In which Jennifer Homeowner laments the loss of her identity, only considerably less elegant.

The apartment leasing agent and I are on "Jen" terms now. As in, she's started calling me Jen. Since she's trying to be helpful, I'm trying not to be annoyed. She has verified for me twice that my new address is what she wrote it down to be, verification I needed since the electric company couldn't find it in their database. Apparently they have one number off, as we verified by checking meter numbers. Anyway, that's set, and if the check I sent today gets there Friday I'll be fine. If not, I'm going to have to drive up there Friday and give her another check, an act I'm not looking forward to at all--though it might let me pick up Eric and thus cancel the car dolly. But no, I'm going to need my car to carry all the fragile stuff anyway--telescope, computer, DVD player, VCR, two stereos, electronic keyboard. And I need that five hours I'd lose because I'm not nearly as motivated to get everything packed as I ought to be.

I hate moving. I knew I was going to reach a time when I no longer liked moving and this is it. I want to be there, I don't want to be here, but I don't like this process of doing it. From the time I went to Baltimore for grad school in 1999 up until this move to Toledo, I have moved seven times. That's an average of more than a move a year. And only to three places, really--Baltimore, Seattle, Ohio. Why do I keep changing homes? It's not to prevent me from accumulating stuff, because I've accumulated (books mostly, but also, you know, a sewing machine and a fabric stash and a Papasan chair and a KitchenAid food processor). If I kept going different places, as I'd originally wanted to, that would be fine, but no, it's only been three, and I'm now at the point where I don't want to be a stranger in a new city anymore; I want to be where my friends and my family are. And I'm still going to have to keep moving, in six months to a house (why do I need a house?) and in a couple of years to the West Coast and possibly a couple of years after that back if Eric can't stand it. I have to keep all my boxes. (My new apartment has the water heater in the walk-in closet. I'm thinking of taking the second bedroom to sleep in and making that room the office/craft room so that it doesn't bother me every morning when I get dressed.)

Oh, and the buyers don't want the washer and dryer, which is reasonable but disappointing. "If she leaves them, we'll take them," they said, via The Agent. Ha ha ha. Now I'm definitely not leaving them. Only not leaving them involves unhooking them and hauling them up the basement stairs (which probably means taking the railing off) and putting them in storage for six months. I don't wanna. I hate moving.