One of the things that I didn’t really mention on the blog was that I moved over the summer. One of these days my life will be more settled and I’ll maybe even have a house that I live in, but today is not that day.

I was thinking back as to how many different places I’ve lived in since moving away from my childhood home to college.  Quite a few really—the dorm, my first apartment in Cleveland, basically another two apartments there, my place in Charlotte, back to Cleveland (3 different places) and now 3 different places here.  I’ve become an expert on moving really, and on packing and unpacking.  (Let’s see, that makes 11 places I’ve lived as an adult, and 3 before. Not counting long summer festivals! How many of you have lived in at least 14 different places for at least 9 months each?

Well, I lied. I’m hardly an expert on unpacking. Or any of those things. I just know I do it, and it is always a big pain! One thing that helped was that we had been saving all the boxes in the basement, so I didn’t have to stress over finding quality boxes. Another pro tip: you can just BUY moving boxes to begin with and then reuse them over and over. If you are a checklist type of person, there’s a neat little checklist from Real Simple that could be helpful.

My latest move was a bit of a challenge due to a timing constraint. We had to be out of the old place by a certain date, but weren’t guaranteed the keys for the new place until… the same date. It turned out we were able to get the keys the night before and drop off a few things, but it was a stressful time. I wasn’t sure if we needed to rent a storage place or if we’d need to park a truck somewhere overnight. In the end, the old landlord was super cool and we ended up hiring movers to load up, and then there was a brief window of time to frantically clean before the final walk through.

Other things I’ve learned about moving. The older you get, the less likely you want to do the move yourself. It isn’t that bad to hire movers. I’ve done moves all by myself in my car, I’ve rented a truck  and driven it (never again), I’ve rented a truck and hired movers, and this time, I rented movers and a truck. It was definitely the easiest and lowest stress option. It was a bit more expensive, and the stress was hoping that they would finish up in the amount of time/money I thought it would be, but it was a safe move and nothing got broken. And my friends do enough for me: I can’t ask them to help me move anymore, and I’m not willing to do it for them! Also by the time you pay for pizza and beer for everybody, it’s really only a little move to just have somebody else do it for you. (So yeah, that means I don’t help friends move either, sorry I’m not sorry, even though I work out 😉 )

I suppose the final suggestion to make moving easier would be to stop doing it so much, settle down, buy a house, that kind of thing. But, as I say, life’s an adventure, and moving is part of that. Getting to live in different neighborhoods and experience different places is part of the fun!

What does it mean when you have to stretch a bit BEFORE you get out of bed? Or that you lie there for 15 minutes attempting to garner the courage to try to walk?

It means that yesterday I was a little insane and ran BEFORE I went to the gym for leg day. A friend wanted to run in Tower Grove Park and the weather was amazing, so I had to do that, but I also needed to get my squats, lunges, and deadlifts on.

So that meant that this morning I felt like I’d been run over by a truck. Luckily today’s gym session was upper body….

My friend April cooked dinner last night—we wanted to hang out but wanted to save some money, so she made a yummy noodle dish, and then we drank wine and had ice cream and solved all the social injustice in the world.  (Well, one of those isn’t quite true, but it would be nice.)

Doesn’t the bowl look awesome?

Recently a friend told me that my instagram account (hannahviolin, come follow me, oh wait, then I can’t resuse all my photos…) was sad, because it had devolved into only cat pictures. I made a vow right then and there to do better. Not that there is anything WRONG with cat pictures, but that I do actually have a couple other things going on.

Wedding on Saturday at the Provincial House Chapel at UMSL—I loved the organ and the whole place was really beautiful.

My student (this is the student who once came into a lesson wearing a horsehead mask) showed up in this shirt. I requested a picture, which he was embarrassed by but I told him of course I would cut off his head. Not literally, or else you’d see more blood.

I’m leaning towards sucking it up and doing the mud run. I need to stop being afraid and get back out there, and I have this vision in my head of a Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White type of transformation.  That might be overdramatic, but I just have to get up early, drive there, do it, and I always feel awesome about myself after I do crap like that. I’m not going to take any pictures if I do, because I’m not risking that, so unless the pros get some, it’ll be like it didn’t happen, but heck, why not.  That’s my two cents about it. I might change my mind and decide I need to sleep on Saturday instead, and that’s okay too, but I know if I go I’ll have a good time. It’s not too late to register if you want to, and the link goes to my first post about it where there’s a coupon code.

Alright, I’d better shower and attempt to practice violin (arms…soooo…tired….)