moving diarrhea

We finished our move on Sunday just in time for dinner with Eric's co-residents. I tell you what: a steak dinner with friends in the cool comfort of air-conditioning after two full days of physical exertion in 90+ degree weather is as good as it gets. To give you a sense of the extent of our dehydration and hunger by that point, it only took about 2 oz of wine before Liz was feeling tipsy.

Nevertheless, here's a toast to our moving crew: to Adrian and Rallie on the Silver Spring end, and to Branden, Nga and Ugo on the Adelphi end. Here's a second toast to Nga and Branden on their first wedding anniversary, which was Sunday! Why they spent half the day moving our mess and cooking dinner, we have no idea... but we sure appreciated it. And we propose a final toast to Branden for getting us through at least three moves now, two of which involved significant amounts of lumber when Liz was actively woodworking. He would agree that boxes of fabric are infinitely easier to move--sans splinters, at that.

The state of things here is best described as (pardon the expression) "moving diarrhea." Boxes are strewn everywhere, some partially rummaged through in search of this or that. We have yet to locate Eric's alarm clock. We've substituted with Liz's phone, but 5:10 am comes awful early--and Liz will be away the next four nights at a conference. Packing that suitcase tomorrow will be a challenge.

It's looking like we won't be truly settled until mid-August, but we hope we can make good headway in July. No call and normal hours are going to be a beautiful thing.

transplanting again

I've been meaning to start up our blog again... but then, I've been meaning to do a lot of things that never seem to come to fruition. On Thursday evening I had the perfect entry point to the blog, so perfect that I have to share it even though it feels like distant memory this morning. I wandered past the Goethe Institut in DC's Chinatown on my way to catch the Metro home, incidentally they posted Volker Braun's poem in the window: ich kann bleiben wo der Pfeffer waechst. But by the time I arrived home, I was too tired to post and still had work to do for one job before going to the next job on Friday morning. Such is the life of a contractor.

This morning I awoke and knew that if I was going to write about our next move before it happened, this was my last opportunity. "Now or never" speaks to a procrastinator. I'm sitting amidst an array of boxes at the moment: the final round, freshly packed last night. The flaps still need to be sealed, labeled. Most of them won't be opened again for another year. The labels give me comfort that we would be able to locate an item quickly if we needed or wanted to find it.

We won't need most of our possessions next year: we will be house-sharing with friends of ours, dear friends from podiatry school at Temple and now co-residents with Eric at the Hospital Center. We've traveled the same road for six years, so it seems fitting that we live together in the seventh and final year of this adventure.

Besides, we're excellent basement-squatters: we took up residence in the Anderson parents' basement for several months before moving to Silver Spring two years ago. This time we'll be paying rent, albeit a significant savings compared to having our own condo. It will give us the ability to travel on our free weekends next year. (Third-year residents in Eric's program don't take call; the program is weighted extremely heavy on the front end, per the last post in 2008.) And we'll be tucking away some real savings--finally--to start a nest egg for our own place when this chapter of our lives comes to a close.

For the record: I did see Eric over the last two years--sometimes he was awake, occasionally he was coherent. OK, perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but it certainly wasn't an easy two years. Next year won't be easy pie, but we do see a light at the end of the tunnel. Cheers, I'll toast to that. Time to seal those boxes and pick up the truck...

long days, short nights ahead

Yesterday was "the big day" in hospitals across the country: all the freshly-graduated doctors made their first appearance in their respective hospitals as residents. So Eric donned his new scrubs and (doctor-length!) white coat to join the ranks and left the house at 6 am yesterday and got home a little after 8 pm. After about six hours of restless sleep (for both of us) he got up at 4 am to check his pager; by 5:30 am he had left the house again. I received the following text from Eric at 7 pm tonight:

"Im still alive. U may never see me again."