When I was in college, I was an English major, philosophy minor. First of all, I know, way to make a splash in the job market, right? My business major friends thought this course of study was amusing, too.

Secondly, yes, I realize academia isn't the best way to start a post on a blog that you all have come to view as, um, not super academic.

I promise, it won't be. But having cast aside my course books year ago - Aristotle and Plato, Kant and Hegel - I've been straining to remember their most compelling theories. Aristotle was all about being moderate, right? Kant was into theoretical maxims (which, full diclosure, I had to look up right now because I'd forgotten, and immediately got anxious trying to wrap my head about the Wikipedia synopsis of his work).

Then there is Nietzche, his quest to overcome life's meaninglessness; his concept of an "Ubermensch," or superman. None of which I'll ever forget because I studided Nietzsche for an entire semester during a solemn class focused fully on his work. Our exam took place in our professor's office, lit solely by dim desk lamp, and consisted of him asking us each questions about Nietzche's philosophy while our classmates waited, worried, in the hallway. And worried was the correct way to feel, because when your life consists of taking three hour long naps whenever you feel like it and occasionally dancing on the bar at this place Beckett's we went to every Thursday night, and this guy is expecting you to chat casually about nihilism and get graded on that, well then, yeah, that's an intimidating situation.

The reason I'm telling (possibly boring) you with these details of my college days, is that I've been thinking about life lately in ways that I can only define as philosophical. Believe me, I realize this is amusing coming from someone who spoke out loud to herself in the car this morning about the need to attain a properly fitting bra, for the love of god, you are 40-years-old. But "philosophical" is the only way I can explain it.

Some of this is most certainly because of age. People say you start caring more about the right things as you get older, and I'd like to add my solid agreement to that oft-spoken refrain.

Some of it is because of recent life events, most notably my father dying, and my slowly but surely emerging from consistent moments of real grief, to consitent moments of real content, happy memories being untangled from unhappy feelings, and the ability to imagine, or feel (I don't really know which) his presence in a way that is useful. For instance, when I drove through a freak Connecticut storm which apparently resulted in TWO tornados the other day, and asked my dad WHAT THE HELL WAS HAPPENING while I drove, white-knuckled, down the Merritt Parkway. It wasn't so much that I was envisioning his spirit intervening. More that I was relievd to share my exclamations of utter fear with someone I knew so well during an experience that, otherwise, I would have had to stumble through all alone. This is the kind of funny-now-that-it's-over, near-death-but-not-really-experience he would have enjoyed hearing about when he was alive. Except for the part where he would have inevitably become very anxious about my almost driving straight through a tornado.

This welcome change isn't because of anything I did right or wrong; just time, I think, and good company.

Some of my recent pensiveness is because I've watched friends go through incredibly difficult things. And on a much less personal note, it's because I've watched people I don't know go through incredily difficult things on the national news. I think that asking yourself why life delivers such tragedy, the correct responses are 1) to fix the fixable problems to the best of your ability and 2) to live your life with integrity.

Integrity is what I'm really talking about here. Doing the little and big things right. It's not what one typically thinks about when yelling, carefree and fearless, about the brevity and meaning, of this dazzling, sweet life: "You only live once!!! I'm going to do go home and get all my chores done with so much goddamn integrity."

And yet, due to all the reasons listed above, and perhaps most of all, due to our newfound feeling of finally settling here in Connecticut - making our home comfortable, getting our routines organized and planning for the future responsibly, and for fun - integrity seems like the most important quality to achieve, throughout every hour of the day.

I've always been able to imagine living a contemplative, purposeful life. Back in the days I was part of a young, captive audience in my Modern Philosophy class at B.U., where our charming, excitable professor with his white, unruly hair would - I swear - get so pumped about Kant that he'd hop up and click his heels together in middair, for instance.

