The Big Easy

34 weeks down
19 weeks left
Still not talking about the diet- But soon. Once I’m through the first week wine-and-dine at work, and actually have my kitchen set up so I can begin cooking again, I’ll be back on the wagon. And I need it. Clothes are starting not to fit again. Sigh.
About 9 1/2 months until the wedding

I am without internet. I didn’t realize how much I used the internet until I no longer had said internet. Evidently Verizon will only come and set cable and internet up in your house when you in fact are in the house. And they only do this during their business hours of 8-5. And since today (or, almost a week ago now) I started a big kid job who has just about those same hours, this means that I will not be home to meet said Verizon people to get said internet until two weeks from now. Yeeeouch. And so, I will not be able to regularly post the blog from the comfort of my own home for another two weeks (can you believe there isn’t even anyone in my building I can pirate the interweb from? Stupid password protected neighbors.)

But internet or not, I am still writing the blog, though I can’t promise that it will be posted at the same intervals on the same days with the same frequency or in any sort of timely fashion at all.

So here I am, broadcasting live (well, on about a six day time delay between writing and finding a place/ time to post) from my new city and my new job and my new apartment after what will be known heretofore as the most unrealistic moving timeline ever. I ended my job at 5p.m. on Friday, loaded a moving van with all my earthly belongings on Saturday morning (and let’s be honest, even though I got rid of much, all my earthly belongings still constitutes a lot of crap), drove umpteen hours through the mountains with my car in tow, unloaded all my earthly belongings Saturday night before falling over exhausted, tried desperately to get settled in on Sunday (by settled in I mean, set up the bed, found my shampoo, a clean pair of pants and my coffee pot) and started a new job at 9 a.m. Monday morning.

Yeah. That happened.

Whether it is the moving or the exhaustion, the change in weather, the lack of sleep, the running around ragged or just the kicking up of dust everywhere, I have gotten for myself a MONSTER head cold that has just about zapped any energy that I had left after moving, establishing a new morning routine, and an *actual* 8.5 hour work day (haven’t had one of THOSE in quite awhile.) Seriously, it’s like the kind of sick that you legitimately call off from work for and don’t even feel guilty about. If it hadn’t been on the first three days of my brand new job, I would have been at home sleeping hard. At any rate, I have been in bed each night I have lived in the city around 8:30 p.m. (Clearly, I live a very exciting life. It’s like middle school all over again.) And though vile, I have greatly appreciated the value of my neti pot in the last 24 hours (and of course Vitamin Water, for whom I could be a spokesperson.) Still lame though. Nothing says “I’m so happy to be here for my first day of work” like sneezing all over your new boss ( that only happened once.)

So today (actually, it was today when I first wrote this…it’s four days later now) I started the new job. And I felt amazing, and overwhelmed, and excited and comfortable. It was like I had been there forever. People were kind. I laughed. My colleagues took me out for a welcome lunch. Pretty much, all in all, the best way my first day could have gone.

I’m nervous when I tell you that it was pretty much what I expected given the way the last few weeks have gone. I have never, ever, had any transition go so smoothly. And I gotta be honest—it’s sorta been freaking me out. From getting rid of the apartment, to finding a rent-controlled, all utilities included apartment very close to work (true story, even in morning rush hour, big city traffic that was stop and go the entire way, I still made it to work in under 30 minutes. My friend JO is cursing me for this, by the way.) The move, with the help of an amazing crew of friends on both ends, could not have gone faster or more efficiently. In the middle of late fall, when it rained the week before and after, my moving days were bright, sunny, dry, and easy.

True, my apartment is little. And the kitchen does leave a great deal to be desired. And yes, I am going to have to live on a shoestring for a bit of time until my first paycheck comes in. But all in all, this couldn’t have gone more according to plan.

A long time ago, probably because most things are pretty hard for me generally, I sort of adopted the sentiment that nothing much worth having was easy to get. And if something was easy to get, then it probably wasn’t worth very much. (I am always trying really really hard, by the way, which is surprising to many people. I’m kinda like the proverbial duck, on the surface gliding along smoothly on top of the water, but really, the only way that is actually happening is that I’m kicking like hell under the water the whole time.) But I think that even though this has been an easy transition, that it’s also going to be really good—that this ONE time, the ease just means it’s the right thing, and not that it’s a bad thing. Once again, I find myself having to stop to challenge my own assumptions about life (that could be the subtitle of this blog, don’t ya think?)

So here I am, and while my poor health is a bit of a challenge, all else is running like clockwork.

I mentioned my trepidation to one of my dearest friends who was helping me move my things in here in DC. He just laughed at me and said, “You know, not everything has to be hard. Can you just take a minute and appreciate that this is just a good and right thing to do?” Ha, indeed friend. Indeed.

As I have mentioned (woefully) I have no energy to unpack things, and even less room in my wee kitchen to put the things away that I unpack. And so sadly, arranging the kitchen in a manner that lets me cook hasn’t really happened yet. Obviously, step one of living in a new neighborhood in a new city without a kitchen is to find the best and most easily accessible Chinese takeout restaurant who delivers.

This was last night’s (or, well, Monday’s) dinner plan—the first real meal in my new place after my first day at my new job. The old standby of some pork lo mein and some chicken fried rice in hand, (I had visions of that episode of Sex in the City when Miranda gets angry that the girl at the takeout place starts to know her order by voice because she orders so often) I started to eat. As my meal came to a close (with enough leftovers for *several* more kitchenless nights- ah, the joy of Chinese food) I cracked open the two fortune cookies that I found at the bottom of the bag. The messages read as follows:

“Sing and rejoice, fortune is smiling on you.”

“Look up in the sky tonight. Have a moment for yourself.”

I couldn’t help but smile. These little gems seemed to be echoing what my friend had said and what I had been feeling all along but had been too afraid to say outloud. And so in that moment, between the boxes and the dust and the fog of a Nyquil-induced stooper, I did, in fact smile and rejoice just a little bit. Life is not so bad after all.