rain

I woke up Monday morning to cloudy skies. I shouldn't have been surprised - it is, after all, October - but I got used to months of glorious sunshine, and so I was, in fact surprised.

Even though it rained most of the weekend while I was in Universe City.

When I go to Universe City now, it's this lovely place of rest and friends, and I start to wonder why I left. I spent an afternoon in my old office, feeling nostalgic (if I ever go back to that line of work, it would be in that office). I went to a haunted corn maze* with overlapping groups of friends. I spent an afternoon reading books to my friend's one year old. I went to a fancy cider brewery with another set of friends. I drank lots of tea. 

It's all very peaceful and happy. I have to remind myself that when I lived there, 1. I had an actual stressful job to do, and 2. not everyone was free every weekend like they are when I come to town twice a year. 

* I never used to like scary things like haunted corn mazes or haunted houses, but I also went to another haunted thing this year, and they don't really scare me. They get my adrenaline up, because things are jumping out at you, but - and this is key - the jumping out things can't touch you. (Too much liability.) If the jumping out thing can't touch me, I just stare them down. They find it disappointing. I'm a fear-confronter, apparently. 

forgetful

I am about to leave Universe City for a night of camping at the coast. 

I forgot most of the necessities. 

Things I do not have:

socks

my glasses

silverware

dishes

food

I'm going to stop at Trader Joe's on my way out of town. That will help with that last item. 

Also, I just made a stop at the farmers market (farmer's market? farmers' market?) here in Universe City. For the first time in three years, I have in my possession a pint of the best strawberries in the world, the only ones worth eating, the Tristars. 

And I just snarfed a particularly delicious kind of muffin that is only sold in Universe City. 

Life is good.

re-tracing

I drove into Universe City this afternoon along the very same route that I drove five years ago this month, when I came for my first interview with the organization that was my work home for almost three years.

It even felt the same, except that I was driving my own car and my mom wasn't with me and it's all familiar now. The trees are full with dark green leaves and the air is warm, just like they were in June of 2010. 

"There's a lot of history," my former coworker said, as we ate lunch at the same place where we always used to eat lunch when I worked here. Possibly the same place where my mom and I ate lunch that day in 2010. 

"There's a lot of history in the future, too," I said, which made sense in context even though it doesn't make sense if you think about it too much.

Whenever someone asks how it was to live in Universe City, I say, "It's not a great place to be a single professional in your 30s, but some of the best people I know live in [Universe City]."

I love it here when I come back, especially in the summer, especially when I come back for events involving my old office. It's a great feeling to walk into a room and have a dozen people to hug. 

all you can do is try

A couple of nights ago, I went to bed at 1:30 am after staying up too late to work on a project. I set my alarm for 7:00 am, and I was not pleased at the thought of getting up at that time.

The fire alarm in my building went off at 3:22 am. 

I was severely disoriented, as one is when a fire alarm wakes you up smack in the middle of your first REM cycle, but I managed to gather the most vital things (computer, phone), throw on a sweatshirt, and stumble down the stairs. (I couldn't find my glasses, so it was rather a dim stumbling.)

The firemen came. (It should be firepeople but there are never any women.) They did their thing. The alarm went off. I got back into bed.

By this time, it was almost 4 am, and I had three hours to sleep.

The sleeping did not go well. It was that sort of sleep where you are hyper aware of the fact that you have to get up too soon, and so you never really sleep. 

When I got up, not having slept much at all, I ended up cancelling the thing I had to be up for so that I could get in at least two solid hours of sleep.

And for some reason, that night was apparently the end of my ability to sleep. I have no explanation. I just toss and turn every night now.

...

I drove down to Universe City yesterday, and I saw it with new eyes. I was so unhappy to leave Gone West in 2010 that I never noticed what a pretty little city Universe City is, with the hills all around.

My friend and former neighbor had a slip-and-slide set up in the yard for her son. We sat out under a tree, talking, while the kittens ran around and the sun shone and her little boy tried to put her earrings back into her ear. She laid down on the blanket so the baby would move and put my hands on her stomach so I could feel the strange little bulges under her skin.

