Transitions

I broke off a relationship recently.

Actually, "relationship" isn't really the best word for it. For the longest time, although the young woman involved knew it was me every time I called, I didn't know her name for months. I just called her up on Monday nights to let her know I was coming, she did what I needed her to do and I left.

My wife knew about the whole thing, and as many of these things do, the whole thing started because of being wronged by another woman ... in this case, the one who gave me pizza order to someone else.

What ... you thought I was talking about something other than the girl at the local pizza parlor? When her partner messed up my order, she kind of gave my wife and me a "Yeah, I'm with stupid" look, and we got a good laugh out of it eventually.

I ended things at the pizza place because my wife and I moved out of the area. When you live somewhere for eight years, like we did before moving, you develop habits and routines that you don't realize you have to change until the time comes.

Not only do we need to find a new pizza place (we tried our first one in our new home the other night; it's a solid contender), we need to find other local restaurants, figure out where to go grocery shopping, find a new dentist (which stinks in this case, because the dentist we were going to is one of the few I've ever liked), get a new vet for the cat and a whole bunch of other things.

We got the cable and Internet set up, and I made the arrangements for garbage pickup. I can also report that junk mail has already found us.

And, oh yeah, we need to figure out where everything is.

* * * * *

I spent most of my moving day ... at my old house.

We were closing on our old house and closing on our new one the same day, shuttling between offices while dealing with the moving crew our agent helped us pull together at the last minute when our orignal mover no-showed. Our new mover had to make two trips, and I got the duty of waiting back at the old house for the mover to come back.

I walked around the neighborhood a lot, charged my phone in the car and waited ... and waited. Finally, I knocked on the door and asked, "Do you mind if I come in for a while?"

He was OK with it, so I spent more than an hour in a living room that less than 24 hours earlier, had been my living room, watching movies on his DVD player and playing with his adorable dog. (Seriously, I'm not a big dog person, but I fell in love with his dog. He was so sweet.)

And it was weird as hell. Our buyer got his stuff moved in pretty quickly, so it didn't take long for him to make it his house, even before I hadn't gotten all my stuff moved off the lawn and out of the garage yet. At one point, I was stumbling around looking for a light switch or something, and actually had to remind myself, "This was just your house! This shouldn't be that hard to find!"

It wound up being a very long day, and the movers and I didn't get back to our new house until after midnight, meaning I didn't spend a second in my new house on my moving day.

* * * * *

We aren't done moving in yet, but we're getting there. Lots of stuff is in, and we're not far from the point where we'll be working on decorations.

It should be nice, and it'll be nice when all these transitions are done.