Most of me finds this move to be quite the adventure, and I’m loving it.  Navigating freeways, getting lost in alien neighborhoods, and not being able to understand anything the neighbor is saying (because they’re from Mexico and I don’t speak any Spanish) is fun stuff.  My sister tells me to take the 805 N, but a wrong turn puts me on the other edge of town on the 15 N - it’s one heck of a way to explore my new home.  Thankfully, gas is cheap this month

Cyd is doing extremely well, though her anxiety level is elevated, too.  We cut her hair the other night so she wouldn’t have to deal with tangles or primping each morning.  She actually loves the cut, which is a modified bob - longer in the front, shorter in the back, reminiscent of that lovely Barbra Streisand version of the 1960’s (minus the bangs).  It looks very chic on her.  She’s got some nice friends at school, a “really mean teacher,” a good after-school care program, and a friend across the hallway at home.  She’s been doing her homework, and doing well at it, but she’s going to get some tutoring from her teacher to catch her up to the rest of the class.  Though he says she is not up to the level of “a 5th grader in California,” she knows how to do what they’re doing, and was doing it a couple of years ago in Hawaii with a different method…so I think it’ll be fine once Cyd gets into her rhythm.  There is food here that she can eat (yay!) and a Target store down the road for all her immediate needs.

The little part of me that is not enjoying the move is the anxious part.  I’m finding that I can live without a sofa for a while, but I’m starting to get irritated that I don’t have a television hooked up to the cable service I had to get to insure that I had internet.  I’m enjoying the peace and quiet of my new job, though I find myself missing a lot of the chaos that put me in the hospital so regularly.  I adore my new colleagues, who are a spiffy bunch of people, but I’m sorely missing my staff, who are also a spiffy bunch of people. 

I’ll get over it, I’m sure.  As soon as my car gets here =)

Melissa and the bunch are arranging a nice welcome dinner on Saturday, which I’m really looking forward to.  It’ll be great to see everyone again!  Maybe I’ll even get to snap a picture or two =)

I have learned to hate the color of corrugated cardboard boxes.  I have learned to hate the smell of corrugated cardboard boxes.  Yet, in my second week of packing, I have found that they make reasonable substitutions for ottomans when one is too tired from packing to get into bed.  Sleeping on the sofa, with feet planted on a box, works fine for an eight-hour snooze.

This being in between jobs has its up side.  I’m able to snooze for a full eight hours.  The phone isn’t ringing between 10pm and 5am, the emails aren’t pouring in like waterfalls.  I actually have moments in which packing is like a vacation.  Moments, mind you, nothing more than fleeting moments.  But they’re somehow restful, even though my mind is swirling with all the things that I must do, and all the things I won’t be able to do.  Like clean the hovel.  I’m leaving it fully stocked and relying on the good graces of my building manager to sort it out and clean it.  He’ll get a big tip.  A huge tip.  And some family that relies on Goodwill is going to have one heck of a Christmas this year.

I’ve decided the furniture will stay in Hawaii.  I can pick up new things next week.  That leaves me with roughly 60 boxes of stuff that I’ve accumulated and feel I can’t live without.  Odd, that.  Almost half of everything I own is going into dumpsters or being donated to Goodwill.  But my CDs?  That I could’ve sold to make a few more dollars?  Hell, I’m willing to pay to ship those.  It’s strange, what we think we need on our imaginary desert islands.  Stranger still is the fact that I’m leaving the stereo behind