Moving

Moving..it is never an easy thing to do for many reasons.  I think since 1991 I have moved on average of once a year or so...no joke...When I went to college I moved up to Eugene Or. where I lived in a large blue house called..rightfully so, The Blue House.  In it were 9 people living together between the ages of 20 and 24 i'd say.  I lived there for the summer with my dog and my best friend Gus, and then I had to go...i don't do so well with roommates, so I found a place a bit further out in Eugene with a huge yard, under a main house.  It had a washer and a dryer and was pretty sweet for a 20 year old.  From there I moved to a small one room studio closer to campus the next year, then I found a 3 bedroom house which I paid 755 a month even closer still to campus.  I did have to get roommates there for a bit, but Julia, my college girlfriend, moved in eventually and all was fine for a while.  Then she broke up with me, my dog died and I moved...again...this time to a place named Fish Taco...not really sure why, but this house was a riot....3 of us lived downstairs and 2 upstairs.  My room was basically the living room which was separated by two or three sliding doors with slats, so there was basically very little privacy if any at all.  It was fun though, the most fun i'd ever had living with roommates for sure.  There was always something going on and by then, I was almost done with school so i really didn't give a crap.

Graduation came, I picked up and moved back into my dad's guesthouse in Santa Monica, which was fine for a while, but eventually i had to move because by then I was a grown man all of 26 and I thought living in the guesthouse might not be good for my image...so like a smart guy, i moved into an apartment...with my sister...good for the image? maybe....not really, but a fun place to live and we were really good roomies....then I found a cool pad in the palisades off the beach, where I could check the surf in the morning and walk over a bridge and jump in...that was nice...lived there for about a year....due to some relationship issues, i had to move out though and found my way back to Santa Monica and managed to find a recovering alcoholic vegan who needed a roomate.  The apartment was basic, but after a year of living with this poor guy,who I hope is ok to this day, i had to go...and besides i had met my fiance...another story, so we moved into an apartment on 5th street in Santa Monica.  A nice 2 bedroom charming spot with wood floors and a small kitchen...but then a year later, we decided that we should save money on rent and moved way the hell out to Agoura Hills...if anyone knows where that is in relation to Santa Monica, I might as well have moved to Alaska....we were pretty much cut off out there and living in a modern town home, with a garage below, and a one bedroom unit above...big, plush and functional, but not my style...for sure...so after I broke off the engagement ( another long story) I moved out and was homeless for a bit, sleeping on friends couches and Taylor's couch, I found a tiny tiny, smaller than any place I had ever lived guesthouse in Marina Del Rey...it was basically a room with a kitchen in it and a bathroom...but my landlord was a cool guy and i somehow made it work for my life at that time...AS fate would have it I met one of Taylor's neighbors who became my girlfriend and i ended up moving in with her (mostly to get out of the small pad i was in (big mistake and another long story) and that place happened to be the complex right next to my sisters place back in Santa Monica.  After 9 months and almost watching this girl off herself on booze and pain pills, i fled to another small, but swanky, guesthouse in Brentwood, which happened to be literally across the street from where the whole O.J. Simpson thing happened.  My landlord was Russian and lived alone in a huge new house in front.  The guesthouse was the size of a two car garage, very new, but also very bare bones...i liked it and was happy there, until i got handcuffed by the LAPD by mistake (another great story), and then as luck would have it, he sold the house so I had to move...again....I found a great place in Santa Monica again, a one bedroom, very spacious with a garage and wood floors and redone with a nice new kitchen.  I loved it and it served as probably my longest address.....i'd say 2 years or so???

from there it is a whirlwind, but let's just say in order to end up here in boulder i moved to temporary situations 5 times in a year....I had garage sales, bought a trailer, packed it, moved it, shacked up with family, and finally ended up here in my new place....whew...i guess I have moved alot....

Point is...my mom is moving in the next two weeks and I understand her struggle and frustration with it and how hard it can be, but when I look back at all the dots on the map and the places I have moved into and out of...it has truly created a part of who i am and during the move, which is never easy, we often forget that new beginnings are on the horizon and from that, life grows...sort of like the seasons....I can't wait to help my mom move and set up her new life...again....

love and understanding