Entries about moving

==Before==:

==After==:

==Behold==:

This is pretty much
a) the one thing i have enjoyed about packing/moving so far
b) the one thing i have managed to do to 100% completion (so please, for my sake, no comments on how wrinkled everything will be)

Woke up this morning to 3 inches of snow and flurries. Good motivation to get packing. In one week, we will be on a plane to San Francisco, then Auckland, NZ, and then Christchurch, NZ.

After all the complaining that Nikki and I have done about Brooklyn, and all the wanting we've been doing to get out of NYC, especially this winter with our sidewalk being a 7-layer-dip cross-section of snow, ice, trash, poop, more trash, frozen two-month old Christmas trees, and snow again, it turned out it was harder than we thought it would be to start packing up our apartment in preparation for our trip and our move.

For both Nikki and me, this apartment is the one we've lived in the longest in New York, and in our adult lives so far. Turns out 3+ years in one home will leave you with a lot to look back on. And a lot to move! As we started the process we've been dying to undertake for so many months now, we each got hit with bouts of nostalgia and reticence. There were even some sniffles (though those were likely due to the ferret-sized dust bunnies that emerged).

For the first few hours, it seemed that every opened drawer or shaken out book revealed a great memory of our time here. Things we've gotten used to staring at -- the ugly velvet bow on our door we've left up since a Christmas party two and a half years ago, painting supplies from when it took 3 trips to Lowes to get our dining room wall, um, red, or old valentine's day cards and love notes on post-its tucked between books -- begged to finally be reckoned with. Keep, store and move across state lines? Or trash? There were some tough calls but we muddled through. When we met, Nikki and I both had some growing up to do. We realized today how much of that we have done together, and done here in our apartment on Lincoln Place.

They say that all couples fight about 3 things: money, sex and religion. Someone should add moving to this list. From the minute we began taping boxes together, our different communication styles came right out. These can be summed up by saying that Nikki wants to communicate. Whereas I do not. She wants mutual decision making and conversation; I want boxes packed and taped and labeled and stacked. Until of course, in an effort to avoid any communication whatsoever, I tell her she has full license to make all decisions and then discover 25 minutes later she's throwing away old birthday cards at which point I inform her, perhaps with a raised voice, "I never throw things like that away!!! That's why we have all these boxes!!!!" Then I am ready to communicate. But for some reason, she doesn't want to anymore...

There is that old adage about preparing to marry -- if you can survive the wedding planning, than you can survive the marriage. This time, though, it seems to be that if you can survive packing, then you can survive the move. Or in our case, if you can survive the packing and moving, then you can survive 2 months of living out of backpacks together on another continent followed by 2 months of living out of backpacks together in a studio apartment in Manhattan.

As we were packing up this morning, we both got a little sad and stopped for a hug. Awww. Nikki said, "Well, we're taking the best parts with us." I'm assuming she means each other and not my Kindle. But what she said did give me a little boost, and I want to work to keep this in mind as we move forward together this week and in all the weeks after that.

Here's to our big adventure ahead! Wish us luck!