Waiting for a Jet Plane

(I wrote this at 3 o’clock this afternoon while without internet.)

I’m currently sitting at gate 11(the best gate because it’s like three feet away from security; gate 32 is the worst) at the San Jose airport, which does NOT have free wi-fi, thankyouverymuch, sir sitting next to me, waiting for my flight to start boarding. I’m a little over an hour early for the flight, which is sort of cutting it a little close for my comfort, but thankfully there was NO ONE in line at security, which is good because I had to Opt Out because FUCK if I’m putting myself through a body scanner. NOT HAPPENING.

And my personal pat down was … sort of anticlimactic. I expected some sort of drama or surliness or perhaps just them finding my tiiiiiiiiny biltong knife on my keyring, because, OOPS, I was halfway to the light rail station before I remembered that I had it. But no. She was friendly, I was friendly. She complimented my hair and didn’t search my bags, and in less than a minute or two, I was on my way.

Anyways, I’m normally super anal about getting to the airport early, and would have been panicking and stressing at the prospect of only arriving an hour-ish before my flight, thanks to that one weekend where I missed four flights and was sort of scarred for life. I wanted to get here around 2 for my 4 pm flight, but I went to the gym after I got off work and just didn’t have enough time after that to shower and pack (what? I knew WHAT I was going to pack; I just hadn’t actually PACKED it yet) AND make the train that would get me here at 2.

Man, once my bags were packed, though, and I saw how freaking HEAVY they are, I considered just calling a cab and making it easy on myself. But I don’t have any cash, and I’m not actually sure how much money is in my bank account, and besides, taking the light rail and then the bus was FREE. Y’all know how much I like FREE. I’m pretty proud of myself managing to lug all my shit the 15 minutes to the light rail stop without crying or falling over, but a few minutes in, I did have the thought that perhaps I should have asked someone for a ride.

Oh well, I’m here now, and coming home, not only will Feller pick me up at the airport, my bags will be three pounds of coffee and two tins of tea lighter, not to mention all the knitted goods I plan on leaving in Tucson, which will also reduce my return load.

Tucson Bound

I’m leaving for Tucson Thursday evening, and I am SO SO SO excited. It’s just me going, and the week away from Feller will be pretty terrible, but I am so looking forward to uninterrupted time to visit and reconnect with my friends.

Am I in any way prepared for this trip? NOPE. I am pondering what I will pack, which means debating HOW MUCH I’ll pack. Like, Imma be gone for a week, maybe I should check a bag? But I don’t WANNNNNNNNA check a bag! But how much makeup and shoes can you fit into your carryon? I think it’ll just take some creative finagling of the “overhead compartment bag, under the seat bag and purse” rule. But, SERIOUSLY? You gonna make all your shit fit into what the flight attendants will allow you to carry onto the plane? Like, REALLY?

And that’s where I start downsizing the amount of makeup and shoes I would normally pack for a week long trip that involves going to church on Sunday, an occasion for which I like to dress up. I think Imma leave my heels at home this time. I will take two pairs of jeans, because, really? I’ll be gone a week; I need to at least PRETEND to wear more than one pair of pants ever. (Feller was SHOCKED and SCANDALIZED that I would pack three pairs of jeans for our six week trip to Cape Town and the UK. “But … you can just WASH them!”)

I might need to pack before I pack just to make sure I can actually fit everything I want into my various bags. Also, I should determine whether I can carry more stuff easily in my GIANT laptop traveling bag or if I should borrow Feller’s backpack. And what purse do I want to bring? The heavy one that holds a lot of stuff? Or the one that doesn’t weigh five pounds when empty?

And HOW THE HECK am I getting to the airport? My flight leaves at 4 pm, so Feller can’t take me because his job is PRETTY STRICT about 9-5, and fuck if I’m paying for my car to sit five minutes from our house for a week. I’m thinking bus, but again, HOW MUCH SHIT AM I TAKING?! Because lugging all that on public transit doesn’t sound fun to me. But I might be too cheap to take a cab. DILEMMAS.

Oh, and is my present for BFF’s baby shower ready? NOPE. I mean, I guess I have until Sunday afternoon, but let’s not wait until the LAST POSSIBLE second, shall we?

