Friday, December 5, 2008

personal history, by address

So, we are all moved in. That's the best feeling ever, although it is accompanied by the crushing reality that every room of your new place is filled with boxes. I have moved A LOT since I graduated from high school, I thought that I would document the list here for posterity.

1. Fall 1999. Moved from my parents' house to dorm @ Lambuth. Ate many cheeseburgers and cup-o-noodles there, and was generally miserable.
2. Spring 2000. Lambuth ---> parents' house. Worked at the newpaper that summer. Had sex with ex-boyfriend in our respective cars in many locations around Decatur County.
3. Fall 2000. Parents' house ---> dorm @ MTSU. I lived with Angela, who really lived with her boyfriend. Had a light mental breakdown, I think. Met Liz.
4. Spring 2001. Dorm @ MTSU ---> Parents' house. See Spring 2000. Plus more pot, I think (It's hard to remember that kind of thing, heh heh heh).
5. Fall 2001. Parents' house ---> Apartment @ Nottingham in M'boro. Liz and I lived together and had a really good time unless we were having a really bad time. The bad times may explain why we didn't really talk from 2002-05.
6. Spring 2002. Nottingham ---> Parents' house. See previous summers. Later, rinse, repeat.
7. Fall 2002. Parents' house ---> Lytle apartment w/Wendy. It was a really weird place, and WF stayed @ her boyfriend's, all the time too. You know, that's a common phase for couples in their early 20s who are still too scared of their parents to officially move in together. The apartment was the upstairs of a big house that our landlord lived in, and he got really grumpy with me when I repeatedly let in a stray cat that frequented the yard. The cat loved getting high. From shoddy recollections, this was the time in which my substance abuse really kicked off.
8. Spring 2003. Lytle ---> Havenwood w/my ex, Logan. First time we officially lived together. Acquired two cats. Smoked many bongloads. Graduated from MTSU but continued an illustrious career at Bellacino's Pizza & Grinders. Was fat. Embarked on ill-fated experimentation with "open relationship," that would eventually destroy both my relationship with the ex as well as my then-best friend. In an incredible twist of fate, this was the same apartment complex that LT lived in with her ex-boyfriend. But we didn't know each other! Weird!
9. Spring 2005. Havenwood ---> Poplar (still with ex, but it was definitely the beginning of the end). Many, many sexy/dark/depressing things happened at this place, but I also lost 20 lbs., and isn't that all that matters? Weight loss, ladies, bottom line.
10. Spring 2006. Poplar ---> Parents' house. Stayed there all summer since my Daddy was sick. Drank a lot of cheap beer. This was when I started drinking in front of my parents. Started dating Brandon. Very exciting, very terrible time.
11. September 2006. Mom's house ---> E. Nashville. Signed the lease on the same day my dad died, horribly enough. B & I moved in together pretty immediately because it was GD fate. Called this place "ice house" because the floors were granite and it was so cold, all winter. Little did I know this was a precursor to every other winter we've had so far.
12. April 2007. E. Nashville ---> Mom's house. Actually just my stuff moved down there, and B & I went Wwoofing. My mother was certain of a disasterous fate, but looky, I'm still alive. Got engaged in Madrid, and a hundred other things happened too.
13. August 2007. Mom's house ---> Monroe in Memphis. We moved in on the Elvis death anniversary and it was so hot I thought B & T would have heatstrokes moving all our shit in. We realized that we were happy in Memphis in ways we never were in Nashville. Landlord unceremoniously kicked us out after selling the building (it's now Restaurant Iris).
14. December 2007. Monroe ---> Lawrence. Nice but very cold. Had several good parties here. And got married! And got fleas! And had lovely out of town company come & stay!

So that makes this last move, Lawrence to Evelyn, my 15th. 15th! I don't know if this is normal or not. Granted, lots of time I was simply moving from one place to another in the same city (I beat the dead horse of Murfreesboro for a ridiculously long time, and I'm here to say, it is totally possible to leave that town & never look back. People bitch so much about M'boro, and my advice is, if you want to leave & you can leave, save a little of the money you're spending on watered-down beer @ Jim's, and get together a deposit on a new apartment. Dream the dream, people.)

