Lauren and I packed the last of her things into the minivan yesterday and moved them out of her apartment. It’s the end of an era.
The 302mies – Lauren, Aleksia, and Anita – spent three years in that apartment. It was a pretty nice place – not the lap of luxury by any means, but a decent enough apartment for three university students. It was across the street from a Kwik-Trip, a critical fact in Wisconsin, and only a couple of blocks from the football stadium. It served them well. But they’ve all graduated now – Lauren twice – and they’re heading off to other things. Not too far off, it has to be said, at least not right away – they all have jobs in the city now, though that happened over a long enough stretch of time and with enough uncertainty in the current labor market that continuing to live in that apartment wasn’t really an option.
We’ve been slowly moving Lauren’s stuff back home to Our Little Town, one minivan-load at a time, because it is a whole lot easier to do it that way than it is to rent a truck and try to get into that parking lot on the day when every lease in the city turns over. Ask us how we know that sometime. Fortunately Lauren is a pretty ruthless editor of her stuff and almost all of the apartment’s furniture was leaving with Aleksia or Anita, so aside from trying to fold a foam mattress into the van it was pretty unproblematic.
I will say, though, that the dolly Kim and I bought back when we were still selling homemade soap at craft shows was some of the best money we ever spent.
The nice part about doing this in multiple trips is that it takes a while so there was time for Lauren bring her friend Olivia down for dinner on Wednesday. The rabbit got involved and there were many tarot readings because why shouldn’t there be. I don’t believe anyone tried to do a reading for the rabbit, which was probably an oversight, but we had a lovely time together anyway. Good food in good company is one of the secrets of life, I think.
The 302mies – Lauren, Aleksia, and Anita – spent three years in that apartment. It was a pretty nice place – not the lap of luxury by any means, but a decent enough apartment for three university students. It was across the street from a Kwik-Trip, a critical fact in Wisconsin, and only a couple of blocks from the football stadium. It served them well. But they’ve all graduated now – Lauren twice – and they’re heading off to other things. Not too far off, it has to be said, at least not right away – they all have jobs in the city now, though that happened over a long enough stretch of time and with enough uncertainty in the current labor market that continuing to live in that apartment wasn’t really an option.
We’ve been slowly moving Lauren’s stuff back home to Our Little Town, one minivan-load at a time, because it is a whole lot easier to do it that way than it is to rent a truck and try to get into that parking lot on the day when every lease in the city turns over. Ask us how we know that sometime. Fortunately Lauren is a pretty ruthless editor of her stuff and almost all of the apartment’s furniture was leaving with Aleksia or Anita, so aside from trying to fold a foam mattress into the van it was pretty unproblematic.
I will say, though, that the dolly Kim and I bought back when we were still selling homemade soap at craft shows was some of the best money we ever spent.
The nice part about doing this in multiple trips is that it takes a while so there was time for Lauren bring her friend Olivia down for dinner on Wednesday. The rabbit got involved and there were many tarot readings because why shouldn’t there be. I don’t believe anyone tried to do a reading for the rabbit, which was probably an oversight, but we had a lovely time together anyway. Good food in good company is one of the secrets of life, I think.
Lauren and I unpacked the van yesterday and distributed her stuff around the house and into the garage, depending on the specific nature of the stuff in question. Eventually we went over to the County Fair, a place that used to be our second home, back when Lauren and Oliver were in 4H. It features a wide variety of livestock – rabbits, dairy cows, beefers, pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys, and goats – and an even wider variety of moderately nonlethal food, most of which can be had for only slightly higher than reasonable prices but you know it’s the Fair and that’s what you do. They also have a booth that has the best fried cheese curds in the county, and in this state that is a highly coveted award. There was a country act filling the night with music. We debated what was the best thing we spent too much money on that turned out to be worth it. We had a good time together.
Tomorrow Lauren will head out for an Adventure and we won’t see her for quite some time, but we’ll be here when she gets back and we’ll look forward to hearing her tell the stories.
All eras end. New eras begin. That is the nature of eras.
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