Packing

For me, historically, the most difficult part of the Spring Finals Week has not been the exams and papers. Rather, it has been the process of packing and moving all of my belonging from here to there, wherever there may be. This year, packing presents some new challenges. First, because of the acquisition of a new, black wardrobe, I now have more clothes than usual to fit into my luggage. Secondly, over my three years here, I seem to have acquired an overly prodigious quantity of books. Perhaps naively, I have convinced myself that I will one day reread them (or read them for the first time as the case may be), and as a result I now have a goodly portion of these books here in storage. Following upon this fact is the realization that in order to put new things in my limit storage space, I am going to have to take old things home. This is the rub - my car was full when I arrived in the fall and now I have more than I had then. So, where is it all to go when I begin the 600 mile trek back to my home. Moreover, where is it to live once it arrives at home. My father has been patient with me using his house for storage over the course of my education, but his willingness to continue operating in such a capacity is, I fear, reaching its limits. I'm never sure which box of books will become the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. The time is coming when I will have to pay rent by means of the greenback or the sweat of my brow. I relish neither of these options.

A further challenge presents itself in the fact that after packing, I will not be going home immediately. Rather than my typical one-day trek along I90, this trip will include a brief interlude in Rochester and a fair bit of dilly-dallying in Iowa for the ordinations of friends. As I will be driving with classmates to Iowa, I am faced with the prospect of leaving my car with all of my worldly belongings in a strange parking lot. It isn't that I am distrustful. But, when it comes to security, my car rates rather more toward the bottom of the scale. Plus, because of my small town roots, I just don't like leaving my car unattended for more than a couple of hours.

Misery, it is said, loves company. I'm not sure that packing at the end of the year qualifies as misery, but at the very least, writing this post has allowed me to prolong the inevitable moment when I must begin that much longer. At least I've got that going for me . . .