moving

I’m Back!

/ Alyxander James / 1 Comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! My apologies for the lack of post last week – I was on the road most of the day and by the time it occurred to me that I hadn’t blogged yet, it was late enough I decided to just skip it entirely.

Last week I was on PTO all week (it was the week of Song School, and even though we decided not to go this year, I’d requested the time off a while ago and decided I should keep it). It turned out to be a good thing – my in-laws moved to a new house, we had a houseguest for part of the week, and it was just generally busier than I expected it to be, and I don’t think I could have worked on top of all of that. It did make me realize that I need to get better at taking vacations that are actual vacations, though.

Last Thursday I drove down to northeast Iowa to kidnap one of my favorite cousins (with her consent, of course) and bring her up to stay with us for a few days. It was really lovely having her here and getting to just hang out and explore a few more places in the Twin Cities that we hadn’t been to yet. My favorite sorts of houseguests are the ones who are okay with just hanging out a lot of the time, and that was definitely the case here. It was great.

On Friday, I started looking up local pet rescues on Instagram, and stumbled across a very sweet looking dog who was up for adoption. We ended up spur-of-the-moment applying to adopt her. Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for her), the rescue determined over the weekend that she needed another dog in the home in order to really thrive, so she’s not the dog for us. We did put in an application for a different dog with another agency, though, and are both anxiously awaiting a response and anxiously hoping we can get the last few things unpacked here before they call.

Today is my husband’s birthday! Not really sure what we’re doing to celebrate, yet, but I’m happy for the extra excuse to celebrate them.

I think that’s about it from me this week. Hopefully next week we’ll have some updates on the canine companion front! I hope you’re all hanging in there and masking and vaxxing and staying as healthy as possible.

Minnesota!

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I will admit I have been completely confused about what day it is all week – between taking all of last week off of work to move, and having Monday off for the holiday, my internal calendar is all sorts of turned around. But hey, I’m here. And by here, I mean in our new apartment in St. Paul!

Moving went about as smoothly as it could have, but it was exhausting. I’m so grateful for the help we had from family and friends, and that we were able to afford movers to load and unload the truck. The new apartment is delightful – it’s spacious and feels like a major upgrade from where we were before.

It feels good to be back in Minnesota. It’s also weird. I’m learning how to navigate the fact that I’m now a couple of states away from the team I lead at work. We’ve all been remote pretty much the entire time we’ve worked together, but it still feels different. I’m slowly starting to reach out to friends here to reconnect, hoping that I can reestablish a sense of community in the Twin Cities. I did have the delightful experience of running into an old friend on the street the other day – she works downtown and spotted me from the skyway and it was so fun to get to see her!

All in all I’m feeling good about where we’re at – we have a lovely home that’s honestly more unpacked than I expected it to be by this point. I have an office to work out of, which is a vast improvement from working out of my dining room. We’re figuring out routines.

I think that’s it from me for this week. I hope you’re all hanging in there!

Counting Down

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers! It is Thursday, and the last Thursday I will wake up in this apartment. Next Wednesday we are packing all our stuff up in a truck and driving to Minnesota, and next Thursday we’re moving into our new apartment!

Related sidebar: there will probably not be a blog next week.

I am a tightly-coiled ball of anxiety this week. I’m struggling to focus on anything aside from the boxes that need filling and the other little administrative tasks that need doing related to the move. But unlike some past instances of anxiety at this level, I’m not totally paralyzed by it, and I haven’t succumbed to the idea that this is just my life now. I know this is temporary, and that I will get through it and come out the other side relatively unscathed. And that’s a nice feeling.

I’m taking all of next week off from work, both to give myself extra time to help my husband finish packing, and to give us the chance to maybe visit a few favorite Chicago spots to say farewell.

It’s weird saying goodbye. I’ve never been great at goodbyes in general, but…I don’t know. Leaving Chicago feels like a big deal. When we moved away from Minnesota to Chicago, it was different – we knew we’d be moving back eventually, and for me at least, there were things in Minnesota I needed distance from. But now returning to Minnesota, while I know that I’ll be back to visit Chicago as often as I can manage it, I don’t know if this will ever end up being a place that I live again. I don’t currently think it’s in the cards, but I guess we’ll find out. Chicago has been a great home for the past 9 years. So many people I love so dearly are here. I made incredible friends. I figured out a lot of what it meant to be Alyx while I was here, and I’m sure that would have been a very different journey without Chicago. I started writing songs again in Chicago, and actually performed them for people – for strangers! I’m sure the next week is going to bring its fair share of tears as we say goodbye to our life here.

