A Beginning

Six years ago this month, I was accepted to graduate school in the East. I packed my belongings and journeyed across the country, ready to break with the past and begin my future anew. Building a new life stretched and enriched my soul, and I was healed in ever so many ways.

Home is something of a strange concept for me. I feel that I have many homes, and DC is certainly a  home to me. Leaving one of my homes is always excruciating.

Our apartment is half hollow now: furniture sold, keepsakes boxed, pictures wrapped, and walls wiped clean. We will pick and sort through our East coast lives for another week yet, and then we will together pack our belongings and journey across the country. This leaving has not been-- nor will it ever be--easy. But, we press forward. We will return to the West. And we will begin again.

Passport to Stay Put

Procrastination is not always a bad thing.

When David and I were married, the trauma and expense of changing my name was so all encompassing that I didn't follow through on every aspect of becoming Mrs. K. The sole remaining official document left unchanged is my passport--that dear, blessed thing, bearing the stamps of adventures past and taunting me with its blank pages. Because of my procrastination--plus those adult constraints of vacation time and money--I am bound to these United States.

There comes a point every winter where if I do not have a real vacation planned on the immediate horizon, my brain will begin to disintegrate. I have hit that point. I have hit that point so hard that an unhealthy majority of the things I say to poor David are wistful vacation longings. No, really:

Given that I am essentially a hair's breadth away from kidnapping David and decamping to the Isle of Wight or something, it's probably best that my procrastination is keeping me in check.