The Unpacking Continues

It is not unreasonable to think that since I've been living in Scott's house (which I'm supposed to think of as mine, but I still don't) for 3 months, I would be unpacked by now. Every box would be emptied, every belonging sorted and tossed or stored or shelved or situated nicely. After all, it has been 3 months. And I didn't even start my hideous new job until August 13th, so what the hell have I been doing with all my time?

Adjusting. Or trying to adjust. It takes me a ridiculously long time to adapt to change. Even sometimes just sitting here typing at night, I stop and look around and wonder how I got here. One day last week I was driving to work, noticing, again, the impossible-not-to-notice mountain scenery (impossible, at least, to someone who has spent almost her entire life in the midwest), and I looked at my hand on the steering wheel. At the diamond ring pressed up against the wedding band. And I thought "How did I land here?"

This is not some dramatic bloggy hint that I think I've made a mistake by getting married. This relationship has been so right from the very first moment we made contact that it was like finding the point of your life and doing a full-throttle rolling of the eyes in recognition that, oh, this is what things have been leading up to.

It is very hard to imagine where things might be headed when you're standing in the thick middle of a decade of teeth-gritting confusion. One decade ago this month started the worst, most heinously depressing, dismal time of my life. My stress level was radioactive. The changes included: marital status, moving from one country to another and then back, new job, new place to live, new friends. I felt as though I was on that gut-flipping downhill zoom of a roller coaster, that one where you can't even focus your eyes. When you board an actual roller coaster, you are warned to remove all your jewelry, glasses, hat, etc. when you hop on. My metaphorical roller coaster left my necklace safely hanging around my neck and instead yanked away everything I thought I had ever been sure of.

My life blew apart. I started a whole new career, teaching college. I had sworn when I was a grad student 10 years earlier that I would never ever teach again. I had hated the 3 semesters of it I'd endured in exchange for tuition. I'd done really well at it, but hated walking into that room every day to face the group. I suffered terribly from "stagefright." I ate so many pre-class Rolaids to keep from puking that I doubt I ever entered the room without having a white tongue. That was me, sitting on the beaten up sofa in the women's lounge, trying to slow my breathing and distract myself from the jittery breakfast in my stomach. It never got easier. But it never failed: When I would confide in a few of my students after the semester was over, and tell them how scared I had been to walk into the room, they were in genuine disbelief. "You?" they'd say. "YOU?"

Yes, me. And so it was with much gobsmackity that I looked around a decade later and there I was again. In a f*cking classroom, with a bunch of students waiting for me to break the ice. How had I fallen through the rabbit hole yet again?

And so it was with getting married again. It was my belief that if I ever were to have a husband again, he would be some amiably good guy who would make a nice partner and would be, you know, really nice and all. And he would probably have kids. I would be a reasonably happy, out-of-my-element stepmom to some kids. I didn't dare venture into hoping that I'd find a guy who maybe didn't have kids/ex-wife/complicated connections. Or who might be someone I could fall in love so deeply with that my heart felt like a happy dog rolling in the stench of dead rabbit remains. I know. I'm very romantic.

But here I am. My life has blown apart again. This time, in a much better way. That guy showed up. My heart is a happy dog. I recalibrated. The roller coaster is serpentining through a kaleidoscope of interesting scenery, and occasionally it slows down enough for me to take it in. Once again, I have very little idea what I'm sure of. But this time it feels less like losing my mind (a little less) and more like, I don't know, evolving. Midlife crisis-ish evolving. I know who I love, I know what makes me laugh, and I know what I'm homesick for. I also know that if I do not unpack these last 75 boxes, 2 things will happen:

1. We will not have our family room back. The one with the fireplace where cozy evenings happen on the couch. The couch that is still standing on end like a lonely, upholstered chunk of Stonehenge. Instead, we will have a room in which we climb like bitter mountain goats to get to a box we think my camera might be in.

2. On Monday the 24th, the people delivering our new elliptical (12 months same as cash!) will have no place to set it up. This simply will not do. Because in 2 weeks or so, there is no more pool usage for 8 months. Stop and think about how outrageously stupid that is. In Phoenix, which happens to be in the desert, the water in the pool is too cold to swim in from October to May. Thus, we need a different form of exercise. We can't have wild monkey trapeze-sex every day. Monkeys have a union now. They are persnickity about their work conditions.