These Vagabond Shoes...

My favorite times at my house are Taco Tuesdays. The best thing about Taco Tuesdays is that they can actually occur spontaneously on pretty much any night of the week. One of the roommates will come home from work, and instead of a throwing together a hastily prepared meal eaten at the counter, will declare “I feel like tacos tonight.”

Then there is great jubilation over the inspired idea. Plans to go to the gym, do laundry or run errands are abandoned. Sufjan Stevens, or something equally soothing, is played on the stereo. Erin will start cooking the meat (real for us, soy for the metro-sexual men of the house), I’ll chop the vegetables, Nick purees the avocados, and Corey brings out the chips and salsa for pre-dinner snacking. When the feast is prepared, we all sit down at the table like the bizarre pseudo-suburban family that we have become.

The last such night was especially significant, because we all knew there was a good chance it would be one of the last. Change is always a little bittersweet even when it’s welcome or even sought after. This week, I accepted a job offer in Los Angeles and will be moving there in few weeks. By the end of the summer, the three delightful people I’ve shared a home with for the past year-and-a-half will likely be scattered around the globe when they leave to teach overseas.

I’m rejoicing at no longer being an urban snob trapped in the suburbs. No more will I be stranded miles from a Nordstroms and good Indian take-out. After three years of living 60 miles apart and mutual shuttling back and forth on weekends, I’m leaving tract-home Hell for the relative civilization of Los Angeles and domestic bliss with Matt.

It’s incredibly exciting, and long overdue, but it also closes a chapter in my life. With the exception of the nine months I lived in a one-bedroom apartment alone, I’ve always had roommates.

There’ve been the Good (the current roomies, my 1601 girls from senior year of college), the Bad (my freshman year roommate who sold drugs and kept her stash hidden in the cereal bar box) and the Ugly. (My former housemate, Jen, who listened to rap full blast in the morning and actually thought she should only have to pay half the rent one month because she was going to be out of town for two weeks. Also, my other freshman year roommate who went to bed at 10:30 every night and at 12 a.m. would inevitably march into the floor lounge and tell everyone to “go to bed, idiots!”)

Now, that part of life that is spent shuffling from place to place, essentially rootless and able to pack my life into a few boxes on short notice, is over. Matt and I will purchase furniture and hang framed pictures on the wall. I will spend an inordinate amount of time drooling over Pottery Barn catalogues. My books will be displayed on shelves instead of shoved under my bed in shopping bags.

If things go according to plan, I will be somewhat settled and Matt will be the last roommate I ever have. That is unless somewhere down the line, in my golden years, I end up sharing a house in Miami with a ditzy blond from St. Olaf, a slutty aging Southern belle, and a sassy elderly woman who starts every sentence with “Sicily, 1952…” (I guess in this scenario I would be Dorothy.)

The next stage of my life is sure to be a journey fraught with adventure and some peril. Can a slob and a neatnik co-habitate without turning into characters from a Neil Simon play? Who will emerge as the ultimate master of the remote, and how many televised Red Sox games can one woman endure?

I can’t wait to find out.