A moving experience

I have lived in Lakeshore East for a decade, all of it in the same apartment building, until last month.

For most of you, November 2, 2016, will long be remembered in Chicago lore as the day the Cubs finally won the World Series. I shall also remember that date as the day I chose to move from one Lakeshore East apartment building to another.

I took a vacation day for the occasion, which seems absurd in retrospect, because it was the hardest working “vacation” I have ever taken. It was a full-day affair, moving out of one apartment into a second apartment, then coming back to the first apartment to clean it and turn in the key before midnight. By the end, I was an unpleasant emotional mélange of crabby and giddy from packing fatigue and physical exhaustion.

As my wife and I worked late into the night, we kept track of the Cubs game through the reactions of the only other people using the elevators — a horde of pizza delivery folks. They all had the game on in their vehicles and gave me updates upon request.

We finished just as the Cubs were forced into extra innings. I had no TV and I was too tired to go anywhere, so I tracked the box score on my phone. But I didn’t need the phone to know when the game was over. Ecstatic shouts, car horns and sirens erupted in a jubilant symphony.

I was elated that the Cubs were finally victorious, that the move was over — the only casualty being the mysterious disappearance of our cat’s miniature playhouse, which got lost in the shuffle — and that we could finally go to sleep in our hastily constructed bed.

If I had known that the Cubs’ fate was dependent on me moving, I would have done it years ago.

Matthew Reiss has been a Lakeshore East resident since 2007 and a New Eastside News writer since 2015. He married his true love at the Blackstone Hotel and earned a law degree from the University of Kansas, but prefers to spend his evenings onstage, performing and directing for the local comedy group, The Stuntmen.

— Matthew Reiss