All Over Again

Anyone remember this picture?

I'll give you a hint--it was posted here almost exactly a year ago. The post that accompanied it talked about moving Boy#4 into a new apartment, and how (boo-hoo!) this was the last child I would be moving into a grown-up apartment and (waaaaah!) where had the years gone? and (sob-sniff!) I was now old and unneeded.

Hahahahaha!

As it turns out, I was JK-ing all over the place about that, except for the feeling old part, which was true, and the boo-hoo-ing part which was most definitely true at the time. Yesterday Husband, Four and I spent the day apartment-hunting. It turns out that engineering jobs in the oil industry are volatile (Ha, ha! See what I did there?) and that if your company is bought out and your division divested, you may be moving.

But guess what? A new job just might be FIVE HOURS closer to the House on the Corner, where your mother is doing a happy dance that not only is the job geographically more accessible, it is in a field that is much less likely than the oil industry to require piano-playing fingers be sacrificed to machinery.

However, it does require another apartment and another move, and so there we were again, talking to perky young things about security deposits and on-site maintenance crews and fitness centers with flat-screen televisions. It took me back decades to when my mother and I were looking for my first grown-up apartment, and I was SO EXCITED by the thought that there was a clubhouse and a swimming pool. Know how many times I used the clubhouse and/or the swimming pool during my two years in that apartment? Once. For a get-together for family and friends immediately after the Best Wedding Ever, after which I moved into Husband's house and never lived in the apartment again. Base your apartment decisions on whether the carpet is stinky and not whether there is a fitness center, is what I'm saying.

Anyway. It was a good day, and Four now has some excellent options for apartments. I have cautioned him against stinky carpets, his father has harrumphed about desirable neighborhoods, and both of us have realized that Four is a grown-up and this is completely his decision and we're backing out of that now.

Oh, and we've reminded him that his new grown-up job comes with a moving allowance, which means he will be hiring someone else to schlep the couch and washing machine down the stairs of his current apartment and up the stairs to his new digs.

I love being the mother of grown-ups. It's all opinion and no muscle, which is just the way I like it.