D-Day.

Last weekend was a furious sprint to the finish line. We had a five o'clock Monday deadline, and two main projects: get out of our apartment, and pack for a year (or two) in Europe. Each one of those tasks alone would have been daunting enough for me, but put them together, add a bunch of heavy emotion, and my only way to cope was to shift into high gear and dive into heavy do-mode Sarah. 

First, getting out of our apartment. As I've mentioned, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to purge - things un-needed, things un-loved, things under-used. We did really well for the most part - we got rid of piles. Like, big piles. But there was still a lot to go through. Marselle stepped up, deploying her discerning eye, ability to snarl then wince her eyebrows to say "Of course you won't keep that" and confidently conclude by gesturing with her hand that we move on. If insulted, in the end, I was elated, even proud, that my piles kept getting bigger as a result. More thanks to Courtney for making a run to Salvation Army (in the pouring rain) and to Michael, even if curmudgeonly, for taking Dave to grab the rental car. And to many more, who are babysitting our plants, babysitting art, babysitting furniture. Ran errands, offered to help. 

Packing for Europe, on the other hand, was - to my surprise - harder. What creature comforts do I want with us? What do we actually need? What will I need to work remotely? What should we re-purchase there to assimilate? It was a hectic tetris of what comes, what stays, and in what bag. Why is packing just so damn hard? 

Overall, I'd say we handled the two projects pretty well. No fighting, we stayed within expected size for our storage unit (including the wrapping paper), and we got rid of lots. of. stuff. 

But the real challenges had nothing to do with our bags or our boxes. Sunday night, I watched Courtney say goodbye to Truffle. I had been thinking a lot about my goodbyes, but this was a moment for which I absolutely didn't prepare.  CB leaned over, in her subtle, barely-detectable-but-is-totally-there southern tone, said genuinely, "Bye girl. We'll miss you." I had considered how Truff would be surprised by the move, how she would miss Hank and Reed and our neighbors that dote on her.  But she and Court were roommates. For years, and she was adored. She was cared for. And here is a goodbye moment that so overwhelmed me, and I had no idea it was coming. In that instant I knew there were about to be a hundred more moments packed into the next two days that I overlooked. Moments and places and people that have given me, given us, so much. Moments and places and people that have made me who I am today, and made me and Dave, us. 

On Sunday, Dave and I took a break and sat in our living room, looking out into an almost-empty apartment and rattled off our favorite memories from our space. Christmases with Abby, Roz, Greg, Sharon, and John. Fires and, embarrassingly, difficulty starting them. Getting engaged and getting married. Lindsey and Matt brunches, late-night Bi-Rite runs. Take out Kasa, eggs on Saturday, runs through the forest. We could feel the gravitas. 

By our deadline on Monday, we looked around and knew that what we were doing was in part possible because of the deep roots we grew in San Francisco. We also knew all along that leaving would be hard. At five (well, six) o'clock, we shed more tears, loaded the car, and drove to SFO. 

Standing in the spot where we took our first photo in the apartment, a teary-eyed last moment with bare walls and an empty room right before we drove off.

And Today We Party

Today, we eat, drink, and be merry. With what I'm sure will be LOTS of tears. Like, crazy amounts of tears. 

Today is our Dave-and-Sarah-Moving-To-Munich party. We're going to see lots of faces and remember lots of moments. I'm trying to remind myself that today is a celebration of the community we've created. It's a celebration that we are just that god damn lucky to have all these people in our lives. 

Today, we're not celebrating our departure. I want to celebrate where we're going, and the beauty we'll have waiting in our home city for our return :)

All Our Worldly Possessions

We've started packing. Okay, that's not quite accurate. We've started cataloging all our worldly possessions, tagging them with the D(ave)-System: bring, store, sell, give. It's incredibly empowering, and frightening, to think that I'm making a decision about the fate of all the things I've acquired over my lifetime in one split moment. In a moment of haste, I could easily miscategorize and tag something sell! Or equally troubling, in a moment of false melancholy, decide to store, only to then pay each and every month to keep an only mildly-wanted item and then be burdened by lugging it around for the rest of forever, obsessing about the sunk cost of keeping it and therefore unable to ever give it away in the future. 

