Moving

I have moved into my third home in Indiana. Each of the three I have lived in have had their quirks, and obviously, I felt two of those places had quirks beyond my tolerance. It is painful to move, expensive, time consuming, mentally debilitating. And yet I do. I have. I will. I know I will again. It is a rental after all, and although this very cluster of buildings has faculty from my own institution who have lived here for decades, I am not that kind of pessimist. I want to find a home base I can call my own, my own to invest in, my own to destroy. Yes, destroy. Part of creating a home is its very destruction and rebuilding. Over and over.

Somehow, in moving, I made the poor choice of packing a library book that had been sitting on my desk, into a box I assumed I would be quickly opening again. The box and book have vanished, and the urgent emails from the library remind me it is time to return it. Part of being a faculty-person is having the elite position that a librarian wouldn't dare charge a fine for a late book, and procrastination and laziness are making me take advantage of this perk. If that weren't enough, somehow the other two books I checked out at the same time, that sat all through the holiday on my desk in my office, suddenly vanished. I cannot recall if I 'put them away,' or returned them (thus having them mis-shelved or whatnot). In total, three books missing, and not the faintest idea where they went to. It is a problem I can ignore, but it also fills me with such anxiety, I can't tell you how I cope. I go to my office and stare at my bookshelves, expecting the missing tombs to suddenly leap to my eyes, at which time I will laugh and announce the cliché, "at least a snake would've bitten me!" It hasn't happened yet.

I just emptied three and a half boxes in my extra bedroom. There were a number of boxes moved into that room when I wasn't looking. I don't really know what-all is there. I did find my missing harddrive, my tax receipts, a number of lost ideas and doodles on paper. But no books. Where have they gone? With the missing socks? (I haven't had any go missing lately.) With the lost ideas, the wasted days, the used kitty litter? How does my life so quickly descend into a chaos, bathing in unintended neglect, denial of adulthood (while everyday firmly asserts I am there)?