On My Way

Thank you so much, everyone, for your kind words and good wishes in the comments these past couple of days. They really help me out as I’m pulling further and further away from everything I know and getting ready to really go. Although lately when someone tells me “Have a wonderful time on your trip!” I’ve just been putting on a puzzled face and going “What trip? What are you talking about?”

I’m writing this from the ABL in Sunnyvale, waiting for my mom and sister to come pick me up so we can head to the first destination on our mother-daughter-sister road trip: the famous and fabulous Monterey Bay Aquarium. Rob just told me, on his way out the door for work, that there is a…deep breath, now…new octopus exhibit, which totally justifies my insistence, to my family when we were planning this trip, that we spend not one but two days there. I can’t wait. It’s going to be a really fun time.

This week has shown me that it’s quite useful to be a wee bit obsessive when it comes to trip planning, especially if you have eight months to do so and you are familiar with your own tendency to freak out a little under stress. This whole weekend at the ABL I’ve been patting myself on the back for deciding not to just work until July 30th and then get on the plane from Seattle, with no intermission between the life I had there, with its work and bus and bellydance and book club, to whatever life I’m going to have in New Zealand, about the details of which I will have to get back to you. It’s been really good so far to start the trip with people I really care about and kind of get used to traveling that way.

It almost killed me to leave Seattle, though, I have to admit. I was writing an entry at six in the morning when Treasa came out, ready for her run, and was like “What are you doing?” And I was like, “Hi, do you know me? What do you think I’m doing?” And then it was time to go, and Ian came downstairs in his bathrobe to say goodbye and I got a little sniffly and then John was in the shower so I couldn’t say goodbye to him, and then Treasa and Katie walked me out to the car and I was sobbing. Like heaving and wailing and bawling and it was awful and I thought I’d made the worse mistake in the world, to leave my friends and my community and my city. As I pulled out of the driveway I was doing the thing I do when I get especially sad and stressed, which is to talk out loud to myself and call myself pet names, which I just realized as I’m writing this makes me a lot like Gollum, precious. Whatever. It works. I was still crying as I drove down Market Street, saying goodbye to the Hi-Life and Cupcake Royale and then as I got onto 99, the aquarium and the mountains and the Pike Place Market. I made to my cousin’s house and collapsed in his arms and then he made me some cinnamon toast, which helped considerably.

After saying goodbye to David, I stopped briefly in Tacoma to visit my friend Erica, who hadn’t been able to come to the going-away party, and she had a plate of brownies and muffins made up for me to take, as well as a cat who sat on my lap and purred for twenty minutes, which made me feel quite a bit better. When I was getting back on the 5, though, there was a point where you could either take the right for Portland or the left for Seattle and I made the right but I kept looking left and I just wanted to go home so bad. “You don’t live there anymore,” I told myself, a little sternly. “You don’t live anywhere, so just put your iPod on Shuffle and keep driving.” And of course the iPod decided to give me songs with lyrics like “When you sent me off to see the world, were you scared that I might get hurt?” and “I’m bound to pack it up” and “Your heart is an empty room, with walls of the deepest blue,” which I’m sure Death Cab don’t know they wrote about the cloud room but they totally did.

Tracy and Peter and Paul and I ended up not meeting at Powell’s the way we had planned but instead near the convention center where Peter and Paul were attending an international juggling convention, thank you very much. When I pulled up to the Burgertime where we were meeting, apparently Paul looked up and went, bless his heart, “All of a sudden I feel…awesome!” and there I was. It was so good to see everyone. After lunch Peter and Paul gave me a tour of the convention, promising the bouncer at the door of the practice space that I wouldn’t sue if I was hit by a flying club, and pointed out the different kinds of juggling nerds and gossiping about the various gang wars of the juggling community. After passing judgment on the jugglers (“wow, they throw those things really high”), and after a nap and then dinner with a couple more cousins and then an early breakfast the next day with everyone, I was feeling a lot better and less weepy, and I signed off my car and gave everyone hugs in a much better frame of mind.

Dave and Chrysa were at the airport to pick me up in their fly new hoopty and we basically had a five hour lunch together, during which we went OH NO GIRL and TRUE DAT a lot and we all decided to get engaged again. My old friend Ed, whom I haven’t seen for like two years, met us at the ABL and we went swimming for a while…oh, because have I mentioned how death hot it is down here? Which didn’t stop my mom from telling me on the phone last night what gorgeous weather it is. Anyway, Ed came over and we all had dinner, and then it was time to pick up Marcy, who’d flown up special from Redlands to see me, and then it was Saturday and time for Anna and I to get into matching uniforms of black loose pants and black camis. And then it was so hot that there was nothing for it but to take a three hour nap and when I woke up Anna had painted goodbye and good luck henna on my arms and back and if you think I looked fierce before, with my fuzzy hair, my librarian glasses, and my tag sticking out, you can only imagine what I looked like at the party with my hands all hennaed up and this fantastic octopus/skull-and-crossbones shirt that Shannon very sweetly gave me. I haven’t been doing a very good job of taking pictures lately because I always want to just talk to people but we did get some good shots that I hope to post this week.

The party was super silly and super fun. A bunch of people I really like (including my old college roommate Airy!) came over and we sat around in the dark because it was so hot and did just my favorite thing in the world, which is to talk and laugh and scream and tell stories. It was such a luxury just to bask in their collective presences. Everyone was so gorgeous and so funny. We started talking about heinous dating experiences and I told about this one and it just went on from there, with people saying things like “He danced like an enraged velociraptor” and “I thought if I just didn’t move, maybe he’d take his hand out from between my thighs” and “Do you want to MAKE OUT or NOT?” I’d tell you more about that conversation but a) too dirty for my family-friendly little site here, and also b) I am totally stealing those stories for my own purposes. Because those New Zealand people? Will have no idea.

Yesterday Anna and Marcy and Abi (who’d also flown in) went to Marin to go to Kat’s going-away barbecue, and we were thrilled that we had because it was so much cooler there than in the Silicon Valley. It was hard to say goodbye to Kat and Abi and I felt very strange doing so, very unreal. We all took a walk up to the top of a hill overlooking the ocean and I thought about dipping my feet in the freezing cold Pacific but then I remembered the next time I am at the beach the Pacific will be very warm indeed and also it turned out there was a tiny little sign warning people not to touch the water, which I guess all the millions of people in the water didn’t see.

There was a little drama with Marcy’s missing her flight, which was fine with me since it meant I could spend some more time with her, and then we fought for a while about which movie to fall asleep in front of. And now it’s Monday morning and everyone who lives here has left the house for work and soon my mom and sister will be here and it’s only a week until I leave the country. I’ve been having a wonderful time the past couple of days, and loving my friends so much. I think I often fall into the trap of taking my community for granted, you know, like everyone I know is beautiful and smart and funny and fantastic but it’s no big deal. This past couple of days, though, it’s like people are trying to make it difficult for me to leave by treating me so well and showing me so much love and affection and by being so generally amazing. I don’t deserve it but I’m going to try to live up to it, taking all those good wishes with me in my heart to the other side of the world.