At the same time, I’m really excited to be returning to Minnesota. I’m so excited about our new apartment, and I think it’s going to be a fantastic space for us to grow into. There are friends in Minnesota that I’ve missed terribly who will be minutes away now. We’ll hopefully get to be more involved in our nephews’ lives. I’ve already heard from several friends I’d not talked to in a long time who want to reconnect. I think it’s going to be good to be closer to family. While Chicago feels like home to me now, Illinois doesn’t. Minnesota, on the other hand, is home in a sense I can feel in my bones. I noticed it the most when we were driving back from Song School the first year we went. We were swinging through Minnesota on the way home because we’d borrowed my father-in-law’s car for the trip, and the second we crossed the state line into Minnesota, my whole body relaxed, even though logically I knew I was no safer in that part of the state than it had been in South Dakota. I’ve noticed it since then, too, on road trips back to visit family. Minnesota is in my bones, and it’s calling me home.

Like I said, probably no blog next week (unless I’m really on top of things and write it early, but don’t hold your breath). Next time I write, I will officially be in my new place! I hope you’re all continuing to hang in there. Please take care of yourselves and each other.

Brief Thursday Thoughts

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday. It’s going to be a pretty quick blog this week – I have a lot to pack in at work today since they’ve given us tomorrow off in recognition of Juneteenth.

This week I’m delivering performance assessments to my direct reports at work for the first time. It’s nerve-wracking, because I want to be supportive and encouraging and also help them grow and deliver it all in a way that’s motivating rather than paralyzing. The upside is that I was not at all nervous for my own performance assessment this time around – usually I get really in my head about it, but I’ve been so focused on getting assessments written that I didn’t have the brainspace to worry much about it.

Last weekend I dove full-force back into being a social human, and ended up needing to take Monday off to recover (and also because I woke up with a massive sinus headache). Friday night I went out for dinner and drinks with some coworkers, a couple of which I’d never met in person (and then rest of which I’d only seen in person once or twice, basically). It was fun getting to know them a little better IRL, and to see how tall they actually are. Saturday, we got dinner with some dear friends, and then I ended up going over to their house afterward and we wound up playing D&D until 1am (which is SEVERAL hours past my usual bedtime, but it was worth it). I cannot put into words how delightful it was to get to play in person with some of my favorite fellow nerds. And Sunday we got up early to grab coffee with another friend at the park near our apartment, and then I had a virtual D&D game that night (which only went until 10, thankfully). I am definitely swinging wildly between, “I want to see all my friends and do all the things!” and, “I am way too anxious for being social right now.”

We’re down to two weeks away from moving, and I’m trying not to panic. We’ve made good packing progress already. The big thing that’s hanging over my head right now is figuring out how to get rid of the furniture that’s not coming with us to Minnesota. I’m sure it’ll all work out, though.

I think that’s it from me for this week. I hope you’re all hanging in there and taking care of yourselves, whatever that looks like, as many of us start taking our first shaky steps back into social life.

It’s Too Darn Hot

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Greetings, dear readers, and welcome to another Thursday. I am extremely scatterbrained this week. It’s been so hot and sticky here in the Midwest (and I shouldn’t even complain, because it hasn’t been as bad in Chicago as it’s been in the Twin Cities), which always makes me a little crabby. I overheat pretty easily and humidity does weird things to my joints and it’s just hard to focus when you feel like you’re melting. Even though my desk is basically directly in front of our window AC, it’s still pretty humid in our apartment, and it’s like my body knows that it’s hot outside and is responding to that instead of the cool air I keep trying to plant myself in front of.

We’re moving in three weeks and I’m trying (with middling success) not to panic about everything that needs to get packed between now and then. I know it’ll all come together, and we’ve done a good job of making lists and keeping track of all the logistical details, but there’s this part of my brain that is absolutely convinced that I’ve forgotten some major detail somewhere along the line. Anxiety, woo!

This weekend we have a handful of social things set up that I’m looking forward to. And in between packing and socializing I’m trying to decompress with Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing on my Switch Lite (I was knitting a sweater but it is obviously way too warm to have a pile of wool in my lap right now). I don’t play a lot of video games and I don’t play any of them very well, but it’s good to have a thing I can do where my hands are busy but I’m not doom scrolling.

