In Denial

I got back from my awesome Tongariro Crossing trip on Monday evening and I was all fired up to post a photo entry, with pictures of me standing by craters and me standing by lakes and me standing by Mt. Doom and me standing under tree ferns, but I was having power cord issues so I couldn’t wake my laptop up and then I got kind of into the book I was reading and then I went out every night after work this week and got home late and then I had to do a lot of stuff at work and a lot of emails to write and now I’m home with a new laptop cord but it’s time to go to bed so I can’t upload photos or tell you about my fun silly trip, no not tonight.

Two more weeks of work, and one more week here getting ready to go after that, and then Rarotonga. And then the South Island, and then the North. And then—I don’t know because I STILL haven’t finalized my tickets yet, but finalized they will be, and this weekend, too—Samoa, maybe, and then back to the West Coast of the States, and then the East, and then the West. And after that it’s anyone’s guess.

I’m in total denial, by the way, even though I just wrote that above paragraph very calmly and collectedly. Through a series of happy coincidences it looks like an Italian girl I met in Cairns is going to move into my room when I leave—I’ve been saying that A. is upgrading from half-Italian to full—but I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that in order for that to happen, I’m going to have to leave. I’ve made plans for my leaving do (do you live in Wellington? You are totally invited) but it’s still difficult for me to grasp that it’s because I’m leaving. It’s not happening. I have started giving away clothes and making hostel reservations, but it’s not happening. I’m selling my books this weekend, but it’s not happening. I’m referring out all my clients and having my exit interview tomorrow, but it’s not happening.

Life in Wellington just keeps going on and on, and I’m going with it. Today I went to work and had a meeting and got in touch with a client and did some research and made some calls and then made an emergency dental appointment because yesterday as I was walking into town to meet Stormy for dinner I all of a sudden just…lost a filling. As I was walking down the street, minding my own business. So I went to the dentist, who was very cute and told me all about his own Overseas Experience, and it took a long time for me to get numb and he told me I was “anatomically a little bit different from most people,” and then he proceeded to drill and drill and drill my teeth. I slobbered out of the chair and to New World where I picked up some much-needed tea and yogurt powder, and then to Courtenay Place where I met Nahum, who lent me a new powercord for the laptop. I ran into Suri on the way to Artie Bee’s for some cheap (ish) paperbacks and then I met Alice for milkshakes—which was about all I could handle with my poor numb mouth– at Sweet Mother’s Kitchen to rant and rave about boys and dumbness and how dumb boys can be. We went to New World again (but the New World Metro on Lambton Quay, not the big Mt. Vic New World where I’d got my yogurt powder and tea) and then got the cable car up to the Botanical Gardens to see a free Age Pryor show there. Laura and Dan happened to be sitting right near Nic and Al and Herman and Sandy, so we all squooshed together in the side garden and ate our picnic dinner and listened to Age play his music. Alice and I took a walk around the perimeter of the very crowded garden and pointed out all the boys we thought were cute and were pleasantly surprised to see that we have similar taste in the cuteness of boys. I ran into Julie and Heidi and their partners and then we saw David way out in the front taking pictures and I waved as hard as I could but he didn’t see me.

Kath said she’d give me a ride home so we walked through a very dark part of the gardens and saw some glowworms, and then we walked up eight hundred hills in Kelburn, and then it turned out that the car was actually parked like twenty meters from where we’d been sitting before, but we didn’t care and I was happy not to have to take the bus. And now I am writing another I-ate-soup-for-lunch entry because that’s all I want to write about as I get ready to go away from my heart’s city: what it’s like here, what I do here, what I am here.