We have ARRIVED! Actually, we arrived about two weeks ago, but I've been busy. Kind of.

Renting an apartment sight-unseen worked out quite a bit better in Madison than it did in DC. It's fairly little, but old and cute with plaster walls and hardwood floors and big windows and a location two blocks from one of Madison's three lakes. It may or may not be haunted, but as long as non-perishables don't fly out of the cabinets and nothing's oozing out of the walls, I have no problem with that.

My classes start tomorrow evening, and will cause little to no stress, partly because I'm only taking two due to loan limitations. The low-stress factor is also influenced by the fact that one class is on "adolescent development", the purpose of which is to presumably prepare you to control a classroom full of the developing little fuckers, while the other class is "Young Adult Literature". If Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret is on the syllabus, I may have to interrupt the instructor to perform a Happy Dance. I'm guessing it's a little outdated, though, what with all the discussion of attaching sanitary napkins to belts. Menstruation in the Dark Ages...

Work starts Thursday afternoon with a couple of half-days to ease the kids into a new routine, then I start for real next Tuesday. I'm really looking forward to it, and not just for the pay check. It will surprise no one to hear that we are once again desperately poor, waiting for Kevin to find a drywall/laborer job and for me to receive my student loan check that should really be put into savings but will probably have to be used to pay the car insurance. Will the poverty ever end? I want to start swimming, but the $38 a month for a Y membership seems like an outrageously extravagant luxury.

On the other hand, I do have roller derby activities to provide a bright spot on the horizon. As I believe I mentioned before, Em has recruited me for a spot on the Anarchettes, cheerleading squad for the Mad Rollin' Dolls, the sexiest bunch of hellcats on wheels. Em's the captain of the Anarchettes and has lofty plans to take the group beyond last year's duties of ticket-taking and merch-selling. We have already rhapsodized about the cheers we will write, the half-time shows we will develop, and the saucy little outfits we will design with the other girls on the squad. I can't fucking wait.

So things are good. The stress of moving has been worth all the quality time with Em, the cozy little apartment, and the smell of clean lake that comes in the kitchen window when the wind is right.

Oil of Olay can kiss my ass

I'm 29 tomorrow. I'm not the kind of girl who's going to freak out about turning 30--actually, I'm looking forward to my thirties. However, I just have to ask, where the fuck did my twenties go? They went by so fast. The early years were lame, the middle section was miserable, and it's just finally gotten decent. Which is great and there's no force on earth that could convince me to start at 21 again, but that doesn't help that nagging feeling that I'm going to start looking ridiculous in many of my favorite clothes very soon.

Security blanket of smog

This upcoming move is scaring the crap out of me. I hate living in DC. Hate. It. But I know where things are. I know people here, and even like some of them. Kevin proposed to me in this (tiny and overpriced) apartment. We (usually) get our mail without a problem. We have a bank, and magazine subscriptions, and a semi-traditional outing to the Sunday flea market, and now everything has to be changed. It's a lot of upheaval, and for some reason, this is seeming much scarier than any of the other cross-country moves I've made. Maybe it's because we have such high hopes for Madison (not without good reason--Em's there, I already have a job, Kevin will probably be doing drywall which is a hell of a lot more dependable and stable than working for tips), or maybe it's because I'm getting older and change is becoming less and less appealing to me. Still, I need to keep reminding myself that the stability we'll get in Madison is a million times better than any superficial stability we have here.

Plus I get to be on the roller derby cheerleading squad--The Anarchettes--in Madison. Such an opportunity has not presented itself in DC. So, yes, the move is, by any standard, a good thing, but that doesn't mean I won't be an emotional train wreck for the next week and a half.