There aren’t that many great things about not drinking very much anymore (it’s fine if you’re not drinking because of a problem with drinking, but if you’re like me and are simply trying to not be fat then not drinking very much anymore is BOOOOORING), but one of them is that your tolerance for alcohol goes way down, which means you can get drunk faster with less alcohol. Another one of them is that being drunk takes on an air of silly fun instead of sad, tedious “jesus, this again?” Lastly, one of them is that you’re expected to be drunk on your birthday so nobody comments on how drunk you are or thinks you’re out of line because who cares, obviously you’re celebrating (or mourning, depending on the ever-receding-into-the-distant-past year of your birth).

I guess this is to say that I. Got. DRUNK on my birthday. And it was a pretty good time.

On the day after my birthday, Graham and I went to sign the lease on our new place. It’s always a bit of a kick in the nuts to sign over that kind of money, but we really, really, really like this place and feel that it’s worth it. And although the rent is higher than what we’re paying now, once you factor in the cost we pay at the Laundromat each week and the storage unit each month and realize that we don’t have to pay for either thing in the new place, everything balances out.

We have a month and a few days until Moving Day, and I don’t think I’m bragging when I say that I will have this entire house packed by then. In fact, I’ll have the majority of the house packed a week before the movers show up. It’s not that I’m a particularly motivated person – let’s not ignore the mountain of shit I don’t get done on a daily basis – but this is not my first time at the rodeo. Packing up your childhood bedroom or studio apartment and schlepping over a few blocks is one thing. Moving entire shared households across the country several times takes finesse.

Or something less fancy than finesse, like dogged determination to just get this one thing right this one time, please, you’re a goddamn adult and there’s no reason to make this harder than it has to be.

This week, we’re setting aside the books we plan to donate to the neighborhood Little Free Libraries. And this is no easy task. I’ve already expurgated the titles I no longer want, never liked, or have been holding onto since sometime either pre- or immediately post-2002-ish that are no longer relevant to my interests. I’m currently sitting beside three knee-high stacks of books to be donated to the roving readers of Seattle, and in addition to a mild sense of embarrassment over a teenage interest in Wicca, I’m pretty pissed at myself for hauling these things from St. Louis to begin with. And! (I sputter) before that, at least for some of them, to and from a total of seven different domiciles in three different states.

Jesus, self. Get a hold of your life.

Outside of the books, the most difficult part of the house to pack will be the kitchen. Because if there are two things you can know about me, they are that I read and I cook. I mean, I don’t own any singular bullshit like clip-on magnifying reading lamps or avocado slicers or anything, but there’s just a lot to put away, and if someone a little less experienced was in charge, I don’t think it’d get done right at all.

All other things considered, it helps that we don’t actually have a lot of stuff. Well, not for two 30-something people who have been living on their own since their late teens and who currently share a life. We’ve accumulated our little universe of things, sure, but compared to most people our age, we live pretty small and I’m actually pretty proud of the fact that the hardest things to move from one place to another will be large, inherited furniture and boxes upon boxes of books. Because when you think about it, being able to sit at a desk made by an actual craftsman in the 1940s before it was given to you by your father while you decide on which of your ridiculously numerous pieces of literature to enjoy is not a terrible problem, and it’s certainly less stressful than worrying if some stranger is treating your…your…I don’t know, what silly expensive thing do people get these days? I don’t even know how that works anymore.