Thrihyrne

I returned last night from a 5-day (including basically 2 days of travel) whirlwind trip with evannichols to Harrisonburg, Virginia. This was a 'business' trip, to go through a large closet of my belongings that have been there since 2005 when I was filing for divorce from my to-be-wasband and my stepdad came to Nashville and we got a small U-Haul trailer and moved all of my belongings from Nashville to Harrisonburg. Since then, I've moved to Verona, VA, to 2 other locations in Harrisonburg, and various places in Portland. Now, at last, I'm stable in a wide variety of ways, including my residence. So it was time.

This was also the first time I'd seen my mother and stepfather since my acrimonious departure in fall of 2011. Since then, I've had a 180° turnaround in relations with my mother (I've never had long-term issues with my stepdad) and we've been communicating much more regularly. Still, I was a bit unsure about whether or not there might be awkward questions, or awkward expectations, and to my relief, there simply wasn't any. It was a very busy and purposeful three days, but there was also a fabulous reunion element to do with the choir I'd sung with in Staunton. We had lunch with a couple of my dear friends, there was a massive hug-fest and introductions of Evan to, well, everyone. Not only that, but my dear friend persephone100 came down to stay for a day and visit and assist. She also got to go 'shopping' for free through my stuff! So many items went to a happy new home. :) Heaps of things will go to a new home eventually, as the Harrisonburg Goodwill got another motherlode of my stuff that I simply wasn't emotionally tied to.

So now we're back, having checked 3 bags on the return flight, and shipping one rug and one plastic bin via UPS. That's it. All the rest was recycled/trashed/given away/scanned. What a relief, and a harbinger of this amazing life I lead now and plan to have for years. Now Evan knows I have a past! He had a super-saturated experience of people and places and proof that I really have received a tremendous amount of written correspondence since 1986. It's good to be home, and to return to my current life, which is a gift unto itself.

The short (and long!) of my one-day visit with emansil_12 was that the day was sublime. We talked, walked, shopped, ate lunch with evannichols, hung out at my house, visited my wee library branch, went back to her lodging, talked more… and then it was time for me to go to an appointment. It joyed my heart so much to have the whole day with her, and for her to meet Evan in person, and to meet my housemates and see my room and environs. We will need to do this far more often than once every four years!! She is now off to Lubricus with snottygrrl and winnett, and I hope they all have a wonderful time at the con.

My work schedule is a bit wonky due to the fabulousness of friends visiting and that I'm traveling with evannichols this weekend! I just realized I've not really posted about that, but I'll be going with him to Spicer's Meadow in northern California for a couple of days for an annual Nichols family get-together. This means that I'll be meeting his parents and an older brother and others for the first time in person. :D While that is a big deal, what's an even bigger deal to me psychologically is traveling with him, and flying, even. I've not traveled or flown with anyone (exception of the Staunton choir tour) since, oh, 2004. I'm used to keeping my anxieties and fears to myself, and making not great decisions because I could, and I was alone and no-one was keeping tabs on me. So this will be all different. And precisely because Evan is so optimistic and level-headed, I haven't been wracked by my usual freak-out about flying. I am going to treat myself either to a bagel or doughnut that morning we fly, however. It's healthier than my prior choice would have been.

So… I'll be AFK pretty much until mid-week next week. But after that I'll have pictures, of the trip and with my dear emansil_12.

Don't know about you, but LJ wouldn't even load for me for 2 days!! I'm hoping beyond hope to get this posted, see how you all are doing and things like that before it goes missing again. ::shakes fist:: I've been thinking a lot about this whole future career thing and after several conversations and long emails with people am rethinking the master's in social work. Not that it wouldn't be helpful, as any master's would be, but that one is kind of notorious for being underpaid out in the world, and it may behoove me to go ahead and start working out in the field, somehow, somewhere. I am thinking about getting at least a certification in gerontology, as they offer that at the local community college. It might not be a huge help, but it'd be something since there's nothing in my background that reflects an interest in working with the affairs of the aging. Food for thought. I may also audit a social work course or two at JMU this fall, it that works out; I'll be having lunch with the head of the social work department in mid August, so I'll see what happens then.

In very exciting news, I was able to upgrade my operating system on my aging Mac for not a large financial investment. I'm so very, very happy. Thus far I'm able to continue using my older applications, though I'm sure that won't last forever. Hopefully long enough for me to get into this next phase of life, somewhat settled (wherever that may be), employed for six months or so, and then maybe think about finally getting a laptop. Though I do love my Mac mini.

I'm going away on another fairly short trip with my parents, leaving Sunday the 31st and returning Monday August 8th. We're spending a short 72 hours in Maine (South Thomaston) with a former not-exactly-colleague of my mom's who has a house up there, and we'll also of course see the grandchildren (my nieces and nephews), including my younger brother's newest — Boaz — who was born on July 2nd or 3rd. I'm not good with dates. But he's the most recent of the brood. I'd hoped that the adorable little Dell laptop that I took with us to Canada last summer would be fixed, but it hasn't even been picked up from my mom's office by the computing department. That said, mom will bring her iPad, so doubtless I'll check email and LJ a few times, so I won't be totally AFK. I'll work on my original fic and I'll definitely need to bring a couple of books. Need to go by the library tomorrow to rectify that situation! I will be typing up the latest in my monk story and posting that before I leave, for those reading along. Must say I'm looking forward to getting out of the heat…

I'm afraid this wasn't the smashing ending I'd hoped for as we spent 12 hours in the car! We got home about an hour ago. Still, it was a happily uneventful drive and we're back safely without too much traffic or construction.

( five states and one Canadian province that I drove or rode through today: Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. )

So for those who've followed along, that was my past 7 days in pictures, just not including a lot of family for a variety of reasons. But you hopefully got a sense of where I was and what my days were like!