I went to a party with some of my old coworkers. One of them drove a remote control car around the back alley like it was a drunk cat, chasing the kids, threatening our feet. These people, these people. I miss them. I miss the camaraderie of the little back corner of the building where four of us had offices, where we could yell questions back and forth, where I could go plop myself into a chair in any of their offices and get the benefit of 45 collective years of experience among them all. I would take that back in a second, but I can't, because three of us have moved on.

This afternoon, I had brunch with more lovely people who are leaving Universe City to move across the country. They got great jobs there, and they will be much closer to their family. Still. "You left us!" they said. "But I came back!" I said. "Maybe we'll come back!" they said. I held their munchkin and fed him pieces of broccoli from a little bowl. As I carried him out of the restaurant, an old lady with a walker looked at him with that open admiration that so many of us have when we look at babies.

I wrapped pictures in bubble wrap for another friend who is also moving across the country (curses! why must all my friends move away?).

Then I stopped downtown for tea and some delicious ice cream. I bought a scoop of basil strawberry peppercorn ice cream, and the owner got all excited when I asked about the seasonal corn flavor they had last year (next month, when the strawberries and blueberries are done), and so he gave me a little scoop of smoky caramel ice cream with apricot cardamom chutney on top. I would normally balk at the idea of apricot chutney, but sometimes you have to accept that the purveyors of food have come up with a good combination, and they had. I can't quite explain the flavor, but somehow the two things together made something completely new.

And then I drove home up the ribbon of highway, singing along to the radio.

space

Periodically I forget that my environment matters to me. "I can live anywhere!" I think, and I sign up to live in a place that is tiny, or dirty, or damp. Sometimes I sign up to live with people who turn out to be unpleasable, and I spend months trying to keep them happy, to no avail.

After all, I lived in a tukul in South Sudan, right? I lived in a bedroom the size of a king-sized bed in New York. I can live anywhere!

It's true, in the short term. I can live anywhere. But I can't live anywhere and be happy.

Places where I have been happiest in my living situation:

1. My house on the lake in Rwanda, where I could make myself toast and tea every morning and eat it out on the stone patio, looking out over the water.
2. My apartment in Gone West Round #1, that over-sized hotel room that was all mine, with a short wall of southwest-facing windows.
3. My duplex in Universe City, with the deck looking out over the trees and the city. 

I notice two trends here: pretty, and alone.

I had a roommate in Universe City, sort of. But after about six months, she functionally moved in with her boyfriend, and I didn't see her again for a year. I'm not kidding. She did not sleep in the house for a year. I knew when I went home that I was going home to an empty house, and it was glorious. (Then I got a new roommate, but by then the place felt like mine.)

After a fairly miserable year in Gone West Round #2, in a house that smelled like cat pee and wasn't  very welcoming at all, and four months of mooching on the good graces of friends in Gone West Round #2.1, I moved into an apartment on Sunday.

It's a sublet. I may have to leave at the end of August when the guy who lives here gets back from a summer of hiking in Colorado. 

But in the meantime, it is mine, all mine, and I cannot tell you what a difference it has made. 

It is tiny, this place. It is a studio, with a nook for the bed. The kitchen has black and white tiles on the floor, and the drawers are nearly painted shut. The lights all have pull chains to turn them on. There are numerous locks on the door that no longer function, and three that do. 

The windows face west. The place is bright and cheerful, and already I have a series of photos of sunsets taken out the window. 

I get work done here, next to my fridge full of healthy food, and then I walk through the neighborhood in the evening.

When I come back to this little space, I feel like I'm coming home. It's been a long time since I felt that way.

13: useless desires

This song, for some reason, is Universe City to me.

And so much else in life:

 (Patty Griffin; Useless Desires)

(I'm not sure about the photos in this video, but I couldn't find a video that was just the song or just Patty Griffin singing the song live with good sound quality.)

back (forth)

I took a nap this afternoon. It was lovely.

