There was something else about this one year anniversary that also stuck with us. Neither one of us have lived in one place for a whole year in quite some time. For me it would be going back to 2005 when I graduated from college and lived with my parents while working as a paid intern for several sports related jobs. I lived there for a year and 4 months before I began bouncing around the country. My husband also graduated in 2005 and began a career in New Orleans just months before Hurricane Katrina hit. He lost everything and relocated to Oklahoma 3 short months later. Even though he lived in Oklahoma a year and a half, he had to move apartments a couple of times because of the unusual living situation that was set up. That's another story in itself.
While we may have lived in one city for more than a year, circumstances always had us relocating apartments before the year was over. When we lived in Phoenix, we moved a month before our lease was up because the owners of the apartment complex were building a newer complex closer to our jobs and they offered us a deal we couldn't refuse, in addition to getting out of our lease early. We were a few months shy of our one year lease when we relocated to Pittsburgh. While we were in Pittsburgh, we lived with my husband's father, then found a house in a nice neighborhood, only to find out it had a mold problem 8 months into our lease. We moved into a nice new apartment and life was good except we hated Pittsburgh winters. Then my husband lost his job, I quit mine because it was nothing special, and we moved to North Carolina. We then lived with my parents for 9 long months and bought our own house last year!! We have no itch to move, which is a first!
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| My flower baskets in all their spring glory before the summer heat! They're still alive but you can tell the summer took a beating on them. |
I don't keep as many boxes around ready for the next big move. I've learned that those can go in the recycling. Confession: I still keep really good boxes out of habit. We didn't start hanging anything on the walls until last spring. I unpacked my last box sometime in April but left all of it's contents (picture frames) laying on our guest bed. They're still there. I swear I'm going to hang them up soon. I still don't have a lot on the walls because I'd like to paint soon. When I do hang a picture, I want it to stay there for a while. I have to constantly remind myself, it's a process. We will get there. Until then, I'm feeling quite content with what we've accomplished in just a year!
