Double Date Weddings 2008

Six years ago (and a week) Zak and I got married, and a week after that, our dear friends Ty and Jd did too. It was christened "Double Date Wedding 2002" by Wally Pleasant, a folk singer who was commissioned to write a song all about us.

This last week has been Double Date Weddings 2008. It has also been a wierd respite from our move preparations. I'd like to write more but I'm very tired. Here is a picture of Puj and Stevu from their wedding... there will be some of Bri and K's soon, but I didn't bring my camera so I'll have to wait. Now I've got to go to sleep.

I'm putting things into boxes.

It's really difficult to concentrate/focus/pack. One box at a time. That's all I can do.

Time Warp

In the summer of '95, I had to get ready to say goodbye to my three best friends and my boyfriend because they were all going to college and leaving me behind for my senior year. By September, I could recount what I did every single day of that summer, because it all felt so eventful and poignant. (Also, because we did awesome stuff like, go to the drive-in, hung out at diners and Thai restaurants, drank coffee and swam in Newport at night, and climbed around Lincoln park.)

This summer there are some circumstantial similarities, of course, but weirdly there's been some very visceral experiences that confuse my sense of time.

- Riding in the backseat of a car on the way to the beach around sunset with loud techno music playing, while the driver inexpertly speeds through gears and skids to a stop at every light.

- Believing that coffee can make up for weeks of mild and mostly voluntary sleep deprivation.

- Spending HOURS on the phone with different people, talking until I figure out really big ideas about myself and my future.

garage sale is over.

whew.

Shameful

It's the basement, man, it just swallows me whole!

I've been under the stairs, and keep finding the kind of stuff people keep in cardboard boxes under the stairs... tax documents, paperwork from work trainings and college classes, old notes from friends and lovers... generally weird stuff! I found my second journal WHICH I started in 7th gr. (Homeroom 20, it says on the cover.) I started it because we were reading Ann Frank's diary, AND we were about to start the Persian Gulf war, and my self-absorption kind of led me to conflate the two. It's more embarrassing than I would have thought.

"6:36 am January 16th: Hi again! I'm waiting for my Cream of Wheat to heat up. Isn't it weird that when my mom was a kid they had to make a big pan of it now you make your own in 3-4 min. as compared to 20 min cool huh, Oops it's done, see ya.

9:11am January 17th: We bombed Iraq last night. We bombed their air fields, factories, and everything. We're about to take a lit exam.

10:56 am I'm back and I'm in science. Oh, I got a 95% on my exam only two wrong!!! I'm so happy, mom's going to be ecstatic!! We won in Gym! We're going to see a movie to tell us about Uranus. Bye!"

Good thing I grew up, so I can write about important stuff, like what people in Ballard say on the bus, and how efficiently (or not) I'm moving.

I'm a little dizzy....

Saw the Dark Knight, it was incredible, absolutely amazing. LOVED it.

The to-do list has graduated from the bathroom mirror to the white board in the kitchen. (This whiteboard used to hold shopping lists and lists of all the non-visible foods in the house (pantry, freezer etc.) Now it has lists pertaining to emptying this house, to filling boxes and a truck, to preparing for visitors (?!) and applying to school.

Also, we started feeding the cats Peppercatz because of John's wierd skin problems and their enormity. It's raw meat, which I feel good about for them but a little confused about as a new vegetarian. On the other hand, after two days they're behavior is decidedly more catlike on the cat-to-sofa spectrum which is incredibly charming. Yesterday, we watched John tear ass across the lawn (which generally only happens in the presence of a dog or a vaccuum) and scratch her nails on the fence. "She's THINKING about CLIMBING the FENCE!" Z said with absolute incredulity. We're mixing it with their old food (California Natural) and the kibbles have been left over every single day. (Today, I gave them Evo which the lady at the pet store gave me for free to try. It is still sitting there.) John ignored her bowl in order to plot about how to intimidate Little G out of hers.... again a move away from sofa.

Proof of Packing

Last night my friends John and Paula watched me pack because Z is away for the weekend and I needed some moral support. I went through a box of old stuff (dumped most of it) and two shelves of books. (Most of our books Z and I want to pack or pitch together, but tonight I did my child/youth section, and saved two questionable items to ask him about later.) Unfortunately, since I don't have boxes yet (but will fetch some today... cast-offs from P's wedding gifts) my packing really consisted of stacking. But the hard part for me is really sitting on the floor, and casting off the ones I don't want, and I did that.










































For John the Baptist, hating changes is the hard part, though.

I've found myself really anxious and stressed out about this move, more than I thought I would be. Yesterday I said something about "this family" and how we move. It was a tense moment in a long string of tense moments, but Z laughed when I said that and we realized that maybe there are some other voices speaking in our conversation. I don't remember much of moving as a kid, but we did it a lot because my dad was in the Navy. (The last big move was when I was 9 and I remember that one.) I'm pretty curious about how my family talked about moving, and what my parents were anxious about at the time. I remember the concept of "cleaning for inspection" and that it was a big deal. I think at one point this meant my mother scraping spaghetti off the ceiling in Connecticut (someone had shown her that a perfect way to test your spaghetti is to throw it onto the ceiling... if it sticks, it's done.) and oatmeal off the water heater in California (a kid my mom cared for had been forced to eat his cold oatmeal breakfast leftovers for lunch and the kid had hidden it there when my mom's back was turned). I guess, when I'm feeling stressed out about emptying the basement, I can imagine scraping oatmeal off the heater.
Yeah, that might help.