I would say that it was a nap kind of day, but really it was the beautiful sort of day that should have been spent outside and instead I woke up in Universe City, packed up my stuff, said goodbye to my friends who had lent me their basement room, had tea with a former coworker, drove to Gone West, had a Spanish lesson, went to Trader Joe's, came home, took a nap, made lentils and rice to eat all week, and walked to the bookstore, where I picked out a Spanish verb book, Spanish flashcards, and a new journal before realizing that I'd forgotten my wallet at home and the store was closing right then. So it was more of a sneak-a-nap sort of day than a nap sort of day.

My trip to Universe City was primarily for an event on Friday. A good friend and colleague of mine received a very high honor, and there was no way I was going to miss the ceremony. I talked to hordes of former coworkers and opposing counsel types, and more than once people mentioned that my old job has an opening again and do you think...? 

I thought about it, surrounded by all of these familiar, wonderful people.

I thought about it pushing my friends' baby in a jogging stroller up and down the hills in the neighborhood one over and one down from where I used to live, while they cleaned the house for a kids birthday party, while a former opposing counsel stopped and yelled hi as he drove by.

I thought about it getting chai at my sunny old coffee shop, where a former colleague just happened to be getting coffee and we chatted for half an hour.

But then she left, and I sat alone, and I felt again the break my heart took in Universe City, and I knew that I didn't want to couldn't go back to living amongst all those reminders.

Still, later, drinking tea outside in the warm sunshine with the honoree from the day before, the thought crept back.

Reading book after book to little A. while the football game played in the background, bouncing baby J., eating E.'s delicious glazed drumsticks, sharing a fuzzy blanket with I., the thought came again. 

And drinking Two-Buck Chuck with J. and L. in their familiar kitchen, there it was yet again.

But this morning I knew that it was impossible, even as I hugged one more former colleague. I can't go back to the life of wondering whether I'll ever hear from a certain boy again. I can't go back to being three flights away from my family. I can't go back to one of the worst places on the planet for my allergies. I can't. I won't. I am gone. 

There are some places you can only revisit. You can't go back.

Onward.

driving problems

I secretly take a little bit of joy in letting my manual transmission car roll backwards just a tiny bit when people pull up too close behind me on a hill.

Does that make me a bad person? 

Even if you are in a hurry, it is a good idea to be kind to other drivers.

Which is possibly the opposite of what I am doing by letting my car roll back. But I'm not doing it to hit them (I have never hit them), just to remind them that some of us have manual transmission cars, and on especially steep hills, we need a little more space. I think people forget that manual transmission cars still exist. 

WE EXIST, PEOPLE.

...

A couple of times lately I have thought there was something wrong with my headlights. It would be annoying if I had to replace yet another headlight.

I feel like I forgot to turn my headlights on, but I look and look at the road before me and there are two widening Vs of light, so it can't be my car.

Why is it so dark?

It turns out that the power has been going off every time it rains, in different parts of town, which in the Pacific Northwest is a problem. It rains a lot here, you see. 

(Weirdly, Universe City gets 13 inches of rain per year more than Gone West, possibly proving my ancient theory that it rains more often in Gone West but not as hard. Gone West drizzles. Universe City pours. I needed an umbrella much more in Universe City.)

And still, every time it actually rains (v. drizzling), both towns fall apart. This would be like the Mitten falling apart every time it snowed, ONLY WORSE because it rains 9 months out of the year here. The drains fill up. The electricity goes out.

It is unnerving to be at a major intersection in a major city with no traffic signal. In Liberia, where the traffic lights haven't worked in years, everyone seems to just figure it out. Here, people are so dependent on the lights that they stutter forward hesitantly at the intersections so that I want to open my window and say, "Yes, it's your turn. Yes, all three of you who are headed east. All three of you go at once, and then those of us headed north and south will go at the same time, see?"