Much of today was on the road, and then lounging around at my sister-in-law's grandparents' place. I feel rather out of place a lot of the time, and am quite content to fade to the background with my knitting while everybody fawns over my brother's baby/one year old. I'm just not a baby person. And this should have been 6 pictures, but one didn't upload, and given how much of a pain in the ass photoshop is being, I thought I'd cut my losses and post five pictures today.

( Oh Canada )

I expect I'll do a fair amount of writing and knitting over the next couple of days, though perhaps I can get into town and mail a couple of post cards. And to the Canadians on my flist, glad to be up here! :)

It turns out that I did pack my camera cable, but instead of putting with my other cables in my bag, I put it in the front of my backpack. Didn't think to look there! So here's Friday's pictures from our 6 hour drive to a place outside of Greenville, PA, staying with a longtime family friend and her husband on a lake. Now I'm safely in Arkell, near Guelph, Ontario, and have fallen in love with this sprawling house and grounds and barn and 'bunkhouse' where I'll be sleeping. It's delightfully isolated and some of my sister-in-law's family is here, more coming. It will be a combination of lots of socializing with me getting to go off and write if I wish, and there are loads of places for me to do that. :happy sigh: Oh, and when we stopped for some lunch at Tim Horton's (a Canadian fast food staple with great doughnuts), I saw not one but two cute gingers! I'm so lucky.

And I'm sorry if some of these are appearing ginormous; I've tried resizing them all in Photobucket, and rotating them and stuff like that, but it doesn't always appear to have worked. :(

( but here's day three )

I'll post today's pictures later on tonight! ♥

This will be a super-short post about my trip thus far (very, very heavy on the baby action, and conversations about babies, and childcare, and pregnancy, and cars, and babies, and me getting a lot of knitting done, and some writing, and more conversations about and with babies going on around me), but I had an absolutely marvelous time visiting with heartofoshun. We met at Sweet Melissa Patisserie and hugged and squeed and talked and ate and drank coffee and talked and ate and drank coffee and talked and talked and talked. She was just as warm and expressive and articulate and enthusiastic and approachable and open as I imagined she would be. We hung out for a good three hours and I've decided that I definitely need to plan another trip up this way before I return to the west coast. It was a true gift to get to spend that much quality time one on one with her. Meeting fandom friends can be so life-affirming, especially when, to be candid, I've not felt that I have a whole lot to say to my siblings/stepsiblings/their spouses because I'm the lone divorcee with no children who isn't into babies. Or young children. So I've been knitting and hanging out in the same room, but feeling rather superfluous. But spending time with Oshun was a tremendous highlight. Right now I'm over at my brother's, and he's cooking something that smells quite delicious, and I've discovered he speaks Hindi to his son (10 month old, baby #2 for the trip), as well as English. Very interesting.

Tomorrow's speldiferous event? I'll get to visit with brumeux77 for the… third time, I believe it is! How fortunate of a person am I?!

Just a quick note: I'll be leaving tomorrow morning to go to Bellevue for the weekend to spend time with my family. My mom will be there, and my sister, her husband and daughter, and we'll stay at my aunt's house. Unfortunately my aunt is going off on vacation Saturday morning, so I won't get to see her, but I'm sure we'll spend plenty of time with my 90 year old grandmother as well. I might drop online to check email, but I won't be online much at all until Monday. I have a new book on tape, one that just sounded interesting, and which I'm really enjoying, The Breaking Wave by Nevil Shute, written in 1955. I hadn't realized it was that old until I began listening. It's also set in Australia, and the reader, while English, has a very convincing accent, so that's fun too.

Hope that all of you have a lovely weekend. ♥

As part of my trip, I'm not visiting any new states; I've been fortunate to be well-traveled from a young age. 48 out of 50 states, and I have this somewhat wacky idea of going on an Alaskan cruise or somesuch for my upcoming 39th birthday.



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Not as well traveled internationally as I'd like, but not too bad:



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Definitely tending toward the countries where people have pasty pale skin like mine. And when I was in Russia, back then it was the U.S.S.R., at the very end before it fell apart. I do hope to get to Germany and Ireland in the near future.

I've never been one for resolutions, but as I've been busily productive around the house and online this morning, I realized that I do have a few goals, which I'll share.

‡ Get bodywork done on Bianca, my white Subaru, so that I'm not constantly reminded of the really poor choices I made last year around this time.

‡ Apply for a writer position at Rosetta Stone.

‡ Work on my original fic ideas in earnest this spring and see if I can discipline myself as much in that realm as I've tended to in the fanfic world.

‡ Travel to the UK and Ireland, California, and Australia to see friends. In the case of Ireland, visit a country I've wanted to since I was a child. If anyone has recommendations of where to go and what to see, I'd be more than welcome to hear your suggestions. I'll probably be heading over in September or October.

The biggie?
‡ To relax more, and be more of a human being, rather than a human doing. I think in some ways with my new living situation that's already happening, but I could stand not to judge myself on a constant and high quality stream of production, whether fiction or knitting projects or letters or whatever else. In less than 100 years, everything that I've put out into the world will have met its end and crumbled/become moth-eaten/vanished, as will I. Not a bad idea to savor the moments and indulge in reading and maybe even just being at rest instead of constantly feeling I must be pursuing something. Easier said than done, of course, especially since I'll be definitively without any recreational beverages for these next few months, which means my mind is never, ever off.

I hope that you all continue to stay around in 2008, a year in which I hope for far more calm, and self-actualization, less anxiety and a marrow-deep sense of peace. Thank you for hanging out in my virtual home here, for reading my stories, for letting me know when something I've posted about has affected you, and for your supportive affection and companionship.