There’s just so much to do in the next few days, and I’d like to hit the gym before I go, hopefully for my 3 times a week goal, but that depends on when the TV delivery guys get here, I think. Sometime between 1-6. Wonderful. And guess who’s been fighting a cold the past three days and, thus, utterly useless for anything that isn’t NAPPING? ME. That would be me. Doesn’t my immune system know that I have BETTER things to do?

I guess now, while waiting for the TV, would be a good time to be productive.

Happy Holidays

So, quickly, check out my 2010 Book List! Eventually, I’ll get down to doing a Top Five of 2010, but it might be a couple of weeks. You know how I am about follow through.

ANYWAYS. The feller and I went home for Christmas and New Year’s. Well, my home. Arizona. We stayed a few days with my mom, until we decided that we needed some Grown Up Time and got a motel, which was AWESOME. OMG. Awesome. And then we were down in Tucson for about 5 days staying with my BFF and her hubby. And, fuck. It was SO NICE. We didn’t have a plan or an agenda or shit that we had to do. No wedding dress shopping or bridal showers or weddings or birthdays or preplanned bbq’s. All those things were fun, and I enjoyed doing them, but there’s something to be said for the freedom to chill and hang and do whatever you feel like doing.

We had dinner with friends and played with fireworks (they’re legal in AZ now!) (except bottle rockets; you still can’t have those) (how long before someone burns down his neighborhood, I wonder?) and made Christmas candy with Mariam and I got a new tattoo and we went shopping and drinking and just had a relaxing good time. It was EXACTLY what I was hoping for on this trip, and even though it wasn’t how my feller wanted to spend his Christmas break, he was wonderful and went along with everything I suggested.

The only bad thing is that I’m homesick like crazy now (though I suppose I will admit that the INTENSITY of my feelings are in part due to menstrual hormones). If I weren’t in a happy, loving and committed relationship, I’d pack up my stuff tomorrow and go home. And it’s not even that I don’t LIKE the Bay Area; I like it FINE, but it’s not my home. It’s not where my support system, all the people I love, is, and I just don’t know if I could ever feel about here the way I feel about there. Because it’s about more than just the people and relationships that I have there that I don’t have here; I LOVE Tucson. I love the desert and the mountains and the heat and the summer storms, and, I don’t know, I feel at home there. I have since the first day I moved down there. But for now, I just hope and pray that my path leads me home someday.

ANYWAYS. Tucson was awesome. Family was awesome. Friends were awesome. And everyone really liked the feller. All in all, it was a successful trip. And we came home to find our house-sitter was a secret cleaning freak (or maybe not so secret; I don’t know her life), and she left us a list of the things she had cleaned, which basically was ALL THE THINGS. NO JOKE, she DUSTED OUR CEILING, y’all. I don’t think I’ve EVER dusted a ceiling in my LIFE. AND she thought my kitties were adorable! Even Bandito, who’s kind of a shithead! So that was a pleasant surprise at 3 am when we got home.

So, good trip, good holidays and now it’s back to the same old same old for now. But I do believe change is a comin’ this year. I’m ready, I am.

Living Together

People have been asking for picture’s of the house, and I WANT to take pictures! I really do! But I think I’m giving up on ever taking them. I’m never home during the day and weekends are usually so jam packed that I don’t have the time or spare thought to whip out my camera for documentation. And I’ve been so busy/stressed/tired/sick in the evenings that all I want to do is curl up in bed with some How I Met Your Mother.

At any rate, the house is AMAZING. I mean, it’s not perfect; I wish the driveway were wide enough for two cars to park side by side. I wish the insulation were a bit better so it would stay warm all over the house. I wish we had a garbage disposal. But really? Except for those few small things? The house is wonderful. It’s huge and old and charming (but not in the way that in housing ads “charming” means small or kind of shitty or “oh yeah, you totally have to stand on one foot and cross your eyes and do a little dance to get any of the appliances to work”), I mean, it quite literally charms me. It’s got all those built in bookshelves that I love and enough space for all of our stuff without feeling cramped and the biggest bathtub I have ever had the pleasure of taking a bath in. I can stretch out in that thing and barely touch the other end and it’s so deep and wonderful and, yeah, I think Imma need to take a bath tonight.

