A month or so ago, my husband was driving on the freeway when the dashboard lights began flashing. He immediately drove home and made an appointment with a mechanic (because it’s always something, right?).

He enlisted me to help him deliver the car to the mechanic, so within a week we headed to the shop realizing only when entering the mechanic’s parking lot that we had forgotten his car. That’s right. He was in my car with me as we drove together to drop off his car.

Neither of us noticed this error. What is wrong with us? Have the events of the past five years (two moves, one pandemic, three different pastorates for him and four different jobs for me) finally taken their toll?

We might be losing it but at least I didn’t unpack fully so it’ll be easier to move all our earthly belongings three miles up the road on March 10, our Official Moving date. I’m looking forward to unpacking and finally finding everything that I’ve lost since June. Maybe even, my brain.

I can’t wait though I am full of the kind of dread that is giving me nightmares that involve performing music that I have never practiced.

I’m alone in my living room with the remains of Christmas taunting me. I need to pack everything away and then tote it to the new house we’ll be renting in February.

That’s right. We are moving for the second time in a eight months to a different rental house–this one owned by friends we’ve known for forty years. It’ll be more spacious and newer. (Our current rental was built by our landlord’s dad in 1954.) We expect to be able to stay for a long time in the next house.

Our current rental has been fine–and the price was half of current market value–but the lease was for one year and then it would be month to month. I felt so unsettled and when the opportunity came to rent the other house three miles away, we jumped at it.

(I should mention that two or three weeks ago, I was getting ready on a Monday morning when I heard a loud bang/thump. I optimistically told myself that maybe one of the boys downstairs dropped something heavy but sure enough, I was wrong. A short time later, my husband knocked on the bathroom door to tell me that there was water in the basement and so I hurried downstairs to find the hot water tank spewing water into the cement basement which is filled with cardboard boxes and plastic totes because I never fully unpacked here because there isn’t enough space for everything.

I rushed to move the cardboard boxes onto the totes and out of the path of the water and then–in my nightgown, mind you–I began to deal with the water. First I called the landlord to find out how to turn off the water to the house, cranked it off and then splashed through the water and began using a cruddy wet-vac I found tucked into a corner of the basement. Two of my adult kids watched, my husband came down, the neighbor came over and finally, someone took over the wet-vac so I could finish getting ready and go to work.

At any rate, the Serv-Pro people eventually appeared to set up huge fans and rip up carpet. They tore out a wall and finally deemed it “dry” and now I have to meet with an insurance adjuster even though I’m just a tenant. It’s been a nightmare, really, but I remind myself that at least it’s not my insurance and it’s not my problem.)

Anyway. Now we are going to move. In our spare time.

We have given ourselves two months to complete the move, though, and will that be worse or better? Yes.

Christmas comes early when you work retail but then it picks up speed and goes by so fast you wonder how it’s already January. All our kids were here this year, in addition to my mom, and we had a really good day (except for an incident between two adult kids that ended in tears which is ridiculous but also reminds us that we are all human beings with feelings and misunderstandings).

I hope it’ll be a good year or at least a year without a water catastrophe and one in which I can fully unpack and find my scissors among other things.