After all that it gets easy- just pack, clean and say goodbye. Okay, that last one won’t be so easy. Anytime I talk about how much I love Philadelphia and how I will miss the dear friends I have made here El Presidente gets all crazy headed and starts thinking that I do not want to move out west. I DO want to go. I want to go very much, and I know for sure how much I want to go because of how much I love it here. (I promise that makes sense.) If Philadelphia were a place I did not enjoy I might be tempted to agree to an international move just to try something else. If I hated it here I would question my decision to leave. Am I going just because I don’t like it here? Am I going just to go? Is this just “anywhere but here” syndrome? Philadelphia has felt more like home to me than anywhere else I have ever lived. In such a short time I have found a groove in this town and I will be sad to let it go. I love this crazy town so much that only one thing could make me leave it. And that is that I am one hundred percent sure that this move is what is best for my little family. This is right, this is our journey home and I cannot wait to get going. I am thrilled that Mr. President and I have made this decision together without any tension or argument, and that The Spawn is trying to talk me into leaving for “Vancoooooooober” right now in our pajamas. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be sad to drive away…

Philadelphia has been good to me and mine. So if anyone wants to buy us a summer home out here just go right ahead and do it (South Philly if you please).

I’ll give you a moment to absorb that information.

The squeeze didn’t let that little tidbit slip until after I had already committed to going. It went a little something like this….

 “ Blah, blah, blah…Canada is soooooo great! Mountains and green and blah and yadda and healthcare and whatsis and ohbytheway I don’t think there are any Targets in Canada. “

 I reeled, I gasped, and I ran to my iPhone to google and desperately search for a Target.ca web address… there was nothing. And so I ranted….

 “What in god’s name do you mean there are no TARGETS IN CANADA?!?!?!?!? What kind of backwards country are you moving me to?!? You Canadians are savages! Living without Target…. where do you people buy things?!?!”

 And then he said something truly terrifying, something that chilled me to my core and made me doubt everything I thought I knew about our relationship. He said…

 “We have Wal*Mart”

 Who is this man I have agreed to marry? I took at least 10 years off his life with the look I shot him. But, I am a champion and a survivor and I refused to be kept away from my beloved retail store.

 “I will order online and just have it shipped. SO THERE!”

 But he came back at me with some story about how he doesn’t think UPS operates in Canada and I probably can’t get it shipped in either.

 “Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, so I will drive down to Bellingham once a week and shop and come home! A HA!”

 And then the final blow that took me down- he told me that anything imported you have to pay duties on, therefore negating all the blessed affordability that helps make Target so damn great.

 I was broken. No more Target? Everything I own is from Target. It is a haven of inexpensive but fabulous shoes and handbags. It is where I buy undies and work clothes and socks and slippers. Our 600 thread count sheets that we love? They’re from Target. Cat litter, groceries, movies, books, make-up and hair goo and Crayola and every snack food that Archer Farms makes…. it all comes from Target. The Spawn’s whole existence has been brought to you by Target. It is where we registered- his stroller, crib, formula, baby wash, wipes, diapers, clothing and blankets and chewy-on slobber toys were all found at Target. My darling baby boy asks every weekend if we can “go to errands at Target peeease”. How am I supposed to tell him that soon, there will be no Target?

 And what about Mr. President? How could he be so cavalier about dropping this bombshell? Wal*Mart?!?! Pshaw! You think you know someone and then they trick you into moving to a country without Target…

 I hope he knows what I am giving up for him.

 Well, Friday morning a familiar pain crept into my lower abdomen. I have felt it periodically for a year and was prepared to grimace and ignore it as usual. Except, it didn’t fade or change. It hurt! I showered and got ready for work, thinking that if it still bothered me after my lunch shift I would go and get it checked out. (Read: I assumed I was using my special crazy-brain powers to create this phantom pain.) Then when I got to work it didn’t go away. It got worse and walking around wasn’t helping. It hurt enough that I decided to go to the emergency room even though I believed that they would be sending me home in an hour or so rolling their eyes about the crazy cry-baby faker with no problems. So I went to a hospital close to my work. And then I waited. I waited while people got choppered in and ambulance after ambulance arrived with critical patients. I waited while the elderly with breathing issues and pregnant women with asthma came in around me. Four hours later with a busting full waiting room and my name no higher up on the list I decided that I certainly wasn’t ill enough to sit here all day and headed for home to reassess my situation.

 Except as I was walking towards a bus stop it got much, much worse. New plan! Take a cab to Penn, which is nicer and bigger and closer to my house! Genius! And when I arrived I saw an empty waiting room! Huzzah! 4 pm, two people in the waiting area and considerably more pain. Surely I was only moments from relief! Except I live in Philadelphia and the ER was busy. Very busy. The rooms were packed and as I sat and waited the waiting area filled up around me. I considered leaving several times but each time I got up to leave the pain was still there so I waited a bit longer. Finally at about 10:30pm my little pager went off and told me to head back to a room. I have never been so excited to wait in a different location as I was at that moment. Once in a room I was palpated and questioned and I talked about my IUD for the umpteenth time and they gave me some Motrin and went to consult with a more senior resident. I was situated right next to the center desk so I heard each trauma call as it came in. More waiting. At some point I was informed that a full pelvic exam was in my future and that the appropriate pain medication would happen before anyone tried to put anything inside my seriously hurting parts. Exam, and the decision that despite having no symptoms other than pain that I had PID and did I by chance have syphilis? Ummmmmmmm, no. Decidedly not. As the nurse came back to get blood and my discharge papers were being printed I finally flagged down my doctor and asked if everything looked normal with my IUD. She said…(wait for it)…”what IUD?” Really? Then all of the sudden an attending comes in and says since we couldn’t see it anywhere you need a cat scan to locate it and here’s an IV and some morphine and drink this nasty contrast stuff and someone will be with you shortly. That was at 1 am.

