Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. . .

Turn and face the strain.

It's finally sinking in: we're moving.

My whole life is getting ready to be turned upside down and inside out and then packed into little brown boxes.

Just the thought of it makes me feel ill.

Yes, obviously I have known all along that house hunting and buying results in moving, but the enormity of it all didn't hit me until last night. I was tucking Elizabeth into bed and suddenly it struck me that in a matter of weeks everything comfortable and familiar about our little house will be. . .gone. No more tiny bathroom sharing, no more downtown Wendell walking, no more playing in the churchyard across the street, no more jumping over Weasel gates to get to any room in the back of the house. All that will become a part of my past. And the children's pasts.

Probably that's what bums me out the most, I think. Knowing that Elizabeth will feel the same way about this house as I feel about the house on Whitaker Mill Rd. and that in just a few weeks this house will go from being her home to a place she only remembers as her home. Yes, she'll make new memories in the new house and it will soon become home to her (home is where the heart is, after all) but still. . . To this day I still pine for the Whitaker Mill house. And of course it's not the house so much, it's what the house represented. But at the same time it is still the house.

It's complicated.

Anyway, long and short is that I'm sad.

I'm sad to be moving. I'm sad for myself and for the kids.

This won't affect William so much because I moved him around a lot when he was younger, but it will still affect him, I know. Even if he his chomping at the bit to get into the "teen suite" that's awaiting him at the new place, this house has been his home since he was. . .10? 11? In kids years that's a long time ago, and a long time to have lived in one place.

And of course I'm attached to this house. You would think that someone who has moved 20 times in the span of 33 years would be immune to moving, but that's not the case. And this move will be especially difficult because for once in my adult life I feel fairly settled and secure and, while I am looking forward to a bigger and newer house, I like my dinky little house and I'm going to miss it.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, indeed.