I think I’m going to keep this one short, because I have already gotten distracted after basically every sentence I’ve written, and I don’t have a lot of other coherent thoughts. I hope you’re all hanging in there. I’ll leave you with a clip of the inspiration for the title of this blog post. I’ve seen Kiss Me, Kate exactly once, probably close to 20 years ago, but fragments of this song get stuck in my head every time the temperature rises to uncomfortable levels:

I remember literally nothing else from this movie, but this song spoke to me lol

Time for Change

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I have been all over the place about what day it is this week – I spent most of Tuesday thinking it was Wednesday, most of Wednesday thinking it was Tuesday, and today it feels like Wednesday again. Not sure what that’s about.

Anyway, I’ve been hinting for the last few weeks that big changes were afoot that I couldn’t yet talk about publicly. I’ve announced this to enough of the right people at this point that now I can safely blog about it – my husband and I are moving back to Minnesota! We move into our new place six weeks from today, actually, which is wild.

When we moved to Chicago in 2012, we knew it wasn’t going to be forever – our families are still in the Twin Cities and we knew we’d eventually want to move back to be closer to them. We figured that’d be 7-10 years away. The trouble was, we never changed that “7-10 years away” number in our heads as the years ticked by. Nine years later and we’re realizing it is, indeed, time.

There are so many people I’m going to miss in Chicago, but the weird mixed blessing of 2020 is that most of the places/things we’d have to say goodbye to we’ve…kind of already done that with, since we haven’t been able to do anything in person in over a year. (I’m thinking in particular of the Old Town School and the songwriting community we’re part of here…it’s all been online.)

I will, at least, still be back somewhat regularly for work, so I know I can continue to connect with friends here. I am also genuinely excited to return to the Twin Cities and the friends and family we still have there. We’re moving into a beautiful apartment with in-unit laundry (which has been a dream for forever), and a den where I can set up my office space (no more working out of my dining room). I’m overwhelmed by the process of the move itself, but I’m looking forward to being moved into the new space. I’m super grateful I have a job that I can continue to do remotely even when the rest of my team returns to the office in some capacity.

It’s weird to leave this apartment, though. We got married in this apartment. We’ve learned how to coexist in this one-bedroom space while being together 24/7 over the past year. There have been enough minor annoyances around maintenance that I’m not exactly sad to leave it behind, but it is weird.

So that’s the big news! In other news, next week there will likely not be a blog (or it will go up late) – we’re headed up to Minnesota for a visit over Memorial Day weekend (hopefully bringing up a load of fragile things to store at my parents’ place until the move, and doing a tour of the building we’re moving into, and just seeing family) and will be driving on Thursday at the time that I usually write this blog. If I’m super on top of things and get something written Wednesday night, we’ll all be pleasantly surprised.

Keep hanging in there and taking care of yourselves and each other. I believe in you.

Thursday Ramblings

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s Thursday, and I’m tired.

I’ve been tired all week. I’m fighting an end-of-summer cold, and it’s making mornings especially challenging. Today, at least, I was able to get up and out of the house at a reasonable hour – I’m leading a training at work this morning, so it would’ve been especially problematic if I was late. But I feel like I’m dragging.

The fact that the weather got hot again is not helping matters – I am ready for fall weather. I’m also ready for consistent weather – the constant shifting is really hard on my body – but that’s probably not a realistic wish in Chicago.

I’m not having a bad week, exactly. I’m just low on energy. The weekend was good – I got to play D&D and we got the apartment more settled. I wrote a song I liked for class this week, so that was exciting.

How about you, dear readers? How are you feeling as we wait for the season to really start changing? What’s new and exciting in your lives? I’d love to hear from you.

Progress, Slow and Steady

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

We’re officially done with our old apartment! It took more time to get everything out than we expected it to. We wound up walking out the door for the last time exactly at noon on the 31st, which was exactly when our lease was up.

While the reality of this is still sinking in, it is great that now we can actually focus on settling into our new place. We’ve gotten ourselves together enough that we’ve been able to do some cooking, which always makes a place feel more like home. We’re still getting our stuff organized and figuring out where everything belongs, but we’re making steady progress.

I’m loving our new neighborhood. There are so many lovely trees, and it’s pretty quiet, which is nice. I have to walk a little farther to the bus in the morning, but that’s not awful. Being walking distance from the Old Town School of Folk Music is lovely – my class on Tuesday ended around 9:30, and I was home before 9:45! (In the past, it took 45 minutes to an hour to get home on transit, which made for very late nights.) Tonight, my partner and I are both volunteering at OTSFM – we’re looking forward to having the option of doing that more often!