 God bless my lovely nurse Barbara who was friendly and reassuring and chatty and didn’t make me feel like I was being rushed despite how busy they obviously were. 5 am I went for a cat scan and at 6:30 they came back and told me that a large cyst on my left ovary had ruptured and that the IUD seemed to be in the right place but the strings weren’t visible which means they might be stuck in my cervix and I should probably get it taken out. Gee thanks.

 I made it home by 7:15 or so and after being awake for over 24 hours and in pain for most of those I spent the rest of the weekend alternately sleeping and eating. Sheesh!

 Today I am waiting for a nurse to call me back with appointment time to get the IUD removed and the rest of my test results back. So I guess it has all worked out in the end. Let’s hope I have learned some sort of lesson and will not put off the inevitable until it comes looking for me, binds and gags me, slaps me around a little, throws me in a trunk and drives me to the end result.

41 days until I drive away from a city I have thoroughly enjoyed since last May. 41 days until I leave friends behind. 41 days until I pick up and move out of town for the eleventy-billionth time. It seems so familiar to be cramming things into boxes and sneaking off in a hurry. Four times before this I have moved far away hoping to find a magic reset button that would dissolve all the trouble I had made. Four fresh starts, four last chances, four good-byes. I am an expert leave-er, but so terrible at staying. This is the first time that I have nothing to run from. I am not off on a quest for yet another fresh start. This time is about continuing. This time is about expanding on 2 years of work rather than scrapping it all saying “maybe next time”. In 41 days I am moving because I want to, because it is the place I have chosen and because I am ready to go. In 41 days our little family heads out for home.

22 days until I make Mr. President a husband. 22 days until I am a wife. 22 days until we take a bold step away from the past and commit to our future. 22 days until we make official what we already know so well.

There are so many arrangements to make and boxes to pack and honeymoon road trips to map out in just 41 days. 41 days that I have decided to spend home early, with the people I love in the city I love savoring every moment of this tremendous new journey.

Now, how many cheese steaks do you think I can eat in 41 days?

In less than two months, Mr. President and I are packing up The Spawn and moving. Wanna know where to? Of course you do! It’s the most awesome place ever……..it is also the site of the winter Olympics that are starting today. That’s right folks, Vancouver. We’re going. To Canada. It’s like draft dodging except instead of sneaking across the northern border to escape certain death due to war, we are boldly and legally crossing that northern border to live and work and hang out and build a family and to start saying “eh” at the end of all our sentences.

Now, raise your hand if you thought the big news was me being pregnant. It’s okay, despite my constant bitching and over-sharing about my IUD most of the people I know suspect that I am currently growing a person, so you are in good company. Isn’t this news even more exciting though? We are just picking up and taking off. We are so gangster. Do we have jobs up there? Hell no! But we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Starting April 1^st we are taking off on a two-week, cross-country tour of friends and family that will end in our new country. Well, it will be new for me and The Spawn…..for Mr. President it will be old and home-like since it is, you know, his home.

We are thrilled and excited and scared and hopeful and ready (oh-so-ready!) and impatient to go. Yay us!

The problem now is that I can’t share my really big! Exciting! THRILLING!! news with you kids because it turns out that the interwebs are not particularly private. Who knew? At any rate, until I get the official go ahead from El Presidente, I have to keep my blogger-lips shut tight. (that sounded dirty) Do you know how hard it is to write about anything else when there is just one thing that you want to write about but can’t? So hard! Algebra hard. Soufflé baking hard! Only doing one shot of jäger in a night hard!!! (It’s totally the hardest.)

Le sigh.

 In happier news, The Spawn is finally starting to give a crap about this whole getting married business. At first he was dismayed that my ring isn’t blue (since he knows that blue is my “frayborit” color) and told us that we needed medicine when we shared our wedding plans with him. Since then he has come to decide that “little mirrors” is my new favorite color and he occasionally kisses my ring (it’s like I’m the Godfather!!) and tells me how much he loves the pretty ring that Mr. President gave me. As far as his actual comprehension goes, he tells us that the ring means “mommy and [Mr. President] forever!” which sounds pretty darn good to me.

 As for The Prez, he is thrilled to not have to call me his girlfriend anymore and is greeting me every morning with;” Good morning my fiancée…. my little bride-like thing!”

 And me? Well, I am down to only about an hour of staring at my left hand a day and just once or twice a week bursting into Muppet songs about getting married. I’d say that’s progress.

 Now someone please come move in with me and force me to do all the other stuff I have to do, okay?

 And now, a mere 24 hours since Mr. President and I realized that what we really want to do is just be married to each other, I am 100 times less likely to throw up at random. We will be married, quietly and without fuss and are thinking of planning a bit of a tour of friend visits. In theory I understand the appeal of having a roomful of people around to share in our moment but I just can’t imagine anything better than a simple ceremony with my squeeze and my Spawn and a little romantic weekend in NYC to celebrate.

 I guess some of us girls just don’t have it in us.

Now if I can only get over the crippling anxiety I feel whenever I think about people coming to stare at me while I take my vows…..