last night was the first night in fifteen years that our (my family's) dog was not sleeping snugly in a padded bed somewhere. and, even though i have not lived in the same house with him for almost seven years, i'm not any less sad that my mom and sister had to make the decision to have him euthanized yesterday afternoon.
even 800 miles away and years removed, i will miss the thought of him sleeping in a patch of sunshine in my parents' dining room.
goodbye smokey. i am missing you very much.
my parents will be here in less than 24 hours.
am i ready?
umn, no... of course not.
but, at the very least, i am consistent. annoying, frustrating, but very consistent.
our apartment is a disaster area, for the most part, because i am in the midst of packing up all our shit so we can move in slightly over a week. it is messy, it is dirty, and i still have a huge amount of packing to actually do.
how is it i thought moving would be easier this time, since i'd be home and be able to do it in small bits.
my penchant for procrastination even gets to me, sometimes.
i have, however, had a very interesting time of going through my (our) things, and waxing reminiscent at all the Things i keep to preserve my memories. i am an admitted pack rat. and, while i don't keep everything anymore. i do keep a lot of peculiar little bits of things from my past.
it's times like these when i wish i had a functioning scanner and/or digital camera to fully illustrate exactly what kind of Things i keep.
this is especially true for hand-written things. especially now, when most of the correspondence i keep is digital, it's nice to have things that were physically written by someone. letters, birthday and holiday cards, lists of my own.
i have a lot of memories associated with the things piled in boxes that are now in my dining room. i like to remember. it amazes me how fondly i enjoy looking back on things and people and places. even ones that weren't so pleasant at the time.
it makes me realize just how much i've enjoyed my life so far. and it makes me wonder what kinds of things i'll be looking at in 10 to 20 years from now.
and, i wonder where i'll be and what i'll be doing then.
so, when some things in my life are harder than usual, i can think about these things.
...and wonder.
i have a lot i could write about, but i'm not sure right now how much i want to say. so, bear with me.
wallace's company is closing up shop. as of today, i think. i was uneasy on tuesday, when we got the first word of it. i was scared last night, crying... but trying to be positive and strong for wallace's sake. and, today, i'm relieved (a bit) and even a little happy.
i mean, i've had some of this potential shit in the back of my mind for a month or so now. dot.com chaos and confusion has been getting increasingly worse, lately. wallace and i had even perused fucked company together, chuckling a little about who was going down, and how badly.
i smiled a bit, as we passed one of the now vacant iXL buildings, near where wallace's office is, umn, at least for today.
we had the karma coming, i guess. i shouldn't have been so cavalier, maybe. who knows? i don't think it would have made much difference.
there had been lay-offs in his office, but... i had hoped they could pull it out, make it work. but, they don't want to go any further into this hole.
this impacts us doubly, because the one child i'm watching right now is the child of one of wallace's co-workers, and i consider her a friend. and, losing that money, on top of wallace's salary brings us down to $0 income by the end of the month.
yeah, thanks. we're only trying to friggin' MOVE into a house, here, people. bad bad timing. gods.
but, there does seem to be maybe a bronze lining to this cloud... which may eventually turn into a silver one. but, i don't know. there is a lot of uncertainty for the next couple of months. and, i haven't quite decided how to deal with that precisely, yet.
but, i'm not crying. i'm not screaming. i'm taking big deep breaths, and reflecting on everything swirling around me.
this will be okay. this might eventually be good, even great -- with a little luck. but, i'm mainly concentrating on the breathing part right now.