My Number One Internet Fanboy posted a Vox QotD about how many places you’ve lived. Wow. Scary thought, let’s see if I can remember them all… I’ve lived in so many places that I used to joke that my mother is hiding the gypsy heritage from me! (Now I joke that I had to move out of Clackamas County so I didn’t accidentally date any of my mom’s or sister’s ex-boyfriends!)

• San Francisco, CA (for the first 3 months of my life)
• Canby, OR (my mom & I lived with my dad’s parents for a few months)
• Fallon, NV (where my sister was born, possibly lived in 2 different houses there but I was too young to remember for sure)
• Adak Island, AK (it used to be nothing but a Navy base)
• Pearl City, HI (a Peppertree Motel for 6 weeks while we waited for our furniture to be shipped to us, then US Naval housing)
• Honolulu, HI (more Naval housing)
• Molalla, OR (let’s see if I can list all of the different places…Grandma’s house for 2 months, the white duplex near the grade school, the green house with the cool basement, the little brown apartment, the trailer just outside city limits, the pink house, the white house — all of those within 2 years! — and the yellow house on 3rd St, for 5 1/2 years)
• Milwaukie, OR (moved in with a boyfriend when I was 16, one of his roommates was a junkie so we all had to get hepatitis shots — and we moved out ASAP!)
• Aurora, OR (lived in a 27-foot travel trailer with my boyfriend, 2 cats & 2 boa constrictors for a full year)
• Oregon City, OR (moved back in with my mother for 4 months)
• West Linn, OR (apartment near the freeway with my first husband)
• various points along the I-5 corridor (lived in an 18-wheel cabover truck with my husband for 8 months, my only address was a P.O. Box, showered at motels & truck stops…not a life I recommend)
• Molalla, OR (9 months in a crappy little house on Shaver St, then a little over a month in my future second husband’s house)
• Wilsonville, OR (16 months in a 2-bedroom apartment with 3 other adults — my future second husband, my best friend from high school Brenda, & Brenda’s boyfriend who happened to be my ex-boyfriend — and my daughter & Brenda’s daughter)
• Albuquerque, NM (lived with my husband, daughter, mother-in-law, and brother-in-law in a 2-bedroom apartment for 2 months…slept in the dining room)
• Rochester, WA (my 2-yr-old and I moved back in with my mother, for 3 months)
• Albuquerque, NM (back to my husband, in my mother-in-law’s apartment for another 4 months, then moved into our own apartment…directly above my mother-in-law)
• Aurora, OR (my husband, my daughter, and I moved back in with Brenda & her daughter & her boyfriend, for 2 months — this time in a 1-bedroom cottage! — we slept in the garage, which had been converted to a rec room)
• Tualatin, OR (my husband, Brenda & her daughter, and me & my daughter moved to a really nice duplex)
• Chehalis, WA (my husband, my two daughters, and I moved in with my mother when Brenda moved in with her boyfriend/future husband)
• Tualatin, OR (8 months after my husband died, my two daughters & I moved in with my boyfriend — the one that used to be Brenda’s boyfriend when we lived in Wilsonville — 2 different apartments with him, and then another apartment without him)
• Albany, OR (the townhouse 2 doors down from my new boyfriend — the one that dumped me 3 weeks after I moved there at his request; Robert moved in with me 6 months later)
• Portland, OR (apartment on SE 20th near the Lone Fir Cemetary where I lived with first Robert & then Geoffrey, then the house out by SE Flavel, and — finally — the townhouse we live in now)

Okay, unless I forgot something, that makes 37. I’m 37 years old. Oi.

This has been moderately depressing. About two-thirds of the way through the list, I realized I was clenching my jaw hard enough to almost hurt. And yes, I can expertly load (and drive) any size moving truck smaller than an 18-wheeler, since the last time that professional movers were involved was the move from Alaska to Hawaii when I was 5 years old.

And, of course, my rental history is immaculate. Out of necessity, you do not screw your landlords over when you’ve moved this many times!