That said, I almost ran an intersection completely because it was so dark that I didn't even realize I'd already come to it.

most

I went to Universe City a week and a half ago, just for a night, for the birthday party of a friend of mine. I drove down after my Spanish lesson, and because of traffic concerns, I took a route into town that I never took while I lived there. I drove up the hill behind my old house without passing it. I parked at a corner that I rarely saw.

And then I went into the backyard and snuggled a baby for three hours.

I love it when my friends provide me with babies to snuggle. My friends love eating with both hands. It's a perfect party tradeoff.

We went out to a college bar, later, one I'd never been in before (we did not bring the baby), and the birthday person got drunk enough that he spilled a beer on himself and I had to put a plastic garbage bag (that was handily in my trunk - always prepared) down on his seat before I drove him home. 

The thing about staying in a house with three drunk friends is that you will never get to sleep because every time you attempt to walk toward the bathroom with your toothbrush in your hand, one of them will start talking to you and three hours will pass before you finally have to go to bed right now or the world will end. (I get serious about my sleep.)

In the morning, driving through town to meet the baby (and some grownups, I suppose) for brunch, the whole place seemed so small and old. It felt like the past, somehow, even as I was there. 

It's the same. I know it's the same. I drove down the same roads with the same buildings on either side every day for two and a half years. I could drive that route through downtown in my sleep. And yet. Even in only six months, the buildings seemed to have shrunk. The sidewalks seemed dirtier.

I got the same iced chai in my old coffee shop, with the big south-facing windows, but the servers were different, and they didn't know my drink. 

I don't fit there anymore, and that makes me happy, and that makes me sad. I made some great friends in Universe City - you need friends more there than here, where so much is going on all the time - but my life isn't there, anymore. I've escaped, and what I still feel most, leaving, is relief.

student

On the train, riding out of downtown toward my martial arts studio, I thought about how much I love this city.

I love the blunt, graffiti-ed back sides of buildings against the train tracks.

I love the way the clouds hang over the bridges.

I love the crowds on the train.

I love the familiar smell of my martial arts studio.

For the first time, waiting for class to start, I looked around the studio and felt at home.

It isn't the same as my Universe City studio. That was my introduction to martial arts, and it cannot be replaced. I feel a fierce loyalty to the people there that goes beyond just a gym. And there is something special about it, too: the kung fu bow when you step onto the floor and when you leave, the counting in unison, the instant focus when the instructor starts talking, the cheering each other on, the way the whole class yells responses. ("Ready?" "READY!")

But this one is starting to feel like me, too, in a different way. This gym is younger, on the whole, and more casual, and the people in it go out to watch fights together. They have a permanent table at the Mexican restaurant around the corner. They feel like people I might end up keeping as friends outside the world of martial arts.

BJJ class was good, and afterwards we lined up again. We only really line up at the end of class when there is something to be given out - a belt, a stripe, something, and I look forward to seeing who gets something. Someday I even hope it will be me! (Okay, it was me a few weeks ago when I got promoted to the non-beginner class in bjj. Someday I hope it will be me again!)

Okay, it was me.

Remember how I was all embarrassed when I got student of the month in Universe City?

I am student of the month here now, and I feel almost more embarrassed. Student of the month is for kiiiids. Give it to a kiiiiid.

And it feels a little excessive to be student of the month in two studios in two different cities, albeit two years apart.

At the same time, as I tried to explain to my roommate, I work hard at martial arts. It's kind of my thing. I am there every single time I am allowed to be. School may have always come easily to me. You may find me surfing the internet on the weekend when I should be cleaning the house. But when I go to fight, I am all focus. I watch carefully and I imitate and I practice and I get better. I am that annoying person who shushes other students when they try to keep talking over the instructor, who dances around cheering people on at the end of class when we are all exhausted, who is told to start at the second step, or the third step, because I clearly need to work harder.

It's nice to have other people recognize how hard you work. Apparently both the stand up and jiu jitsu coaches agreed.

I got a bumper sticker, and a set of patches to put on my gi, and there is a plaque in the studio with my picture on it.