I liked making this list because I got flashes of memories I thought that I had forgotten. Flashes of myself standing in certain rooms of these places, and things that happened to me in them. All the afternoons I spent packing bowls with my ladyfriends, watching shit TV and eating loads of crap food. Having a sobbing fight with my ex in my car, parked outside our place since his friends' house caught on fire and they were staying with us in the interim. Meeting somebody for clandestine afternoon sex while our for-real partners were at work/school. (All these memories seem to have happened post-2004, because my brain is mush).

OK, you can return to whatever you were doing before I wasted your time.

5 comments:

dave said...

you've inspired me. let's see here - i might get a few dates wrong

1. July 2003 - well into college, finally move out of my parents' house after amy intimates to me that she is going to kill all three of us (myself and my folks) and bury our bodies in the back yards if we don't get our own place
2. June 2004 - back into parents' place briefly, to prepare for cross country move #1. they'd already moved out of town so the house was mostly empty. amy and i marginally broken up. almost moved without her. imagine that! weird couple of months
3. Sep 2004 - reformed like voltron, we bid farewell to syracuse and drag all our crap out to wisconsin while we hibernate at her parents' place in white plains and get ready to head south. spent about three months bouncing back and forth between ny and wisconsin just visiting people but we'll count it as one move
4. Jan 2005 - dear god why would you do a cross country move in the middle of winter, especially one that requires you to drive from new york to wisconsin before you can head south? truck goes off road in the middle of nowhere in minnesota. wackiness ensues. we get our first place (17th st) in galveston. minds are boggled
5. Jan 2006 - second place, galveston, around the block. worst move we'd ever had. we figured "it's only around the block how bad can it be we'll just CARRY most of the shit down there" yeah right. torture
6. July 2006 - jump ship on our lease (by faking a letter to our landlords saying that we broke up - real classy) and move into the artist's lofts to be bohemian with our friends. we get married. awesome
7. Jan 2007 - leave the loft to get a house and embark in earnest on our own ill fated experimentation. tears are shed, things are broken, everyone learns a lot. whoopee!
8. Dec 2007 - in my own words here: "i'm leaving this island three years later with my sanity, marriage, and physical well being barely intact" stuff back in storage, off to ohio for a couple months with amy's fam again
9. Jan 2008 - arrive in beautiful sunny memphis tn, hopefully not to move again (at least not cross country) for a LONG long time

you've clearly got me beat but i still think nine is a pretty respectable showing, and that is in four and a half years, after all. thanks for the inspirato

d

theogeo said...

Lordy Lou, y'all move a lot!

I think I might steal this meme and put it on me blog.

The pw is tatersi. As in "taters, I do not care for them."

Anonymous said...

I've moved, at a quick count, 24 times since graduating high school in 1989. Two or three of those were places where I knew I would only stay for a few weeks, so call it twenty "real" moves.

Like you, I moved in Memphis in August 2007 during that heat wave. That was brutal; I provided gallons of Gatorade for my friends who helped.

Bette said...

I mostly blacked out the years I spent in Murfreesboro since I was so damn miserable. I still think about our history and how much we just couldn't make it work as roommates. How horrible that whole ordeal was for everyone..

I always remember water running off of my body in a stream onto your bedroom carpet after you abruptly got me out of the shower on 9/11 in time to watch the second plane hit.

schmutzfynk said...

in addition to the moves d already outlined, i've moved-

1) may 2000- first apartment on highland ave in baton rouge with ex-best elsa. dark dark months. this was not such a pretty time.

2) may 2001- after what still probably wins out as the worst period in my life, i vacate to a total effing shithole in nola on south peters near the quarter. this is the 'lost month' in the book of my life. or maybe wasted is a better word, because nothing happened except... nope, there was nothing. so eventually...

3) june 2001- back with elsa and a dj and a bimbo. the only thing that stands out about this time in my life is how mind blowingly awful it was. the only redeeming factor was the drug use. mescaline, lsd, micro dots, ecstasy... living with a dj had that one perk.

4) november 2001- parents house in brewster, ny. tiny village a 45 minute train ride from the city. that's... kind of the only thing to say about it, period. needless to say, most of my available time was spent wandering around nyc, often alone, going to museums and the library and such.

5) october 2002- david's parents house. completely adorable 20's bungalow with morbidly insufficient plumbing facilities. there are stories i could tell you, my friends. but i won't.

 

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