I am moved.

Aside from making me beholden for life to certain segments of the population (my significant other and/or parents, who helped me heft every last cat-hair-swaddled object in my apartment onto their respective pick-up trucks, thus sparing me the expense and terror of renting a moving truck), the experience of moving revived my lifelong interest in never moving again. Hear me now: I am currently occupying the very apartment that I will inhabit for the rest of my existence on this coil. Nothing—not floods, pestilence, or lakes of fire—will rout me from this apartment. The place will get rezoned and my landlord will sell it to Goodyear blimps who will build a blimp distribution center right on this very spot, but I will live on here, mailing my rent checks every month like the faithful little dog waiting for his deceased owner at the train station.  

As you can probably infer, I dislike moving. Most people seem to, except for improbably attractive people in pseudo-quirky romantic comedies who are fleeing their tragic past, only to find true love in the most unexpected places. While I do have a tragic past, I know there’s no sense in trying to flee it, and while I don’t find love in unexpected places I do find other things. For instance, moving has a way of uncovering all of those piles of cat puke that have been ossifying behind the couch for months/years. Perhaps Tom McCarthy should make a film about me and call it The Archaeologist.

To be fair, the whole moving process would have gone a lot more smoothly if I hadn’t come down with the stomach flu in the days immediately proceeding it. There I was, driving back from a vacation in Chicago, when what had seemed like a really bad case of indigestion from all the Cheetos and coffee blossomed suddenly into a Technicolor pukefest by the side of the road. This was followed by a couple of days of detoxing the old-fashioned way, during which time I should have been packing but was too preoccupied with the master cleanse. All of which meant that the move was one of the more painful ones I’ve undertaken in some years. The ninety-degree weather and lack of A/C at my old apartment didn’t help. But my new apartment has central air.