T-Minus Twelve Hours

It is the night before the packing crew comes, and like always we are exhausted yet have more to do than can be fit in the remaining time, even if we stayed up all night working. We’ve done this enough that we’ve gotten the hang of reaching the Zen acceptance at this point, knowing it cannot be done and being at peace with that. There is no such thing as an optimal move, or even a good one. Just try to avoid the avoidable catastrophes and then let it sort itself out. For me, the hardest part is picking the things that don’t get packed. It is difficult, because you don’t want to put things on the moving truck that you will need, but you also don’t want to load the car up with extraneous stuff that you won’t use. The search for the perfect middle path, grasshopper, is never finished.

As excited as I am to be getting to Conway and the Myrtle Beach area, I’ve been kind of sad and wistful the last week about leaving here. I really have enjoyed Evanston and Chicago. There are so many people that I never even saw when I was here, so many things that we didn’t do. Every day on the El or the Metra, I would go past things and think “I should visit there before we leave.” We are bicycling distance to the Bahaii Temple, yet we never visitied. We never went to the Botanical Gardens, the Lincoln Park Zoo, any of the museums, any of the famous rock clubs. A lot of this was on the to-do list, but it just never happened. Man, it is hard to believe this year went by so fast. I could swear that last week I was pulling up in my car and marvelling at how great I thought it would be to live here.

It’s been fun, Evanston. I will miss you.

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.