Life on the Go

I just finished doing laundry and as I was hanging up my shirts I realized that I haven't hung up any of my clothes since last summer when I had a handful of hangers in the extended stay hotel we were living in for  four months.

And that's about as deep as our roots run, folks.

The truth is, we move a lot.  The other, even greater truth, is that we love it.  The excitement of a new adventure always waiting around the corner.  Never knowing where you'll be two weeks from now, forget about a year from now.  New restaurants, new shops, new sightseeing, new friends.  It's just the way we live.  I'm afraid it's become a little addicting.

Still, there are downsides.  We're pretty good at coping with them and sometimes I think to myself, "no wonder people think we're crazy!"  I have the benefit of being a human GPS and an avid explorer.  I've been in Austin for a week and could already tell you almost everything to see within a 10 mile radius.  But my husband is back on the road this week and I am alone.  All alone.  I have no friends here.  I have nothing to do.  I'm a partial homebody, so when I go into lockdown mode, sometimes it's days before I leave the apartment or have any interaction with another human being.

We went to church on Sunday for the first time.  That's always the worst.  I suppose the expectations of finding friends always overpowers the fear at being new and unusual, but it always creeps back in.  It's always in that moment that I miss Phoenix and all the stability we had there.  I have to remind myself to live in forward motion.  For all I know, six months from now this could be my favorite place in the world (I doubt it, but we'll see).

It's nice to actually go to the store and be able to buy laundry detergent in some form other than single load packets from the travel section.  Same goes for a lot of other things around here.  I've actually even unpacked my toiletries and I'm trying to filter through them before I buy anything new.

I also like living with few attachments.  I've purged most of our belongings since Phoenix and even though we still have way more than we need, we're getting there.  It's nice to know that you can live on so little.

I'm not trying to evoke sympathy.  I'm just in the adjustment period and since there is no end sight for this stop, there's a lot of uncertainty that comes with it.  Still, we're all set up in a great apartment with plenty to do, decent weather, and did I mention that the company pays our rent and even has a maid come in once a week?  Yeah, it's pretty spectacular.