ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

This time tomorrow my roommate and I will be homeowners. And land owners.

Tomorrow afternoon we’re closing on our new house, and I’ve been working for so long to bring this to fruition that I can scarcely believe it’s really finally happening. We’ve been working on the search for and purchase of a new home for about six months now, and it was a long and arduous, but rewarding, process. Thanks to my good credit score and her strong work history, we succeeded in the end. About two months ago I got transferred from my old branch of our company up to a store in Kansas City in preparation for our coming move, and the resulting commute in combination with my school and home purchase activities really sucked, but it’s over now! We’re moving this Saturday, and I’m seriously looking forward to it all being over. I just hope the internet will be set up by then.

We have chosen the Salvation Army to be the recipient of all the belongings we are discarding, as the Lawrence DAV store went out of business (smelled funny anyway), and we reject Goodwill as no good profiteers. So later this week the local chapter will be the lucky owner of all our old crap, stacked in a three foot pile in the living room and including such items as

• almost new Gryffindor sweatshirt; unfortunately was gift in size 3XL
• 1955 Webster’s Unabridged, missing numerous key pages
• felt Pikachu pillow, rendered Vishnulike after glued-on arms each split in half
• Go Fish spinning game; very difficult, missing two “poles”
• children’s “Read To Me” Bible with large color illustration of Sodom & Gomorrah
• trendy Gilligan style Hello Kitty hat
• Lite Brite, missing all paper inserts but including many colored pegs
• pastel unicorn statue, sans horn
• entire set of classy Family Dollar drinking glasses
• discarded Pokemon wallet, decorated with glitter nail polish and stickers
• festive plastic Santa Claus & reindeer gelatin mold
• approximately 150,000 brand new 8-12 cup coffee filters (ours is a 4 cup maker)
• romance novels, such as “The Captain’s Conquest” and “The Merry Widows”

As glad as I am to be finally getting moved, I’m going to miss both Lawrence and our apartment. I don’t really have any friends to speak of left in Lawrence, so I couldn’t really give much of a shit less about that aspect of things, but I like our apartment (aside from the neighbors), and I’ll miss living in a city where I can walk all over town in the dead of night and with tons of shops in close walking distance from our home. My bedroom here is a good size, and my new bedroom is much smaller and won’t have a closet. And we’ll only have one bathroom. But somehow it feels like it’ll all be worth it. The garage, basement, deck, driveway, acre of land, creek, fenced yard, shed, laundry room, and hardwood floors reassure me. And all the spacious apartment bedrooms in the world couldn’t replace the feeling of “it’s ours”.