Making hundreds of tiny decisions like this over and over again is exhausting.

I'm exhausted and I haven't even started packing. 

I've always been jealous of my friends who seem to cull their items to a few highly selected pieces. I want to be that person who has a simple, clean, thing-less bedroom. But I've come to realize that's not me. Somewhere along the line, I decided that having a wrapping paper tupperware -- you know, the long, narrow containers made just and especially for this one, very specific thing -- filled with adorable holiday gift wrap and ribbons -- made me feel like an organized adult. So, I have a giant, specialized plastic bin filled with all kinds of blue and silver, reds and greens and golds. I love my wrapping paper tupperware, and I firmly want it tagged "store." Which of course is hard to justify, when you do the math of what it costs to store that tupperware versus what it will cost to replace it upon our return. To say nothing of poor Dave; he's going to have a heart attack when he reads this post and discovers I want to keep my clear, plastic bin filled with giftwrap.

My challenge goes beyond in-home organization. Books are another prime source for my exhaustion. I've kept a few of my favorite texts from college, books that I haven't gotten around to reading. Hearty references like Our Bodies Ourselves, or What Works for Women at Work. So, what am I supposed to do with all these beauties? I so loooove a deep, stacked bookcase. But I just. Don't. Need. Them. All. My project for today is to tidy up my stacks, and make decisions. Lots and lots of tiny decisions, each one feeling bigger than it really is. 

So today, a cold sunny Sunday in San Francisco, three weeks and counting from our departure, I'm trying to balance the desire to purge, need to reduce, and keeping a little bit of Sarah history. Today is about balance. 

My Sunday to-do. 

Our First Post: On Leaving

The thing about moving is that you have to leave somewhere first. 

And now that we have a date, our plane tickets booked, and empty storage bins cluttering our apartment, it's real. We're leaving San Francisco. We're not leaving because of the crazy housing prices, or because of the Google buses (but don't get me started on that). We're leaving because we can. Because we have the greatest, most amazing luxury to pick up, schlep some stuff across an ocean, and hunker down for a year or two in a city that abuts some of the world's best mountains. All while keeping our jobs and bringing our dog. Life's pretty sweet. 

I know our European adventure is going to have a high level of awesome. But until I'm on that plane, my life is here. And it's a joyous, curated, happy life. One that when I take a step back, I can't believe is mine. For starters, my friends are family - which, to be clear, seems like such an understatement it borders insult. The kale is plentiful and year-round local, the IPA is strong, and rolling California hills calm me. This city is filled with bad asses who are literally changing the world, mostly for good. I love that there are enough bike commuters to cause bike traffic, and that a late self-made billionaire funds a free bluegrass festival. I love our curbside composting, and that most people know what is a worm bin when I mention it. I love that Truffle's dog walker, Reed, loves her like she's his own. I love that on the weekends, my girlfriends and I easily have too many options to choose from. I love that everywhere I look, I have memories. Old running routes, places I went with friends, sometimes solo, dates with Dave. Where my 20-something self partied, where Dave proposed, where strangers ate Courtney's birthday cake. The coffee is good, the parks are dog friendly, and on a bad day, the city still is a stunner. But of all of that, hands down the hardest thing to leave will be my people. The people who make this place my magical home. 

So this next phase isn't about leaving; it's about looking ahead. Dave and I are writing our story, and to get there, we need to leave here. There's no way around it, and that makes me sad. 

For weeks, Dave has encouraged me to pack (with an increasing sense of urgency) and for weeks, I've resisted. I want to be here and soak up every last minute of our life on 19th. Even though I know we'll be back, that doesn't make the leaving any easier. What will help, once we're in the air, high up over the Atlantic, is knowing that it's not about leaving San Francisco. Instead, it's about MOVING TO MUNICH! 

-Sarah