aamcnamara

So I'm leaving tomorrow.

...goodness, it looks terribly official typed out like that.

I am mostly packed. At one point in the past couple of days I was tempted toward "I have so many THINGS!" but managed to lure myself back into "I don't have that many things, it just looks like a lot because they are all on the floor of my not-so-large room at the same time", which was good and also true.

It makes me slightly wistful to realize that I know precisely how much room my life takes up: the suitcase, the duffel bags, the box of books-and-tea, the box of teaset. (And the huge wall of bookshelves, but that's not quite a part of my-life so much as something I've put down for a while and will pick up again later.)

I've been doing the Farewells thing recently. I got to know more people this summer than I'd realized--the janitor I greeted every morning on my way into the archives, the woman I said good morning to at the bus stop, my co-workers and "boss"es at my library-volunteering positions... Apart from that, I've been biking around the lake or walking through the Nicollet Mall farmers' market thinking, "This might be the last time I do this for quite a while--"

Part of it, of course, is that ideally next summer I'll have some kind of job/internship/research and won't necessarily be in Minnesota for the whole time. I won't have time to see new bits of the city like I have been this summer, casually set up hanging-out times and bike or bus over to them... so I'm not really just saying goodbye to the city until winter break; I might be saying goodbye to spending long stretches of time here in general.

Unless I move back here after college. Which is always possible.

In the meantime, I have plenty of little tasks to occupy my attention. One of this afternoon's was getting a new tiny notebook ready to be carried in my purse. I transferred all the Important Information from the old one; I engaged in a brief moment of detective work to figure out when I started carrying the last one; and I put, "Fall 2010 - " on the inside cover of the new one.

In many areas of my life, I am not this organized, because I don't need to be. In my errata-notebooks, the to-do lists, directions I scribbled off google maps, and random phone numbers without names are interspersed with panel notes from a con are interspersed with story ideas. If I don't put dates inside the cover, I would never find anything.

Tomorrow. It's starting to seem real. Tomorrow.

"Graduation practice" yesterday turned out to be their method of trapping us all in the school auditorium for two hours while we waited in line to get our caps and gowns. I am deeply disappointed that the said caps and gowns are in fact purple--I had been looking forward to having a ready-made wizard costume.

However, if all goes well that is the last time I will ever be forced to go to that building, which is awesome.

Then I went with friends to see Up, which I liked quite a bit (though I noted some not so feminist things about it), and then hung out with them until one in the morning.

We've all taken to hugging each other fiercely when we say goodbye, even if we know with absolute certainty we'll see each other later that afternoon or the next day. Because now--time is limited, all of a sudden; and maybe that certainty isn't so certain any more.

The funny thing about going to bed at one a.m. is that you feel absolutely no desire to wake up at five thirty to work on your not-a-novel. So I slept in (which for me means eight), and then had a lazy breakfast and a lazy day, nursing the bruise I got from biking to school last week and the scratches I got on one arm from a failed attempt to climb a gigantic tree last night. I cleaned my room; it's amazing how quickly it becomes clear that all of the paper in which your desk is submerged is, in fact, programs from plays that you went to see five months ago, and assignment sheets for homework which has been done, turned in, and returned graded, and old college mail and information booklets from when you were still searching for a college.

By now I've kind of given up on getting any writing done today. I attempted to make a playlist for a story I want to write, but it turns out that I have exactly zero trickster songs. (Recommendations?)

So, on the whole, a peaceful day. I think I get one of those once in a while, right? Later I will go and drop in at my friends' grad parties, and maybe wander out 250 words on the not-a-novel just so I can say that I did something today, at least.

And tomorrow is a new day, and I don't have to go to school that day either. Or the day after that, ad infinitum until September.