And I'm not saying I've been a moral washout, or that I haven't completed tasks carefully in my time. What I'm saying, instead, is that recently, and for the first time ever, I've been better able to give equal weight to the many responsibilities so many of us struggle with on a daily basis; to see all the parts of my complicated schedule - constantly changing gears between parenthood and writing and ensuring the dog doesn't see that chipmunk across the street from our house and throw herself in front of a moving vehicle - as the necessary, interlocking pieces that yield success in the passing weeks.

While many of these tasks are annoying (going to the DMV to get a sticker on my license to prove I moved to a new town so I can register my children at their new school, despite the fact that I will also be bringing proof of home purchase and several utility bills, comes to mind) I feel much more patience to do them. Register for school to leave time for other important work. Carefully plan the kids' schedule for when I'm out of town later this week so that I can attend a long-awaited reunion with best friends from childhood. Get the passenger-side mirror fixed on the car, because it keeps falling off and hanging by a wire, and while I feel no real urgency regarding this issue, J says it's going to snap off completely someday and hit another car, and we'll get sued.

Put a load of school clothes in the laundry in so that we can sit, as we did Sunday night, on the front step, watching neighbors go by, eating cherries and some truly awful concoction that Gabriel had made from Hershey's kisses and Lemonheads. Nora asked how I knew everybody and I explained that I didn't; saying hi to the passing walkers and cyclists was simply a nice thing to do.

I spent a lot of time as a new parent worrying about when I'd have time to do the most important things (a topic I've written and talked about dozens, probably hundreds of times before, so thank you for still being my friend). I got so caught up in it. I've often lamented the fact that Nora was such an easy baby, I could have written a book or lauched a company during my maternity leave with her. But I didn't do that because I was so worried about the fact that she didn't like to nap in her crib, and how would she ever nap at daycare? And one million other nagging concerns about my identity and career plan now that this baby was so dependent on me.

Now, only now, because of time and experiences and all the other lessons tied up in the works of great philosophical minds and classic rock and roll lyrics, do I see that that time was spent in the only way I could possibly spend it. Worrying with new friends who'd become lifelong friends; spinning anxieties I'd someday write about, and continue to write about, again and again, possibly too much. I know. I'm sorry.

Before I go off the deep end and have to actually email some of my old professors to talk this through, which would surprise and probably not delight them, I'll, instead, share a moment I witnessed on the drive home from drop-offs this morning: two moms with strollers in their exercise gear, walking quickly, lost in conversation. I saw them and thought about it again. Integrity. Then I heard the thunk of the passenger-side mirror coming unhinged again.

I came home and, before sitting down to my computer, walked to our newly-designated junk drawer, retrieved the super glue, went back outside and cemented the mirror to its base, carefully counting to sixty seconds to ensure it held.

Now listen, J, and probably lots of other people who are judging me, I realize that this isn't the correct way to fix a car. Yet in that moment I felt an intense pull to get something done. In order to get the more important things done. And in order to drive confidently down the streets of our new neighborbood with less fear that I'm going to hit other cars or pedestrians with minivan parts. Saving energy wasted on that small concern for waving hi to strangers. Summoning spirits during thunderstorms. You only live once.

Next week, barring any major catastrophes or nervous breakdowns, both of which are possibilities, we will be moving from the house we moved into almost exactly ten years ago in New Haven, to our new house in Hamden, just one town away.

There are the emotional things about moving, even when it's not very far, which I'll probably write about more in the coming weeks and some of which I'll probably share, teary-eyed, with our Morris Cove neighbors over drinks as we prepare for this next chapter.

Then there are the mechanics of it. The stuff that make moving one of the most stressful life events, at least according to the experts. And lately, I've been talking about those parts of the move with a lot of people. With everybody. Even strangers. Constantly. I get it. It's annoying.

The reason - and those of you who have moved understand this - is that it's all consuming. It's so exciting, yes, to be moving to a roomier house, into a school system and schedule that will make our life a lot simpler, and closer to J's new job which is pretty far away from where we live now.