All of this gave me the courage to ask a coach to roll with me. I haven't dared before, because no one looked available, but I really wanted to try it, so I finally braved it, and it was so fun! She went easy on me, of course, but I wasn't instantly defeated. It was fantastic. I love this stuff.

wake up

On my bike last night, the air felt like Rwanda. It was cool but not cold. Perfect.

I was on my bike, and for a block or two, the air smelled like burning, the very smell of most of the continent of Africa, and I was homesick.

If you had told me in 2008, when I flew out of Addis Ababa, that it would be my last trip to Africa for more than five years, I would have laughed at you, and then I would have wept.

It is impossible. Once I went back to Africa in 2000, to Kenya and then back to Liberia, I couldn't imagine that I would ever again have a life that did not involve significant time on the continent.

When I was 26, I'd spent half my life there.

Now it feels so far away.

I don't know this person who hasn't been to Africa in five years, who has let lack of money and vacation time keep her stuck in one place.

I think I need to find myself again. Those years in Universe City were soporific, but I've escaped now, and I'm waking up. The world is waiting for me.

hugs and more hugs

I drove down to Universe City on Saturday, and it was weird. It was very weird. 

I drove down in the daylight, first of all, in the sunlight, and I almost never did that. I put off driving back to Universe City until the absolute latest moment, and it was always getting dark and almost always raining (okay, it felt like it was almost always raining; the reality is that the summers are clear and beautiful here) as I drove back.

But it was daylight, this time, and sunny, and the world did not funnel into a trap at the end of the valley. 

Instead, there were hugs and more hugs among babies toddling on a deck while adults overdosed on guacamole and blue chips. 

There were hugs and more hugs among the detritus of the martial arts studio, all away from the walls for painting. ("I love it!" I said, and I do. Now it is all grey and red and black like our tshirts and boxing gloves.) 

There were hugs and more hugs in the kitchen with salad and G&Ts, with tea and dark chocolate buttons, with Irish comedians and model aeroplanes.

There were hugs and more hugs after a night in such-a-boy-house belonging to my friends I. and B., except in the morning I noticed that the guest room closet contained a hanging Christmas wrapping paper organizer neatly stocked with paper.

There were hugs and more hugs at the newly opened Universe City branch of my tea place, together with conversations with former coworkers and former professional adversaries.

There were hugs and more hugs just down the hill from my old house, with S. and little K., with Cameroonian style beans and lemonade and little chocolate wafer squares and determination to fix S.'s iPhone (I did).

And when it was all over, a flurry of hugs and food and smiles, I came home, here, to Gone West.

I have some good friends in Universe City. There are quality people there. I miss them.

I caught myself driving on auto-pilot, making my way without thinking toward home, toward work, toward martial arts. It felt so familiar, like I could have slipped right back into my life there.

But - for me - it's better to call Gone West home.

reach out

A friend from Universe City was in Gone West this afternoon, and as we talked, as my two most recent worlds grew a little less isolated from one another, I realized one very good thing I learned in Universe City: how to reach out to people. 

Last weekend, I ran into an acquaintance who I knew when I lived here before. We bonded back then over our respective international work, but we never really became friends, because I was too shy to take that extra step and suggest that we hang out, or even to really talk to him when he held a party and invited me. When I saw him last weekend, he said, "You didn't say goodbye!"

I didn't say goodbye because I didn't want to assume that we were better friends than we were. There were a lot of people I left that way when I left Gone West.

That didn't happen when I left Universe City. I said goodbye. Sure, there were people I didn't see when I made the rounds to say goodbye, but I made the rounds. I hugged people I never thought I would hug. I left cards for a good five people in my office. 

Yesterday, waiting in line at a food truck for food, I saw another person who I knew on a professional level back when I first worked in Gone West. My shy-ness instinct was to say hi and shuffle on by, and I did, but after I ordered my food I went back to ask how he's doing, and where he's at these days.

Universe City is small. Not so small that your neighbor notices when there is a different car parked in front of your house for an evening, but small enough that everyone in the same general field knows one another. If I learned anything from that, it is to make connections and keep them up. 

