goes, so it's not as if I'm in danger of permanently leaving anything behind, but it feels that way.

Once I'm in the car tomorrow, I'll be fine. Once I'm in the car, I'm on my way home...