Operation: Crazy Idea Has Commenced!
Likely, this will be disjointed. That's just the way my brain is working of late. NOTE: This entry covers about a month of time, May 31 - June 30. The next (intended) entry will cover events starting July 1.
Good luck.
Hi there. Long time no post. Totally my fault. I'll own that. It's just that, in spite of the major change my life is currently going through, somehow it still feels like the same old same old. That probably doesn't make any sense, but it's true. I had been talking -- it feels -- non-stop about Operation: Crazy Idea for so long that now, when it's actually being implemented, it's all more of the same. The same uncertainty. The same unease. The same nervousness bordering on sheer terror. It has never been my intent to keep you in the dark, Dear Journal, but I'm afraid that's precisely what I've done.
So here is the somewhat massive catch-up post.
My last day working for the State of Texas was May 31. Against my wishes, they threw me a Going Away party, complete with a Visa Gift Card to help me with various expenses I may incur along the way. I had no idea it would be as hard to leave them as it turned out to be when it came time to type up my "I'm out of here" thank you email. I figured it would just end up being a "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" kind of thing. Duck out without anyone noticing I had ever even been there. I guess you can't work in a place for eleven years without making some kind of an impact. As it turns out, it was a somewhat positive impact. The whole gang even stood still long enough for me to snap a few pictures. I'll miss those crazy people.
On June 1 (a Friday), it felt like I had simply taken the day off. I knew, on the surface, that I was officially unemployed, but the deeper parts of my brain equated it to the feeling I normally get when a holiday falls on a Friday. Or when I take a random Friday off for no real reason. The weekend passed with that same feeling, and when Monday the 4th rolled around, I got up, ready to head to work. I think that's when it started to really sink in. I was up, ready to head out the door, with nowhere to go. Even so, it still felt like vacation for the first couple of weeks. I played lots of Lego video games.
Then the urgency began. I had given myself a whole month to get packed and ready to depart, but I had done very little of that. On top of those facts, I did not have an apartment to move to. Or a moving service to get my stuff there. (Procrastination, thy name is Darren Blake.)
As it turned out, lurawan was willing to put me up on her couch for "as long as it takes." (Sucker.) I hurriedly located one of those storage container moving companies (Mobile Mini, for the record) and scheduled for a crate to be delivered on Monday, June 25. It would be taken away on Friday, June 29. I got the majority of my packing done before Monday. Not all, but most.
The plan was to get most of my stuff out of the apartment by Wednesday night, send the sofa out there on Thursday, and be done by Thursday night. I had bought a hand truck so that I would not have to enlist anyone's help (I had volunteers for the move out, but I knew I would have no one for the move back in part once I reached California... so I decided to see if I could do it all alone before it became necessary).
The last week of June in Austin was HOT. It reached 100 or more every single day. By noon each day, I was tuckered. I would take frequent breaks and drink a lot of water. On Thursday, when it was do-or-die time, I started to panic. There was still way too much crap in my apartment, and I had to be done that day, because I did not know exactly when on Friday they would be coming to pick up the container.
I did not take breaks as frequently Thursday. I still drank a lot of water, though. (Did I mention it got over 100 every single day that week?) I ran myself to the point of exhaustion. But somehow, when it was all over, all that was left were the three suitcases I would be taking with me, the modem, the router, and the exercise machine I was giving to my sister. I had to force myself to eat my supper; I was too tired to want to eat.
TMI PARAGRAPH: Skip this one... Before the day was even half over, I looked like I was involved in a wet t-shirt contest. I drank upwards of five liters of water, and only had to pee once. The whole day. It was a hot day.
I slept on the floor that night, because I had also called the 1-800-GOT-JUNK guys to take my bed away, as I was not bringing it with me on my adventure. (I never slept in it anyway, so why burden myself?) It was as uncomfortable as I remember it from the night before my sofa was delivered, but it also meant that the ordeal was over for the moment, and it was only a matter of time before I was in a new place.
My last day actually in Texas was June 30, a Saturday. Friday night I spent with my sister and her family -- one last hurrah before I never see them again. (Melodramatic, yes, but possibly true, too.) We ordered pizza and played board games. I cuddled miniature munchkins and talked with larger munchkins. My brother's girls also spent the night, so I was with all of my nieces (and nephew). I loved it and had a fantastic time.
Then it was time to go. Just like at work a month before, it wasn't until it was actually time to say good-bye that I felt the pang. Walking out to my sister's SUV, I had to fight back the tears, because I knew if I started crying, she would start crying, and we'd never get to the airport on time. The good news is that when she hugged me, Sis did not break my ribs as I feared she would. The bad news is that in that moment, I knew I was going to miss her like crazy. The strange part of the whole scenario is that we don't even talk all that often. It could be months between phone calls, and sometimes those didn't even result in actual face-to-face contact. I do miss them, though. It is the nature of distance.
I made it inside the terminal, wiping away the stubborn moisture that insisted on being present even in public, waited in line to check my two suitcases and pick up my boarding pass, took my place in the security line (reading every posted sign there, since you can barely sneeze without being labeled a suspected terrorist these days), and double-checked the flight boards for extra verification.
And learned my flight had been delayed by two hours.
Y'know, I'm generally a patient person, but the primary thing I hate most about flying is the wait time. (You're supposed to show up X number of hours early so you can get through security, and it never takes as long as they say it will -- though it actually came close to it this time. The only reason I don't just disregard the suggested arrival time is that it takes longer than you think it will when you're depending on it not to take that long. So I find myself waiting for at least 90 minutes most of the time, and bored out of my mind thanks to not wanting to pay to get wi-fi on my iPod. Wow, that was a mostly tangent!) It seems to me that if the flight was going to be delayed two hours, they might have sent an email to let me know about it so that I could have planned around it. Maybe so I could spend that extra two hours cuddling munchkins that I won't get to cuddle for at least a year, if ever. Never got an email. (Even when I got where I was going and could check it again, there was never anything from the airline about a delay. So much for "We need your email address to notify you of itinerary changes.") Later, there was yet another delay, but it was only twenty more minutes. What's twenty minutes when you've already been waiting two hours on top of the hour you would have normally waited?
(It's a good thing this journal is for myself, or I would have to take a giant red marker to that rant.)
A flight that was supposed to take off at 4:30-ish Central and land at 5:30-ish Pacific ended up being close to 7:00 and 8:00. The saving grace of it all was that I got a direct flight from Austin to Los Angeles. (Was willing to fly into John Wayne Airport in Orange County to save my friend the driving, but she was okay with the trip and it was about $100 less to fly into LAX.)
Lurawan, dear one that she is, insisted on going to the Grand Lux Cafe at the Beverly Center upon my arrival, in spite of the fact that I was quite tired by then. Then there was a wait time of close to an hour at the restaurant. I didn't feel like eating and ended up having them pack up half the burger. (It was lunch the following day.) On the drive home, I fought the sleep monster and lost. (One of lurawan's major rules in the car is no sleeping. If she has to be awake, so does the passenger.) Sorry, bub. I broke that rule big time that night.
Welcome to California!