But this part of it. The packing/managing-of-home-improvement-projects/losing-sleep-over-details part of it, I could do without. We're in a nice position, because we are getting our house ready to sell as we're moving into the new place. Nice, because this allows us time to move in slowly, carrying cratefuls of clothes and random small appliances over a carful at a time instead of having to pack everything we own carefully into boxes at a rapid pace, although we have been doing some of that, too.

Packing everything carefully into boxes, by the way, is not a strength of mine. The other day I told J I wasn't feeling helpful enough. What could I pack? Dishes? Books? He gently answered, "Why don't you let me do it?"

My jobs have fallen more into the management category. Ensuring we got our trim painted and sections of wall patched in our old house, and being the point person for home improvement projects on our new one. It sounds fine, typing it out in nice organized sentences like this, but the truth is I've driven myself crazy in recent weeks consdering all the details, budgeting and trying to answer tough questions that are not even remotely tough in the grand scheme of things, and then getting mad at myself for engaging in such superficial stress, causing a constant, internal, somewhat abusive self-directed rant: "Why won't the light in the basement stairway turn on? Should we pay someone to fix it? Could we fix it? What are you even doing with your life???"

In some ways this move is much cushier than the one we experienced all those years ago, packing everything we owned in North Carolina into U-Hauls by ourselves, and driving it hundreds of miles away. We are hiring a moving company to take the reins this go round, and if we leave some stuff behind, no problem; there will be plenty of time to retreive our belongings before we turn the keys over to someone else.

It's more complicated, too. Now we've got kids with busy schedules, and at least slightly higher expectations, which prompted us to do a few things - mainly painting - at our new house before moving in, knowing that once we got settled, we were far less likely to take action. So there's simply more to keep track of this time around.

I've been trying to identify what makes this process so anxiety-producing. Why I can't just wake up, make a list of to-do items and get it done? Why do I feel like I'm having a low-level heart attack for hours at a time?

I think there are a few factors. One is that people are constantly asking us about the move, and it's kind of like when people ask how things are going at the end of pregnancy. No matter how much you're dying to talk about it, you want the answer to be, "It's going great, in fact it's DONE NOW!" But it seems like that will never be the answer and you'll live in this uncertain state forever. I don't mind when people ask me about it, don't get me wrong, because remember, I love to talk about it constantly. I just wish my my responses contained less existential angst.

Another factor is that there are so many moving parts. Projects you have to do, or that maybe you've hired someone to do. Movers to schedule and pay and boxes to pack. Decisions to make about furniture and paint colors. Again, all this seemingly superficial stuff. But it's tiring nonetheless. And then you think you're done, and you're so not done because, wait, how am I supposed to know what pattern I want those tiles in?!? UGGGGGGH. Remember when I used to stress myself out about politics and career goals? And getting enough exercise or at least some exercise or at least having only one Reese's peanut butter egg in a sitting post-Easter, because face it, they DO NOT make you feel better.

I guess it's all of it. It's the emotion tied to the logistics tied to the massive sea change of moving just nine miles away. In one moment I'm realizing I have no idea where to go to the grocery store in this new neighborhood and in the next I'm getting super emotional during my daughter's school musical, not only because she's doing a great job, but because she's not going to go to this school anymore, a school she's gone to since she was just three-years-old. It's getting a new bed and letting go of the one I bought in my early twenties, just beginning to realize what I wanted out of life, and a bed was a good place to start. It's piling toys into bins and hauling bins to the car, and trying to make this next step go just right because you've waited for what's next for all these years.

It's all of that. And it's funny, because I keep telling the kids that change is hard, and it's ok for them to sad about moving on to a new school, and having their own rooms. But everyone seems to have worked it out in their own, healthy ways. I think that my clenched-chest and middle-of-the-night wakeups might be my way of dealing with all this change, because the truth is, moving on is really difficult for me.

Thankfully I tend to find healing powers in identifying the problem.

It's ok. Buying grout is unfamiliar territory, and so is hoping the new neighbors like our family. Slowly but surely, though, we'll make our way.

YOLO (or: a return to my philosophical roots)

The art of moving and a seriously distinct lack of zen