Universe City is small enough that you have to make friends with almost everyone who is vaguely in the same life position as you. If I learned anything from making friends all over again as an adult, it is to reach out to the people you think might make good friends. I suspect it's going to serve me well.

love prose

I flew back last night, one flight straight from the D to Gone West, and even though I knew how very much more I like Gone West than ever I liked Universe City, still I was surprised not to feel the old tearing feeling of leaving. 

Gone West feels so much closer to the Mitten, and I don't approach returning here with dread. Instead, I feel that familiar jolt of happy recognition when I see Gone West, SH on the flight monitor and again when I watch the landscape I know pass beneath the wings on landing. I cannot explain how light I feel now that I do not dread returning to the place where I live.

I would gladly have slept in this morning, but getting up to walk to the bus was not the same burden as was dragging myself to work in a town that never did make me happy. (Even though, disclaimer, I loved and miss the place where I worked in Universe City.)

I'm not sure how long one blog can consist primarily of bits of love prose to a city, but I clearly intend to test it out.

happy

I don't even have words for how happy it makes me to be back in Gone West, you guys. 

I read this thing a few weeks ago where some advice guru told people that where you live is not as important as what you do, and this is possibly true, but where you live matters so incredibly much. I had a fine life in Universe City. I had friends and activities and routines.

But living in Gone West feels like I've come back to life. I remember again how you can actually love the place where you live. It doesn't have to be merely the backdrop for your life; it can be a character in your life. 

I wandered up through my favorite neighborhoods today. I walked through the school playground. I drank tea in my favorite cafe. I shopped in little boutiques. I wove through the park around the water towers. I came down that long flight of stairs. I meandered along one of my favorite streets. I sat in that pretty little park.

This afternoon could have happened three years ago.

People keep asking how it is to be back, and the strangest thing is how it feels like I never left. Maybe I only imagined those 2.5 years in Universe City. 

I have fallen right back into the same places and routines that I had before I moved away, and it feels like nothing has changed except that suddenly I find myself lost in this bigger Trader Joe's, because even though it was my first, familiar Trader Joe's, my brain now expects the layout of the smaller one in Universe City. But then in the chain grocery store, I know exactly where to go, as if my brain remembers this one better than the one in Universe City.

I am so very happy to live here again.

roundly cursing

I drove back down to Universe City yesterday to pack up my office. By the time I got down there and ran a few errands and packed a few things, I was feeling pretty lonely and desolate, as one does while trying to leave a place, so I texted S. and then I went over to E. and K.'s house to pick up their old microwave.*

E. and K. turn out to have a cable knit throw that has fleece on the back.** I curled up under it on their couch. The gas fireplace was going, and K. made chai, and we sat and talked, and by the time I left with their old microwave in the back seat of my car, I felt like a new person. Human connection will do that.  

Then I went and hung out in S.'s living room with little K. running around dancing and demanding attention. S. made chili cheese burritos. ("Do you eat meat?" she asked, and it was one of the days when I decided abruptly that I do eat meat, and so I did.) I have never failed to leave S.'s presence feeling refreshed and wiser.

But then it was 8 pm and I had barely started packing my office. I was fortunately in a much better emotional place than I had been at 1 pm, so I put my friend D. on notice that I needed her on the other end of the line, and I packed and sorted and threw away. Three hours and two overly-full recycling bins later, I had my car loaded up and I began my drive back to Gone West. 

At 11 pm.

State of Happiness is in that lovely (I use this term sarcastically) spring stage where the weather changes every five minutes. By the end of the two hour drive, I had roundly and loudly cursed 1. the other drivers, and 2. the State of Happiness Department of Transportation. 

It was raining, you see. Sometimes it was raining lightly and sometimes it was raining hard, and for a state known for its rain, State of Happiness is remarkably badly equipped for rain. 

