Ode to My Family

I just realized Saturday that I will no longer be living with my parents, effective August 1, 2009. Am I looking forward to it? Yes. Am I kind of sad about it? Yes.

Although I occasionally go into a hyper-bitchy insensitive rant about how I'm ready to move out, I actually enjoy living with my parents. They're both funny and amazing people who have been more than generous and understanding while I've been living with them. They dragged me out of bed when I was unemployed on those days when I literally was so depressed I couldn't imagine doing anything but sleep, even though I was impossibly grumpy and refused to make conversation after being rousted.

Avoidance sleep = BAD

Excited as I am about living in my own apartment with my own artwork, being on my own schedule again (and not having to commute an hour each way to work in the morning!), I'll miss living at home.

That being said, I am extremely excited about moving into my own apartment with my own artwork and being on my own schedule again. I'll get to look at my custom-made steel bookcases (7 feet tall! 3'6" wide! White! Bee-yoo-tee-full!), and the framed print of a Madonna and child, but if the Madonna and child were characters from Planet of the Apes. That's one of the things I look forward to in my own apartment: my quirky design taste.

Because my design taste is decidedly quirky.

I have an orange ceramic deer that serves as the center piece on my dining table. At Christmas, it gets to wear a red flocked wreath with a silver holly leaf. My artwork is a collection of photographs (one by my mom: an old rusted truck parked in an old car dealership porte-cochere somewhere in New Mexico, I think; some family photos, my favorite a candid shot of my grandmother at a Christmas gathering with a gold gift-bow on her head) and limited edition prints.

When I moved into my last apartment, I decided that I needed to keep my picture frames the same throughout, because I wouldn't always be able to hang my pictures in the same rooms as I moved. So the pictures in my bedroom are framed in the same inexpensive white metal frames that are found in my living and dining rooms. Sure, the mats are slightly off, because I forget which color I've used, so I alter them, but they all blend.

Somebody once asked me what sort of interior decorating scheme my apartment had: was it modern or traditional? I responded that it was eclectic, but that most importantly, it had a sense of humor. And it does. There are kind of kitschy things I've inherited (a pottery dish with a squirrel perched on the edge from my great aunt) or bought (such as the orange deer), and very sophisticated things, such as my Wassily Chair and an incredibly sculptural black metal floor lamp I received as part of my Make A Wish bedroom makeover back in high school.

I was trying to explain to a member of the Happy Hour crew why I hadn't just asked a bunch of my friends to help me move: I'm concerned about the insurance. If a friend helps me move, it means I'm liable for damage done to my bookcases or to the immense Scottish chest of drawers that dominates my bedroom. But I'm hiring movers, so they're liable for moving everything and for repairing anything that gets damaged along the way.

I feel like I have so much to do before I move. My dad and I plan to move small things the morning of the day the movers come - clothes, toiletries, that sort of thing. I'm moving on a very popular weekend, so the movers won't actually arrive until 4 in the afternoon. That's the downside. The upside is that I will hopefully be able to get a lot of stuff done that morning - maybe move some stuff from my storage unit, too - before the movers show up. Regardless, I'll be spending a lot of time this next week getting things I know I'll need but that I don't have - cleaning supplies, trash cans, etc...

My mom, saints bless her, said that she was excited that I was moving, too: it means she gets to help me hang pictures and arrange my bookshelves, and all that fun decoratory stuff. Yay for a little mother-daughter bonding!

Note to self: stock up on Chick-Fil-A iced tea Saturday so we'll have plenty to drink during our Sunday picture-hanging marathon.