#ElfShelfies

RULES:

1. When you move home from Chicago to Cedar Rapids three years ago, remember to cancel your Chicago renters' insurance.
1(a). Over the course of those three years, also be sure to notice that the monthly premiums for the renters' insurance that you should have canceled are still being automatically charged to your credit card.
1(b). Every freaking month.
1(c). For THREE FREAKING YEARS.
1(d). Or maybe you're too stupid to have a credit card.
1(e). Or insurance.
1(f). Or nice things in general.
1(g). Because think of all the nice things you could have bought over the last three years with the THIRTY-SIX MONTHLY INSURANCE PREMIUMS YOU NEVER NOTICED YOU WERE PAYING AUTOMATICALLY ON YOUR CREDIT CARD.
1(h). Dipshit.

2. There is no Rule #2.
2(a). You're too stupid even to handle Rule #1.
2(b) We thought we raised you to be more responsible than that.
2(c). You're going to spend yourself into the poorhouse buying insurance you don't need for a place you don't occupy in a city where you don't live.
2(d). You'll probably die poor and alone in the street.
2(e). On the bright side, you'll be insured.
2(f). Just not the way you need to be.
2(g). Dipshit.

Why are his trousers vermilion?

After work tonight I made a trip to my packed-to-the-rafters-with-everything-and-I-mean-everything-I-owned-in-Chicago-when-I-moved-home-two-and-a-half-years-ago storage locker with the faint hope of opening a handful of 30+ boxes and stumbling on four long-buried things: my passport, my running medals, my running bibs and some sort of documentation that shows the cost basis for some meager investments I made 30 years ago with a man who's no longer alive at a company that no longer exists.

Do NOT get me started on the cost basis documentation ... or the fact that it doesn't automatically follow your investments on their inevitable journeys through endless cycles of portfolio selloffs and acquisitions and companies that cease to exist. DO. NOT.

But! Look at everything I DID find:

• My passport!
• My running medals! Which may or may not be jumbled up with a few random disco-ball necklaces!
• My running bibs!
• Plus! Clockwise from the top:
• Cards Against Humanity!
• A little figurine I bought in Barcelona 15 years ago of a folklorical boy squatting over a tiny, fresh pile of childish bad taste! Because why not!
• A $25 IHOP gift card!
• The abovementioned bibs and medals and disco balls and passport and let's get back to the fun stuff
• Long-forgotten-but-still-very-gay Broadway CDs!
• A dented York Peppermint Patty!
• BONUS! A pair of so-gay-they-make-their-own-obscure-Sondheim-references vermilion jeans that can't possibly have ever fit over my hips because right now they look like they won't even fit over what's left of my pride

There's also a massive unopened box sitting right next to me AS WE SPEAK labeled "summer clothes and shoes" that holds the promise of overflowing with something magical and/or even-more-pride-crushing since it was packed and sealed over two years and two waist sizes ago. I'd tell you I won't open it until later when it's not late and I'm not tired but we all know I'll be ripping into it before I even finish writing this po

Nine years ago today

I woke up to a beautiful Iowa sunrise, packed a U-Haul with everything that was left after I’d sold 75% of my belongings in a yard sale the day before, said goodbye to the city I’d called home for 32 years, and drove excited and scared to Chicago.

Two weeks earlier, I’d been in Chicago visiting a friend for pride. I’d decided it would be fun to interview at a big-city advertising agency while I was here. Just for the practice. You know: in case I decided to move here sometime in the distant, distant future. Because moving to Chicago was just a pipe dream. A crazy, insane, brave-person pipe dream.

Imagine my surprise when the big Chicago agency offered me a job on the spot. And offered to reimburse me for my moving expenses. And could I start in two weeks?

Um.

So over the next two weeks I quit my job, listed my house, organized a massive garage sale, day-tripped to Chicago to find an apartment I could move into almost immediately, and never let myself think too hard about what I was doing out of fear I might talk myself out of it.

I drove to Chicago nine years ago today in my little green Neon and Mom and Dad bounced along behind me in the U-Haul. It hadn’t occurred to me that my 60-ish parents were not an ideal U-Haul-unloading team until a couple days before the move, so—since I’d yet to hear about craigslist and it was too late to hire the few movers I could find and I couldn’t conjure up many other options—I sent an email to the tiny handful of people I knew in Chicago, asking nicely (but not needily) if they could possibly meet us at 10:00 that Sunday morning in front of my new apartment. And when we pulled up, they were there. All of them. My sainted welcoming committee. And together we carried everything I owned from the truck up a three-flight spiral staircase into my elfin starter apartment in less than an hour. And then they disappeared back into their beautiful summer weekends … and, unfortunately, they all eventually drifted completely out of my life. But that’s a lament for a different blog post. (If any of you boys are reading this, I thank you again for your help that morning. And please know I’ve paid your immense favor forward to at least 10 other friends here in Chicago over the years.)

Mom and Dad helped me unpack a few boxes and get my bed put together and find some basic utensils so I wouldn’t starve, but they had to get back on the road so they could return the U-Haul. So we shared some hugs and said some good-byes and I got some you-be-carefuls and they climbed in the truck and bounced down the road toward Iowa.

And as I stood there waving goodbye on my new street in front of my new apartment at the dawn of my new life and my new career in my new city, I thought to myself Holy shit, what have I done?

Look what I started!

I had what you might call a little adventure in moving from September through February. For those of you just joining us, highlights included a fraudulent contract, a murdered developer, a prolonged battle to get out of that contract and five months living with friends while it all got sorted out.

My family, drunkenly oblivious to what was obviously the first manifestation of a new family curse, is currently undertaking not one but two moves. Simultaneously!

Here’s their adventure in a nutshell: My sister’s family is moving into our childhood home. My displaced folks are downsizing to a very cool, very spacious, newish condo. All of this—namely contracts with my sister’s buyer and my folks’ seller—exploded from vague possibility to holy-shit reality in the last week. Which gives us all about six weeks to sort through 30+ years’ accumulation in a 100+-year-old house and make the move as efficient and painless as possible.

So on Friday, instead of spending the boyfriend’s birthday with him, I deadheaded to Iowa to spend two days filling two dumpsters with a generation of knickknacks, mementos, embarrassing crafts and broken dreams. And getting profoundly filthy in the process. A 100+-year-old-house is not exactly a haven of dry basements and dust-free attics, and our group sorting and throwing efforts made for some very muddy loads of laundry.

While I was there, I also squeezed in an 8-mile training run with my folks’ neighbor, who blew out his IT band in mile five and limped home while I pounded out what I hoped were three more miles in a city devoid of helpful mile markers. I also found some time to hang out with the niece and nephew, who of course contributed some adorable blogworthy stories during my visit: My niece, who tried to dress nicely for my arrival, put together a fashionable little ensemble that included silver sandals, an Aztec-y prairie skirt and what in her mind needed to be a very plain white shirt. Unfortunately, the plainest shirt she could find had two delicate bows sewn into the neck seams. After much consideration, she decided she could get away with wearing the shirt because “Uncle Jake probably won’t notice.” AS IF. And I got to watch my gangly little nephew, whose nascent athletic prowess is slowly eclipsing what little his Uncle Jake has, play in his flag football season closer on Saturday. My brother-in-law and I spent most of the game discussing everything but flag football, but the one time we looked up, my little nephew—who at the moment had been rotated in as a quarterback—decided to forgo that whole passing-the-ball thing that quarterbacks usually do and he actually made a touchdown. And then everyone in the whole league—even the losers who never made any quarterback touchdowns—got trophies. In lieu of a trophy, Uncle Jake got a farmer burn that is making all the farmers he encounters in Chicago shammelessly swoon.

Now I’m home and tired and everything I wore in Iowa—including my shoes—is being boiled in the washing machine. And I get to go back in four weeks for Round II!