It all goes back to the studded tires. Look, I lived in the Mitten for 12 years. I learned to drive in the Mitten. The Mitten gets a great deal of snow, and we do not use studded tires. We are not allowed to use studded tires. And I understand that there are mountains here, and passes, and studded tires are handy, but they wreck the roads. 

I have never encountered louder roads than the roads in State of Happiness. Every road here has troughs where the cars have driven over and over on their studded tires. Those troughs are incredibly loud when you drive in them, but because they are troughs, your car is inevitably pulled into them. Staying outside of them and still in your lane is a constant battle. It's like sleeping in a bed that caves in toward the middle. No matter how many times you pull yourself out, you always end up back there.

Also, because they are troughs, they fill with water. I never really understood hydroplaning until I drove in State of Happiness. If your car falls into the troughs, which it will, you will hydroplane. This is unpleasant at 70 miles an hour at 12:30 am.

Also, other cars cannot seem to grasp the concept that the troughs full of water mean that any car behind you is practically drowned by the water your car kicks up. So they slide right back into your lane in front of you, even though there are no other cars around, blinding you in a white cloud of water. Or they drive into a bigger than usual trough and spray up so much water that you can't even comprehend whether your car is driving straight. 

There was cursing. There was loud and angry cursing.

I didn't think I was going to make it home alive.

I did. Barely. With several close calls.

* "Do you guys have a moral objection to a microwave, or do you just not have one?" I asked when I moved in. This is, after all, Gone West, where people do have objections to things like microwaves. I can survive without a microwave, but it is useful for things like warming my sinus rinse water, reheating cold tea, and heating my flax seed pillow.

** I am now searching online for a cable knit throw with fleece on that back that costs less than the $129.99 one at P0ttery B@rn.

keep/back

It is fully possible to be too tired to do anything but drag oneself to bed after work every day, except I just moved into my new place on Sunday and so I have to drag myself through room-organizing every evening before I can fall into bed and sleep like there is no alarm clock in the world that could possibly wake me up. I want to cry when my alarm clock goes off.

Already I have started to look forward to my walk to and from the bus stop. The train is a few blocks further, but the bus is just a quick little walk down quiet streets, and when I get off at the end of the day I can feel my stress fall away as the streets get progressively more neighborhood-like in the three blocks from the main road.

It is almost as silent in this house at night as in my house in Universe City. You would never know that there are two highways not two miles away. My room is bigger than one could possibly expect out of an old house - probably twice the size of my room in Universe City, with a huge closet - and right now I even have my little orange couch in here. (I could put it out in the living room, but there is a cat, and he has mangled the couch that is out there, and I have quite an affection for that little orange couch.)

I re-opened my library card first thing, and now I have a list of books on hold again already so that I can walk up the hill on my lunch hour and pick them up, just like I did for two and a half years before I had to leave Gone West.

I work, and I walk to the coffee place, and I explain over and over again all day long where I've been for the last few years to everyone who keeps asking. I'm back, and I'm happy to be back.

And yet, I can hardly bear the idea that this weekend I must go back to Universe City and take the last of my things from my office there and leave behind the key that gets me into that old, familiar building. I want to keep Universe City even as I get Gone West back.

gone back

I ran frantically around my house this morning, packing and throwing the necessary items in my car. 

I wandered my old office this afternoon, feeling nostalgic. 

I stopped for my chai at my daily coffee place and sat in the window, savoring the moment.

Then I drove toward the highway, and as I took the on-ramp toward Gone West, I started laughing and beaming. 

I didn't even realize that I was excited to move back. These last few weeks, living in Universe City and trying to figure out a million little details, with no time to head up to Gone West even to look for a place to live (I haven't been up here since I took this job), I could think only of the list of things to do. I couldn't actually imagine being here. 

But suddenly, this afternoon, the whole thing became real. It happened again and again on the drive: I would break out in grins and sometimes in whoops. I was even more delighted when I took the exit to the street where my favorite tea place is. I could barely sit still in my seat.