And living with the feller? Well, it’s ALSO amazing. We seriously enjoy all the time we spend together and even though neither of us has ever lived with a significant other before, we’re settling in together and getting the hang of cohabitation. And despite me acting like a crazy ass bitch a few times, he still likes me enough to want to hang around for awhile, which is fantastic. Because I kinda dig him too. He even likes my cats most of the time.

We’re getting into the rhythm of him cooking and me cleaning and eating dinner at the dining room table together and chilling on the couch with some TV on (I got him watching Dollhouse, which is something I was hoping to do, though I admittedly skipped the shitty first four episodes and just started with the unaired pilot and went from there) and snuggling in bed before I fall asleep. Seriously. We cuddle in bed EVERY NIGHT before I fall asleep, and he gets MAD at me if I don’t call him in for snuggles. He’s taken to calling our bedtime routine “Mandatory Relationship Cuddles,” and it’s a lovely way for us both to unwind and enjoy each other. We’re kind of disgusting (I mean, we unironically use the word “snuggles”) but in a really wonderful way, and I look forward to getting tucked into bed by him for years to come.

So the living? It is good. And in a time that is not very far from now, we will be on vacation in Arizona and hanging with my family and my friends and doing fun things like eating No Anchovies and just chillaxing and not thinking about work, because that’s what I want. To not think about work for awhile.

On the Hunt

I both love and hate home hunting, be it apartments or houses or both. I love looking at Craigslist ads for housing, until I don’t anymore. Until I have spent SO MUCH TIME looking at Craigslist ads and have found ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that is EVEN CLOSE to what I want in my price range, and I’m SO SICK of seeing the SAME ads for the SAME apartment complexes that will NEVER let me and my three cats live there in peace.

And I love looking at apartments and houses and floorplans and imagining where all my stuff would go and what it would feel like to come home to this space every night, until I realize that this place is ALL WRONG. Then I just want to leave RIGHT NOW. Like the one time I was checking out a one bedroom in Oakland, and it was ADORABLE, and had really beautiful hard wood floors. And then I walked in the bedroom. It was the TINIEST LITTLE-BITTIEST room I have EVER seen. And the closet was a joke. I could hang a total of three things in there. And I knew, I KNEW I couldn’t live there, but I still had to look at the kitchen and bathroom and ask smart sounding questions and pretend like I was interested. Because I don’t want to waste everyone’s time by leaving thirty seconds after I walk in. This is when a lemon law for housing would be handy.

So it was with excitement and some trepidation that I went into this most recent round of home hunting, except it was harder now because not only was I looking for a place that fit all my criteria (which are mostly allowing three cats and having a washer and dryer), but I had to find one that fit all my feller’s criteria too (which mostly dealt with location in relation to his work and soundproofing). But finally, FINALLY, I found a few places that fit the bill, and we were off checking them out. After being stood up by one realtor, we looked at a house together. I don’t know about him, but it was practically love at first sight for me. It has this AMAZING, BEAUTIFUL, WONDERFUL picture window on the front porch and a large living room with a fireplace and BUILT IN SHELVING. I LOVE built in shelving. Built in shelving rockets an okay place into being a place I might want to live. I LOVE IT. And then the feller says HE loves it! And I love it! And WE LOVE IT! LOVE LOVE LOVE!

And then comes the waiting. We’ve applied, we’ve touched base with the owner, we’re waiting to hear if we get the house we love. Did I mention we love it? In fact, I may or may not have already started mentally decorating it (I DID). My plants are already living in the laundry room during the winter months. The breakfast nook is already my study corner. I’m already working out how to fix the awkward angle of the tv to the couch to the fireplace. I’m already (mentally) sending dang mail there. So pretty much, I can ONLY think positive thoughts because, otherwise, someone is kicking me out of my home. MY HOME. MINE.

And thank the sweet baby Jesus, we got it. I got the call this morning offering us the house “if [we]’re still interested”. Still interested? Heck, aren’t I already LIVING there?

Move in is next Saturday. This next week will be a flurry of packing and getting utilities turned on and switched over and calling the internet company to ask why the FUCK my bill just jumped up by $20?! That shit don’t fly around here.