Note: You should play this song while reading this post.

Last night, I went back up to our condo at 340 East Randolph in Chicago for one last peek at the amazing views that have been such an integral part of our daily experience since 2015. It was nice to see a little bit of green in the palette, after a particularly brutal winter . . .

Farewell, Glass Box in the Sky!! We will miss you!

Marcia and I pretty much decided that “view” is not going to be a primary determinant in choosing housing from this point forward, since nothing is ever going to live up to what we’ve experienced here on that front. That said, our new home in Des Moines does have a very pleasant vista of the heart of the city, so we’re thankful for and glad about that . . .

The arched bridge at the right-hand side of that photo provides us quick access on foot to the human habitrail that links the entirety of Des Moines’ downtown, so we can easily get anywhere in the heart of the city without a car, regardless of the season. Our neighborhood, the East Village, is also the hopping/happening part of town these days, so there are a lot more credible restaurants and retail outlets there now than there were when we last lived here. We’re not intending to get another car, and I’m going to be a foot, bike, public transit and ride share guy for the foreseeable future, so that density of destinations is helpful. Katelin and John (daughter and boyfriend) live across the street from us, so that’s a wonderful benefit. The Bumble also lives there, so I’ve been getting what passes for regular quality time (three pets, then a bop, hiss, and scratch) with her. Just like old times.

We took custody of our new place on February 1st, and I have been back and forth from Chicago to there numerous times since then, usually bringing a full load of household goods with me. This week, I’m staying in Chicago in a hotel, under my new work paradigm, where I spent one week each month at our office in Naperville, and work remotely from my home office the other three weeks. When I get back to Des Moines next weekend, we have one more small furniture delivery to receive, and one last room in which to hang art and decorate, and then the new nest will be pretty much complete and ready to serve as home for however many years this chapter in our story is going to last. That will feel really, really good after three years of maintaining two residences, and enduring regular long-term separations.

There are some things in life that get easier as you get older and wiser, but moving is not one of them. When I was a kid, we moved regularly with my Dad’s Marine Corps careers. In the early years of our time together, Marcia and I moved twice in Northern Virginia, twice in Idaho Falls, and twice in New York, before settling in for a nice 12-year stint at Cord Drive in Latham — the longest I have ever lived in one place. I used to be really good at moving, both in terms of the physical aspects (Young Strong Man Can Lift All Furniture, Huttah!), and the psychological ones, which in some ways were eased by living most of the time in either military or academic cultures, where everybody was a n00b every year, and nobody was immediately obvious as the “one of these things is not like the other” cast member.

But somewhere along the line, likely after that long spell in Latham, I turned into a grouchy set-in-my-ways old man with a body that feels the effects of every heavy box that I lift for days after I schlep it. Get of my lawn, you kids!! And where are my back pills?!

By virtue of the way that we’ve had our lives set up over the past three years (one apartment and one storage unit in Des Moines, one condo with a storage cage in Chicago), it has taken multiple little moves between those destinations over a two-month period to get us to the point of almost being settled in our new place, so that’s even harder than the usual rip-the-Bandaid approach of quickly hauling a single household to a new place in one fell swoop. So I’m ready to sit. I’m ready to settle. Bring me some tea and my slippers and point me to my comfy chair. I’m good.

Over the next few months, Marcia and I have trips to Florida, the Carolinas and Greece (30th Anniversary!) lined up, and I’m very much looking forward to traveling that does not involve hauling heavy loads, and that has us leaving from and returning to a single destination: Home. I know that this is not our final one of those (we’ll be going somewhere warmer when retirement time rolls around, guaranteed), so that also means that we’ll need to move on at least one more time, and I’ll be older, grouchier, and stiffer when we do it . . . but once it’s done, we’ll have a new base of operations for new adventures, just as we do now, and that’s a comfort and a blessing, all things considered.