Early May Monte Report

In a few hours I will be fully moved out of my apartment, moving into a state of housing limbo. I'll spend much of May in Arizona with my brother, before returning to my parents' house for a while, followed by the final move to Washington. I don't know exactly when I'll end up in Washington, so stay tuned.

Moving has proven to quite onerous and frustrating. After the flop with the rented moving truck, I began moving my remaining belongings to my parents' house - and no matter how many trips I made, I never was able to accurately gauge how many more trips would be necessary. (I've already made 11 trips...) Today, as I leave for the final time, my car will be jam packed, threatening to require two trips today - and I thought I'd have room to spare with just one!

Anyway, on the mood front, I'd been doing really well for the past week or two as I worked full-time at moving. Most evenings were spent saying final goodbyes to various people. Last night, though, at a Cinco de Mayo party, I allowed myself to be triggered in a bad way, the worst in weeks: I concluded that I was no longer welcome at the party, and at home a short while later my mood just got worse and worse and worse. Finally I managed to summon the energy to pick up the phone and call the party's host and seek more information on what I had perceived. And of course my perception was entirely skewed, and there was no reason whatsoever for me to have felt unwelcome. So I'll take a pat on the back for taking the initiative to fight that trigger. Right now I am beating myself up somewhat over the possibility that I'll need to make two trips today to my parents' house, but it's pretty minor.

Besides being sad to leave so many friends behind, I'm also quite sad to leave this apartment with its spectacular river-side view (see photo), but I'm glad that this nightmare of packing and moving out is all but over. The task of UNpacking is still ahead, of course, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.