I've been in Gone West for four hours now, and I have settled in at K.s' house and found a place to live, in exactly the area I want, with two girls who seem awesome, for less than I paid in Universe City. When I lived near there before, this was always the street I chose to walk down, because it is the prettiest. It also has the best name. (I have a horror of living on numbered streets. I don't like the ### ### format of living on street that has a number rather than a name.) This is a quintessential Gone West street, and I love it, and I can't stop smiling and dancing from one foot to another.

complications

My packing panic has been alleviated by a weekend of, well, packing. Things are coming together. 

The living room now contains a wall's worth of boxes and suitcases and bookshelves and filing cabinets, where I have moved them from the lower bedroom level. I gave away three bags of clothes and shoes. Another three bags of clothes and a box of miscellani are ready to go to St. Vinnie's. 

I have a plan of spending each evening this week going through at least half a box worth of papers. Tonight I have thrown out about an entire grocery bag worth of paper. (Speaking of which: does one need to keep EOBs? What about pay stubs? For how long?)

I threw one of my sets of sheets in the wash yesterday so that I could pack that set and put my favorite set on the bed.

Half an hour later, when I came out of my bedroom, there was water on my bathroom floor, which seemed odd. Heading toward the stairs, I saw, in that moment when you realize that it's all going wrong, that the carpet at the bottom of the stairs was soaked. 

Yup. It was what you think. 

I opened the door to the laundry room, and there was half an inch of water on the floor.

That is never a good thing.

My friend S. happened to be knocking at my door at almost exactly that moment to look through my clothes for tall girl things that might fit her, and she was an immense help. Between J. and S. and I, we wrung out enough towels to fill five buckets of water. 

The landlady told me to call the guy who fixes the place, and I did, and he came over with a shopvac and heaters and fans within half an hour.

The next time I went downstairs, the hall carpet was gone. 

Yeah, it's like that. We are now living in the sort of house where the white noise is almost too loud to be comfortable, what with all the fans, but it can't drown out the noise of footsteps on the bare plywood. We are wearing shoes in the house, lest we be grabbed by little nails sticking out of the wood.

The good news is that the wood dried incredibly fast, probably because we caught it almost instantly.

From inspection of the washer, it appears that the piece of plastic that directs the hose into the tub broke off and directed the hose toward, well, whatever it felt like directing it toward - in this case, the guts of the washer and thereby to the ground. The sheets in the washer were mostly still dry, since all the water had cascaded to the ground.

Come to think of it, I don't actually know if we have a functional washer right now. That would be handy to know.

riddance

There is nothing in the world quite so lonely as packing and moving alone. I hate it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. 

It's almost worth never moving again to not have to go through this. It is horrible. 

There are all those stacks of papers that I never bothered to file. There are all those drawers full of clothes I bought and never wear. There are shelves full of little knick-knacks that I can't believe I would ever need but I can't imagine throwing away. 

Actually, I am getting rid of some clothes that I can't quite believe I am letting out of my hands. I am a saver. I get sentimental. 

But I am getting rid of that dark red wool dress that I bought soon after I moved to Gone West, the one I wore to T.'s wedding and on my first date with B., because I have this wool allergy now, and I will never be able to wear it again, I don't think. Even my wool coat causes itchy sores on my neck if I don't have a scarf to keep the wool from my skin.

I am getting rid of that black pullover jacket that I bought in Montreal before I moved to Rwanda, that I wore almost every single day because Rwanda was much colder at night than I expected. It has filled my drawer for almost a decade, but I have a softshell now, and the old jacket is too short for my torso. 

I am getting rid of those red kikoi pants that I bought in Kenya on my way back from South Sudan, the ones that shrunk in the wash just a little and are too short for me now.

It almost physically hurts to get rid of these pieces of clothing that saw me through so much, but unless I plan to get a bigger house every time I move, it must be done. I have far too many clothes as it is, and far too many books, and far too many pieces of paper.

My friend S. is going to come over and look through my clothes on Sunday. I will feel better if things go to a good home with her. At least they won't feel lonely and rejected, then.