Life feels pretty okay right now. I just want to nest in our new apartment and make it fully home. It feels like there are a lot of other things happening right now, but nothing I’m ready to talk about yet (some of which I don’t really have words for yet). I’m looking forward to a fall of writing and introspection and creating the space that I need to thrive.

Cleanup

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and apologies for the tardiness of this post! I am in the midst of last-minute cleanup in our old apartment.

I’m currently waiting for a junk removal service to show up to take away the old furniture that didn’t move with us. I’ve been cleaning the stove, oven, fridge, various walls in and around the kitchen, and I’ve been sweeping some of the empty spaces. It’s 1:15pm and I’m already tired. I just sat down on the couch that’s going to disappear in the next hour or two, and I feel like this may have been a mistake – I know I need to move and get more done, but I would much rather nap.

We’re so close to being done. There are things to haul down to the trash, and a handful of things we need to bring back to our new place with us. There’s more sweeping and wall cleaning to do. The freezer is clean, but the fridge isn’t yet. The bathroom still needs to be cleaned. A few closets and cabinets need to be swept out. But we’re almost there.

We have to be out by noon on Saturday. That’s less than 48 hours from now. It’s weird to think this place that we called home for almost 7 years isn’t home anymore. It was our first apartment together, and it served us well, despite the maintenance issues we had over the years.

I’m looking forward to really settling into our new space in the next few weeks. I’m hoping that will get easier when we no longer need to worry about this old apartment.

I think it’s time for me to drink some water and dive back into cleaning. Onward!

It’s All About Community

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Happy Thursday, dear readers! I am getting back into the swing of life after a wild couple of weeks, and I nearly forgot to blog – I keep thinking it’s Friday.

Last week, my partner and I made our way to the Rocky Mountain Song School in Lyons, CO. We got a late start, leaving Chicago for Lincoln, NE around 2:45 Friday afternoon, because we were trying to get the rest of the packing for our move done before we hit the road. We got to our hotel in Lincoln around 1:15am. It made for a short night.

We drove to a friend’s house in Denver the next day. It turned out her roommates were gone, and she was dog-sitting for some other friends, so after we hung out for a while, she left to do that and we had the house to ourselves. It was nice – I was especially exhausted, and was able to crash early.

The next morning, we got breakfast with friends who just moved to Denver from Chicago. It was great to see them, and after we ate we went for a little stroll around the neighborhood to look at street art. Then we drove back to the house, packed up our stuff, and headed up to Lyons. It was a bit rainy on the way there, but thankfully by the time we got there and were setting up, it had stopped.

It was so good to be back at Planet Bluegrass. The details of the individual days are a little muddled in my brain, but it was a great time. Monday I took a couple of classes that involved writing to some prompts, and that generated some ideas that led to me writing a complete set of lyrics to a new song that night. Over the next two days, I worked out music for it (my first attempt was entirely too moody, which I realized after another class), and Wednesday night I got to perform it at the open stage, with eight of my favorite humans, who came up with harmonies literally fifteen minutes before we went on to perform. It was incredible.

Practice

Practicing/learning harmonies 15 minutes before going on stage (Photo Credit: Rah Foard)

Performing

Performing at the open stage (Photo Credit: Rah Foard)

Other highlights of the week:

  • I made it my mission to do new things. I took a bunch of classes that intimidated me, and stayed out of my comfort zone most of the time.
  • I went swimming! It was my first time going shirtless in public (it’s been almost three years since I had top surgery). It felt good.
  • I reconnected with some of my very favorite people. I was surrounded by the most incredible community, and the safety that community created gave me the courage to try new things, take risks, and get out of my comfort zone. I was continuously reminded of how important community is, even to an introvert like me. Life doesn’t happen in isolation.

It’s been a whirlwind since we got back. We got home Saturday evening, and picked my partner’s dad up from Union Station (we borrowed his car for our trip, and so he came down to help us move and to get his car back). Sunday we did a lot of running back and forth between apartments. Monday, I headed off to work, and my partner and his dad coordinated with the movers to get the bulk of our stuff over to the new apartment! At this point, we have I think 99% of our stuff over at the new place, and we’ve been sleeping there all week. It’s a chaos of boxes, but last night my partner got most of the kitchen unpacked (I’m feeling under the weather and crashed early – hoping I can be more useful with the rest of the unpacking), and we HAVE to have everything unpacked by Saturday morning, because that’s when the reusable boxes are being picked back up. So…it’s going to be a bonkers couple of days. But it’s a great new space, and it’s already starting to feel like home.