If a cow ever got the chance...

Hi. I'm sitting here with all my possessions, approximately 1/4 of which are now in gigantic cardboard boxes.

It's still 12 days until I move.

The first problem is that on ten of those days, The Company requires my presence. I don't think I can take a sick day because a zillion projects will be crossing my desk and I have to successfully rid myself of them in a timely manner or face a gentle but pointed "talk" with the sub-boss.

(I've been writing way too much about work lately. That's because my social life sucks rocks right now, for a variety of reasons that I can't really go into.)

Anyway, the second problem is that my parents are helping me move. This is a mixed blessing from a logistical standpoint--I mean, if they enlist my uncles, there would be no less than five pickup trucks at the ready, and I am absolutely grateful for their help--but on the other hand, it means that I need to be completely packed, apartment cleaned, all the formalities completed with old and new landlords, by the time the parents show up at 7 a.m. on moving day. They hate and fear Chicago with a passion (except for the Art Institute, and possibly the stretch of Michigan Avenue immediately across from it). It makes me sad, because there is nothing I would like better than to have them stay for a weekend and show them around--the Botanical Garden, the bike path on the lakefront, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Indian restaurants on Devon Avenue--but it won't happen.

My mom was talking about coming down "for the weekend" to see the Chihuly glass exhibit at the Garfield Park conservatory and hang out at my apartment. What this morphed into was the parents driving me back from Wisconsin on Sunday morning. We ate at one of those slightly-more-upscale Taco Bell places in Schaumburg and went to the conservatory for about 45 minutes. Then they dropped me off at my apartment and tore out of there. Total elapsed time in the Chicago area: about 2.5 hours. That's two hours longer than they normally stay.

It baffles me and hurts my feelings slightly. They say they have a long drive back, but as soon as they get past Rockford (about an hour outside the city limits, give or take), suddenly there will be extended stops for breakfast or lunch or the antique mall or some random farm-equipment auction. (I know because I hear of all this later.) They just don't like the city. The traffic, the prices, the panhandlers and crazy people.

Sooo... what this amounts to is that the fleet of trucks will be leaving their house around 3 a.m. on moving day, to arrive here by 7. Possibly even earlier. If they have to stay overnight because I wasn't packed, I will permanently assume the role of least favorite child...

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