9 days and I'm mostly packed. getting pretty good and reducing my life to boxes, or this time around, a trunk, small suitcase and backpack. since I'll be gone a full twelve months this time, everything that's not coming with me is going into storage, so as to be protected from the scrutinizing and compulsively reorganizing eye of the maternal unit.


I've emptied the contents of my treasure chest (diplomas, shopping bags from switzerland, postcards from arizona c. 1997, awards dating back to third grade, school notebooks dating back to kindergarten, a china tea set given to me for my fifth birthday... or was it my fourth?) into rubbermaid containers sprinkled generously with death threats should the contents be touched in any way. they're stacked in a corner of the basement and pretty safe, I think. the m.u. rarely goes down there and when she does, my dad's ever-expanding quantum physics library receives the bulk of her complaints. I managed to fit all my books, excluding textbooks, into one bookcase. not necessarily in the conventional arrangement, but they're all there.


my dear sister will be leaving about the same time I do for new york city, where she'll be starting her first real, full-time job. I pointed out that this, along with her new-found habit of going to bed before 12 and waking up before 8, is suggestive of middle-age. she responded that there's only a year between us and that means I'm practically middle-aged too. which is, of course, impossible, since I eat cookies for breakfast, climb trees barefoot at night and continue to be mistaken for a sixteen-year-old.


8 days now. I'm leaving from buffalo next thursday afternoon, flying through philidelphia, london, and into manchester, then taking the bus to sheffield. sooooooo excited.