Change is in the Air

We're re-arranging some staff in my library system -- as a hiring freeze keeps us from replacing folks who have left over the past year and a half -- and I need to pack up my stuff and head to one of the big libraries soon. Yeah, that's right: I moved house in February (learned a new phone number), got new phones at this lib (learned a new phone number), and now I need to move my office (and learn another new number!). Once again, I am becoming friends with copier paper boxes full of things I think I need at the new place. As at home, I am trying to toss unneeded stuff, rather than move it across town. Pictured below, two items I won't move. The 1970s GRE prep book was donated to us. You know, for the collection or book sale. Because patrons always ask for oldest test help book we have. Or - no -- because a professor writing a definitive history of test prep books might shop our book sale!

The gems below (scanner made them washed out - click and they look better) have been on my cubicle wall, to make me smile. The note reports a patron's comments to a circ staff member. I agreed with the patron that the book was too old to be useful in a public library collection and withdrew it. Someone drew the bugs on a bit of scrap paper and left it by a computer. I think I found it the year the summer reading club had the theme "catch the reading bug," but these weren't like any of the official art. They were much more fun.

Still Reflecting on Moving, Because it is Taking so Long to Get a Move Date Set and so it Seems Both Prolonged and Surreal

A grad school classmate often posts random mobile shots from her day. She lives in D.C. and seems to visit other cities often. Something about one I glanced at toady helped me identify part of what makes me feel sad about moving. She took a picture from, perhaps, a bus window of a street of smallish row houses, some with their front porches closed in with vinyl siding. There are wires and signs -- it's a cluttered shot. And the shoveled sidewalk -- widely cleared here, a narrow path at that point -- draws my eye all the way in. It feels urban, and familiar, yet not familiar in the "what street in Richmond must that be" way because it seems more D.C. or Philly or Balto. somehow. It does makes me think, Yeah, that's we city folk know. And then I remember that she's n times hipper than me, maybe grew up in a city not a suburb, and that D.C. is a major league city (if unusual in so many ways). I remember that I'm headed for a house with a plot of grass and a neighborhood with only about 4 restaurants in walking distance (and those are longish walks!).

Many people I know left the Fan area years ago, when they started families and need space and better schools. Living here still made me feel younger. Not having kids, helps, too. Moving "to the suburbs" (it is in the city, really) makes me feel like I am finally having to say goodbye to young adulthood. Next time she posts a cool city scene, I might have to think "yeah, I remember what it was like to live in town."

Bittersweet

I've always rolled my eyes when people use the term "bittersweet" as in "retiring from this place feels bittersweet." Yet as we gear up to buy a bigger house, I do feel this crazy mix of excited and sad.

How great will it be to never have to clean teen gunk out of the sink before brushing my teeth because she will have her own bathroom? To have enough space to revive my hobby of buying mid-century chairs and lamps?! To have a home that's Ours, not Mine? Maybe the yard will get enough sun for tomatoes and zinnias.

And then again, I get pangs every time I merely walk to Ellwood Thompson, or Avalon, or Mongrel, or For the Love of Chocolate, or Coppola's. Have I mentioned that I have been shopping at Bygones since I was about 16 years old? Damn: how spoiled is it to have all these wonders -- and more -- moments from my front door? Ukrop's, our regional grocery, may get sucked up by a bigger chain -- or it may be rumor. Either way, the Carytown one is nice and small. I feel overwhelmed when I shop in the massive suburban ones, any one of which may be closest to our new place. And I actually love the only quasi-functional baggers at C'town, and the bizarre mix of unfortunates and Windsor Farms housewives who shop the early morning discount bins with me. Surely no Northside store will provide such comforting weirdness.

Even as I dread these losses, the irritants resurface. Step-teen complains about the homeless people she has to walk by on the way home from the bus. Drunks (aged, poor ones; foolish college boys) shout in the back alley at 3 a.m. The kids the lady two doors down babysits ride their bigwheels endlessly up and down the block, shouting; or they beat up the ivy by by my front steps. No, with all that crap, it's not worth putting an addition on the house.

And so here I am, waiting for a junk removal company to take away the long-dead washer and dryer, and for the Realtor's photographer to come in and be shocked by how messy it still is. Is it his/her job to hide all this junk, or should I? Have you really thought about those pictures: no trashcans, dish drainers, cat food bowls, toothbrushes, boxes of tissues in sight.