It is our last week in Bakersfield. Instead of packing up our suitcases for a summer vacation in upstate New York, we are packing ourselves permanently back to the Pacific. Despite the excitement of going home and settling our family, I've found time to be wistful and sad about missing our trip to the lake this year. In planning next year's trip, we've had to accommodate the fact that Mike's father has moved down to North Carolina, and our promises to visit him are met with wary stares across each other. Which of us would be more likely to crack, with only a short car ride and a midnight Lifetime moment between us and certain disgrace? I assured Mike that I would keep him staked in the yard on a chain, so not to worry. I think he plans to lock me in his dad's basement.
One day of work left, one day before the movers take all our worldly belongings and leave us in an empty apartment with a litter box and a fridge full of half-empty condiments. I've enjoyed it here; though the first months were slow and sad, my job and co-workers were brilliant. My first apartment, failed romance, nightlife disasters, misty days in the mountain redwoods, the city lights and fragrant foods of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle... it's been a good place to tend wounds and wait for everything to clear around us.
At work, it's business as usual; pulling toddlers out of the shelves, helping old ladies decipher the handwriting on their book club reading lists, leading preschoolers in choruses of quacking, and shushing myspace teens. My best query recently was, "I need to know what temperature I need to incubate peacock eggs", and the worst was, "If it's 11:59am... and it turns 12:00... is it pm at 12:01... or at 12:00?" The most disconcerting was, from a breathless-sounding elderly person on the phone, "I need to know more about TIA... [insert my long researched explanation of symptoms] oh, it's a small stroke? Ah... I've gotta go." o_0
I'll miss my library.
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