100 Pounds of Home

While living overseas, I moved a lot. In fact, since I graduated from high school, I've never lived anywhere for more than three years. But anyway, while living in Latvia, we moved six times in so many years to a whole hodgepodge of places. Now that I think of it, though, I'm realizing that in the first year alone there were four moves. It's a good thing there was that 100 lb. rule because we didn't have a car, either.

First there was the scrudgy flat in beautiful Cesis; then we upgraded as house and dog sitters for the summer (who remembers Sir the girl dog?) to a funny little house outside of Riga which was full of African treasures and a very expensive sound system that I think only played opera; after that we slummed again in an overly-furnished, claustrophobia-inducing flat in Aluksne where the landlords would constantly enter without warning and eat all of our food in the refrigerator (even when we were home); to a bare-to-the-concrete-walls Soviet block flat that we got to make our own.

I remember ITCHING to get that place. It was nothing special by a long shot, but it seemed like luxurious space to us--first floor, two bedrooms, and stripped down of everything except the kitchen sink. It was a completely blank canvas.