not packing

I should be packing frantically - and I will; oh, that miserable day will come - but there is so much to do in the meantime. Life does not stop so that one can conveniently move. It especially does not stop so that one can conveniently move when you have only three weeks between resigning from one job and starting another, and you have a house and a job and a town to wrap up before you can go.

I won't be finished when I leave, probably. I won't have a new place to live, probably. I will be crashing at the K.'s and throwing my stuff in their garage, probably.

I don't know that for sure, of course. I just have so few days between now and the beginning of the new job in which to find a place and so few days between now and the beginning of the new job in which to move that it seems impossible to get it all done in time to move into a place rather than just get myself and my stuff to Gone West and I can't think of anything after that.

And meanwhile, there are snowshoeing trips to take. (I went on Saturday and ended up in pain and bedraggled thanks to over-enthusiasm on the part of the other participant. Namely: we attempted too much distance and by the end all I could think of was a blissful parking lot where I could take the snowshoes off and put my feet right next to one another instead of artificially forced apart do you have any idea how much pain this will eventually cause your hips? I really cannot do the one I am invited on this weekend. There is no tiiime.)

And meanwhile, there are dinners with friends who will soon be 100 miles away.

And meanwhile, there are the same questions to answer over and over, to new people each time, about what I'm doing and why I'm going.

I can't even think ahead enough to imagine being back in Gone West. Every once in a while, I think of the bustling downtown in the summer, or the view of the mountain as the train goes over the bridge, and I feel a little shiver of happy, but I can't jump ahead of myself lest all the many things that need doing here not get done before I go.

This seems to be the day of the run-on sentence. I think that means I need to go to sleep.