(Raquel’s song) Movin’ out

I am sitting at the island in my new house, as I write this. Having between 4 to 5 grown adults under one roof squeezed the life out of my parents and their solution to quarantine was finding a new place to live. I don’t mean this to sound bougie. We’ve been house-hunting for the past 7 years and now, after all that time, we finally have something to show for it. 

Moving has been incredibly hectic and crazy, with me misplacing almost everything I need and everybody collapsing in bed at the end of the day from exhaustion. I’ve always loved looking at houses, particularly those that I cannot afford. So when my parents asked me to come check out a house, not too far from our current house, I was eager to walk through it and judge whether or not I felt like I could live there. 

After spending 13 years in a house that we outgrew in about 6 months, we were eager to move, and being on top of each other during quarantine helped jumpstart us into a house-hunting frenzy. We made extensive changes to our house and made it ready to sell, which it did within 21 hours of being on the market. 

My brother and his friends helped us move our stuff into our new house, becoming sweat-drenched and exhausted, lifting boxes in and out of stuffy houses, along with the moving company, “GTFO.” Technically, for these guys, “GTFO” stands for “get that furniture out,” since this is south Georgia, but I think we all know what they really mean. The day was a brisk 93 degrees, which never fails to make heavy-lifting so much easier. 

I’ve spent the last couple of days unloading my family’s oversized book collection into what we now call “the book nook” as well as helping organize the kitchen, since those are the two jobs that we deemed my spindly arms capable of doing. 

The house has copious amounts of character and a style that fits my family just right. I’m going to miss the old place because I have so many fond memories there. One time I took a garden hoe and started axing a tree in my backyard in order to make it thinner, because my imaginary friend, Lucky, had her parents visiting and they were allergic to fat trees. 

The tree still has a long line down the middle of it to this day. 

There was also the small bust that my parents had in the hallway that I would makeout with on occasion, as a child, but mostly only to shock my friends. A friend and I once dressed my dog, Lady, up in my old “Beauty and the Beast” dress, which prompted her to run-away for the 9th time, on the spot, while my mom tried to take a picture.

I had two pets while living there, both of which died over the course of living at that house. I started off at a private, Catholic elementary school and graduated from the local public high school in that house. I learned how to tie my shoes, learned that I had gotten accepted into college, and endured most of my speech therapy in that house. While I have made better strides in my quest at being a friend to the environment and to small animals, I had been on a very steep learning curve whilst living in that house, but now I’m happy to move on to other things.

I’m looking at my new house as an opportunity to put all of my stuff into different and interesting places. I will, for instance, have to figure out where to put my 3’x4’  framed poster of Marilyn Monroe and my full-scale, Shawshank Redemption Raquel Welsh poster that borders on old school soft porn.

We have a pool at our new house, which I have practically been living in, perfectly in line with my swimming-loving, water-sign self. I’d love to have more guests over when we are no longer at risk of COVID, but right now I’m letting my friends come by so long as they socially distance with masks. 

I’m here for the long haul, most-likely doing my second year of SLC from the deep south, via zoom call for the next semester and thankfully will be in my new house. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel