California, California, here I come...

Technically, the title is incorrect, because guess who arrived in sunny California on July 31?!

THIS GAL!

I have no interwebz or cable yet, so I'm doing a quick update from the library, but LA is really awesome so far. The apartment is almost complete and my life is 10x more interesting since moving from Delaware.

The drive across was incredible and without troubles, except I did get a speeding ticket in Jersey.  Obviously, I'm pissed off about it.  The cop did not even clock me, but clocked the guy in front of me and decided I was doing the same speed (false), which is some horse manure if I ever heard any.  If I was in Jersey still, I'd contest it, but alas, I am not. It kind of serves me right though, since I've sped throughout all of New Jersey countless times. Gotta squeeze me dry while they could, I suppose.

A bigger, longer, cooler update with pictures coming soon, bbs! Just wanted to let you all know I'm well and alive.

The Final Countdown

That was absolutely necessary.

Today is my last full day in New Jersey.  My plans for it are as such:

• Finish packing up my clothes (SO. MANY. CLOTHES.)
• Sprucing up my bedroom a bit so my parents can stop complaining
• Getting my last haircut for a while from my mom.  My mom has been the only person to ever cut my hair (except the first time I donated it because she was too scared) and I just don't think I can enter the world of paying for my own haircuts.  You can tell me I'm growing up, but I'd still rather say, "Hey Mom? Can you cut my hair after dinner?" Luckily, since I'm a girl, I'm allowed to grow my hair out without looking like too much of an asshole, unlike my brother, who works for the government.
• Packing the rest of my crap in my car.  My dad and stepmom gave Keith and I a toaster oven, which prompted me to squeal with glee.  My grandma also gave us a proper pasta pot.  These two boxes take up more room than you think they should.  

This is what I'd like to fit in my car:

• My clothes
• My bag of toiletries 
• My duffel of stuff I'll actually wear across the road
• My bag of important and possibly breakables
• My teacher bag with various items in it
• My toaster over, pasta pot, and bitchin' fish fishbowl (I have a thing for fishes)
• I'd really like to also fit in my cd tower and my two potted plants and bamboo, but they might have to stay home with my mom. 

I think that's it. 

After I do all of that, I'll say goodbye to my mom, stepdad, and sister, cry for a bit, and then stop by my dad's and say goodbye to my dad and stepmom, cry some more, and then drive to Keith's.  I'll spend the night at Keith's, and then on Monday morning, away we go. 

I will try to update from the road, but we'll see how that all pans out.  If not, I'll see you in California.

New Jersey, I love you so. 

road trip music

With Monday rapidly approaching, I'm trying to make sure I have some clutch music on my iPod to hold Keith and I over on the drive.  He'll also have his iPod, but sometimes, he likes to get a little more country than I do.  I get about as country as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, which I feel like is the hipster, indie-alternative version of country.

Regardless, I realized that my iPod was missing Supertramp, so I'm currently rectifying that now. I'm generally of the indie-alternative persuassion.  To give you an idea of what I'm into, I really enjoy Local Natives, Le Loup (who are now in the Blackberry commercials! Check them out!), fun. (currently in the Sprint commercials, I think?), Fleet Foxes, Band of Horses, Grizzly Bear, Vampire Weekend, Good Old War, Rilo Kiley and other fun stuff.  I listen to all types really (Lord knows my two favorites are 311 and The Beatles and that I've been known to throw it down to Jay-Z and some other glorious rap songs), so give me some recommendations so Keith and I don't get bored of our iPods.  Bonus points if it's a song about driving/road trips, even if it's not of the kind of music I listed.

In the meantime, I'm going to finally bask in "Give a Little Bit" since I've somehow lived this long without it on my iPod.

Packing is Really Obnoxious

I know this blog is here to let you all know how my move is going and all, and we all knew this would happen. I've obviously become a victim of time, meaning that there's very little of it and I have a lot to do.

The good news is that I am packed.  My Door2Door shipping container holding pretty much everything I've ever thought was picked up yesterday and is getting shipped today. It's going to beat me to LA by a day or so.  This makes the actual drive much easier than I originally thought it'd be, because I no longer have to worry about driving a huge ass truck with a car on a flatbed behind it. I only have to worry about maneuvering my little Corolla, which I am having spacial issues with since it's new and I'm still used to driving around my Honda CR-V.

Keith and I went to Delaware early on Tuesday morning to pack up everything that was there.  I packed my car with other various stuff that you saw in my room from a previous post, including all of my board games, a TV my brother left behind, books, CDs, and some clothes.  We had all intentions of packing for the day and getting out early on Wednesday.  We had breakfast with two of his friends who he hasn't seen in a while.  After breakfast, we headed back to my apartment and started on laundry and packing, but then I got a message from Kaylee through facebook.  She really liked how my tattoo turned out this past May and has been saying how she's been itching to get her next tattoo and wanted to see my artist, Javier at Tough Luck Tattoo in Lewes, DE.  Kaylee is a great friend and decided that she'd finally make it to DE after all my years of being there, help me pack, and get a tattoo done.  I told this to Keith, who said that if we're going to be in Lewes, we might as well go to Rehobeth and go to the Dogfish Head Brewery and call his friends back up and see if they wanted to go.  Lewes and Rehobeth are about an hour and half/two hour drive from my apartment in DE, and so Kaylee arrived around 2 and made an appointment for 5:30.

I'm sure you can guess what did not happen that day as planned.  Keith kept saying how when we got back to the apartment, we were going to move the couch, but that obviously did not pan out as planned. Instead, once we got back, we went straight to bed.  But the day was great and filled with good food, great drinks, great friends, and Kaylee's new, bitchin' ink.

So Wednesday came.  Now, if you're not from the East Coast, specifically NJ/DE, I can tell you that we've been having a drought. For at least a month, maybe even two. Wanna guess what the weather was like every time we wanted to move big heavy objects?  TORRENTIAL DOWN POUR EVERY TIME WE WANTED TO MOVE MY MASSIVE, HEAVY-ASS COUCH.  It's heavy because it is a sofa-sleeper and it's fairly old, but wonderfully comfortable.  I spent a large portion of the day soaked and completely overwhelmed, but at the end of the day, my entire place was condensed into boxes packed into a giant container.  Awesome!

I've been trying to see friends and family now that I'm, for all intensive purposes, packed up and ready to go.  I realized the other day that this is my last week here, and although I will be back to visit, it will be different and who knows how long I'll be back for.  Today is possibly the last day I'll be seeing my dad, stepmom, and grandma, and I cried the other day when I realized it.  I'm sure I'll cry today when I say goodbye because I am a big crybaby and can't deal with anything.

For now, I'm going to get ready to enjoy the day with my family.  I'll do more catch-up with you all later.

Success

I haven't updated in four days, but within good reason.

Who has two thumbs and packed up their entire life and was able to fit it all in an 8x5x7 box (with the loving help of her wonderful boyfriend)?!

THIS GAL!

(Please forgive the hair.)

More to come later. 

Guess Who Hasn't Been Packing?

Remember how I yammered about positivity? Also remember how I pissed and moaned about my stuff and nothing fitting it? Welp, I got some positivity back because I found the cheapest (of my options) way of moving my stuff without having to lose my stuff, and the answer was Door to Door.  If you need to move, I'd recommend it because they are friendly and helpful.  I reserved two containers (one is a back-up which I can even get refunded back if I don't use it--score!) to load up and have shipped out to wait for me in Cali when Keith and I make our way out of the Garden State.

Keith has finally made his way back to the East Coast.  Tomorrow I am supposed to go down and see him and his family. Tuesday I'm going back to Delaware to pack up all of my stuff that's down there, which I'm sure is more than I realize, and stuff it into the Door to Door containers.  Meanwhile, I've been avoiding packing like it's the plague, and so it has obviously come back to bite me in the ass.  I clearly have tons of stuff in New Jersey to pack and I am suddenly overwhelmed and completely stressed. I've been trying to organize and put my life together since my parents told me I'm not allowed to leave anything behind.  I'm one of those people who when they see a mountain gets overwhelmed and has no clue where to start and then starts on the smallest, most banal task there is.

Forgive the awful Photobooth quality of it, but this is to give you an idea of what I'm up against.  Also forgive the pink carpet against the fabulously teal walls--we didn't have the time or funds to recarpet my room, so I hid it with my stuff. Excellent plan, yes? PS I bet you can't take a guess on what my favorite color is based on the color of my room as well as my blog. HA.

Nevertheless, none of this furniture is coming with me to Cali, except the CD tower hiding in the back. I've been trying to organize and throw things out, but I feel like I'm not doing such a hot job. But for now, it's 2:35 AM, so I really need to get to bed so I can wake up early and then try to do some more organizing. Pray to sweet baby Jesus in the golden manger to give me the strength, courage, and cajones to knock this out preferably around the end of the World Cup final.  Lord beer me strength. 

Every Mode of Transporting For My Life is Too Big or Too Small.

So here's the part where I piss and moan about the physical act of moving all of my stuff.

Let's start with the obvious. I'm a girl. With a very large wardrobe. Not only that, but I also have a sizable book collection, and arguably, a larger DVD collection (my library is constantly being built, developed, and worked on).  I also have furniture pieces that I'm in love with. For example, I have a beautiful dresser that I worked on myself.  It was once an ugly hunk of wood with massive wood handles that was white and covered in stickers, courtesy of my little sister.  I took it and sanded it down, primed it, and then painted it with a milk chocolate base and made the drawers a wonderful but not pastel light blue and green. And then bought new hardware that look like shells for it.  I worked hard on it.  It has some of my sweat, tears, and blood in it.  It also has very deep drawers that store a good amount of my wardrobe.  I also acquired a great side table from my dad.  It's built out of hatch door from a ship.  Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, but it has a story to it. I have wrought iron bedside tables with glass tops that are pretty but not really girly that would be great for my boyfriend and I to put into our new bedroom.  I have a desk that has 4 drawers and is still not massive.  It may not be the prettiest, but I'm sure with some love, it could be glorious.  It's large enough to house a lot of my supplies without being large and clunky.  I have yet to find a desk to replace it that has as many drawers, not massive, and not cost at least a thousand dollars.

I also have an extensive mug collection. I love mugs. There is just something so wonderful and pleasing about mugs. They're versatile.  I can, of course, have my hot chocolate or tea in there. I can give a guest a cup of coffee. I have mugs that are specifically for soup (my tall Conan O'Brien mug).  You can have a big mug of ice cream, or a small one that you won't feel too guilty about.  A mug is a great place to put your cereal, especially if you don't like to have a lot of milk in your cereal like me.  Pour yourself a mug of Cheez-Its, and it's the perfect serving of a snack. Fantastic.

I'm also a teacher.  Although I've been riffed this year, and I'm still a new teacher, I still have teaching supplies. Paper trays, a laminated calendar to write due dates on, bulletin board materials, laminated posters for the way, binders, and other necessary teaching supplies.

I also have a 6'8 longboard.  Although not the biggest longboard, it is certainly much taller than I am at 5'2 and certainly rides beautifully.

Needless to say, I have a lot of stuff.

I was originally supposed to inherit the couch I've been using in my apartment in Delaware.  It was originally my uncle's, and then it was in my childhood house since his death.  It may not be the prettiest couch, but I will gladly fight with anyone that says it's not the comfiest couch.  The couch and I have shared MANY naps together.  It's a great place to curl up with a book.  When I moved to Delaware to teach, I took that couch with me.  I had been telling my mom that the couch was going to be mine, and she agreed to it. This couch was also going to go with me to California....

...until yesterday when my mom informed me that, no, the couch is going to come back to New Jersey because, "What if your sister wants to have a sleepover? What if your stepfather's mother wants to visit? What if we have guests? Where will we put them? We need that couch back, and Lord knows I don't have the fucking money to get a new couch."

Hey Mom, remember that time I don't have a job because I was riffed and the decided to move across country and had to buy a new car because my lease expired so I'm totally strapped for cash? Oh, yeah, that time is now.  My little sister is getting my double bed, as well as my beautiful room, so we're going to have a spare bedroom for guests to sleep in instead of in the living room on my beloved couch, but that is not what my mom wants to hear or remember.  My mom has a perpetual state of assheimers, as my brother says.

I had planned on renting a large truck with a flatbed to put my new car on, stuffing the truck with all of the stuff, including the couch, and then heading across country. But without the couch, this excessively large truck seems....excessive.  So now, with with 18 days left on our countdown, I have yet to decide if I should leave my wonderful furniture pieces behind and throw them on Craigslist, or give them to my sister with her anti-King Midas touch, stuff my new Corolla to the brim with clothes, books, and DVDs, and head west, or suck it up and rent a too-large truck but happily have all of my crap.  To say a had a little hissy fit would be an understatement. Because I definitely cried and called my boyfriend and pissed and moaned about how my brother got the entire family room set when he moved to California, the fact that I got nothing but a "Happy birthday, Sunshine girl!" on my birthday just less than a month ago, and how helpful I've been and how hellish of a year I've had, as well as how piss-poor broke I'm going to be. The fact that he still wants to come home to the East Coast tomorrow and scoop me up and kiss me and then drive across country to live with me is beyond me. God love him, because Lord knows that even I'm over my bad attitude.

So, lovely readers, please expect to hear more about how I love my stupid material shit and can't bear to part with it even if it means spending more money than I should spend, or about how absolutely tiny my new car is and how nothing fits and how I will barely be clothed in LA with nothing else to my name.

Getting Positivity Back

The new eye doctor was incredibly friendly and very nice.  It's a shame I found an eye doctor I like just before I leave! But, luckily, I'm getting a year's worth of contacts, so I don't have to worry about not seeing for a while.

I'm not particularly religious.  I love the idea of a god, not any particular god, but a god, that is there and helps people out.  I don't believe in fate because I hate the idea of not being able to make things happen for myself.  But I do believe in a few things, and one of them is putting positivity out there.  If you put out positive, you'll get it back.  There are obviously times when I do not always work according to that philosophy and let negativity get the best of me.  For the most part, though, I try to do my best and be positive and pay it forward, even if it's small things like letting a car in front of me that has been trying to get into traffic for a while.  I know I hate it when I'm that person.

But I must have been doing some positive stuff recently because at the end of my eye appointment, I had to shell out $155.  I wasn't angry about it at all; I'd obviously like to keep that money, but hey, I need to see and all.  I went home, and about five minutes later, my eye doctor called me.  He told me that normally he wouldn't be calling right after an exam, but that my insurance wasn't as awesome as we'd hoped.  About 95% of employers get the insurance that covers eye exams, costs of supplies, and then part of your contacts/glasses.  I, sadly, did not fit in that 95% category.  My employer choose the cheaper route, obviously, and so the insurance did not cover supplies or the exam.  He told me that I technically owed them about $150, but because I am a new customer and that my insurance was running out and my upcoming move, he was willing to cut it in half and I only had to pay them $75.  Although I had to pay more money, it was incredibly nice of this man, who I'd only known for about half an hour, to offer that to me.

So, moral of the story, is that I need to continue my positivity.  I'm having a really hard time with this move coming up (faster than I think!), but that doesn't mean I should let it affect how interact with the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have 19 days left on the East Coast.  Let's make it count.

My Eye Doctor Troubles

I've been avoiding posting. Not because of anything in particular, but general anxiousness about my upcoming move.

Since my teaching contract expires on August 31, I am currently trying to squeeze my insurance for every last drop. This means that I'm going to a new eye doctor today and I'm going to see how many contacts I can get out of them.  In another two weeks, I'll be going to the doctor's and seeing how long of a prescription I can milk out of them as well.

The eye doctor will be an experience.  I haven't been to one in well over a year, mainly due to laziness, but also because I always have weird experiences with eye doctors.  It goes a little like this.

When I was younger, I generally sat in the back of the class because of alphabetical order. In 7th grade, I noticed that I was having a hard time seeing, so my mom brought me to the doctor's to get my sight checked out. Turns out, I can't see far very well.  So, I got glasses.  The doctor was this old man who had some sort of problem with his legs because they kind of bent the wrong way. He smelled awful and had a terrible disposition.  He got very angry at me because during the test, he gave me an index card to read to see how my vision was. The card had a very banal paragraph about a boy, his puppy, and a French baguette, and I thought it was such a random paragraph that I began to laugh. He was displeased in my reaction. He also got annoyed because when my face was in that giant contraption where they flip the different focal lenses, my eyelashes kept getting stuck, so I giggled then too.  We were off to a bad start.

Later that year, I asked for contacts because it would be easier to play sports with.  So, Mom hauled me back to the smelly doctor and we met about contacts.  The doctor was examining my eyes and told me to look to the left, so I did. Next thing I knew, his short, stubby index finger was jabbing me in the eye with some foreign object! He stabbed a contact into my eye without ANY warning! Obviously, this did not fly with me. I winced and teared up, and he got angry that I was "making such a fuss."

Um....you just poked my eye without any fair warning, I think it's fair for a 13 year old to be displeased.

We later moved on to a different eye doctor.  The doctor herself was nice; the rest of the staff was not nearly as pleasant.  My doctor didn't mind that I giggled at a lot of things.  She mentioned that she also does that. She didn't even lecture me when she learned that I wore my contacts for way beyond their welcome point.

However, the staff was rough.  The woman who worked the main desk was in her mid-forties and from New Yawk.  Every time I went in, she was wearing leopard print, and a lot of it.  She had claws for nails, and a pinched face like Janice Dickinson. Yikes. The first time I went in, we were having trouble with my insurance cards.  She yelled at me for not knowing more about my insurance (what 17 year old knows much about it?) and told me we would do the paperwork later.  So I went in for my eye exam and all went well, but I had to get my pupils dilated.  After that, my insurance problem was solved, and she told me I had to fill out all the paperwork. Here's the problem: I couldn't see a single thing, let alone read teenytiny print.  I had to call my friend Theresa to come to the eye doctor to not only give me a ride home later, but to help me fill out the paperwork.  Once Theresa came, I started dictating my information to her  so it would get filled out.  The front desk woman SCREECHED at me about how that was not allowed and how I had to fill out my paperwork.  I reminded her that my pupils were dilated, and I therefore could not see anything, but she still yelled on. Eventually, my doctor came out, and I looked at her with my massive, sad pupils and said, "I can't read anything, this is one of my best friends, it's cool if she fills this out for me as long as it's correct, right?" Of course, my doctor agreed.

Not only did that lady work there, but there was another man there that made me feel terrible. Not in the same kind of terrible though.  This man worked with the glasses.  I got my face fitted for my glasses and all.  When I got them, they were slightly crooked, so I asked him if he could level it out.  At that point, I noticed it: he had a lazy eye.  He gave me my glasses back and asked them how they were. They were still slightly crooked, no better or worse than before. I thought I'd ask one more time, blood rushing to my cheeks out of embarrassment, and he gave it another whirl. Still, my glasses were returned crooked.  That's when I said they looked great and hightailed it out of there.  On my visits back, I'd ask them to straighten them out, and every time, they were as crooked as before.

So, as you can see, I don't have much luck when it comes to eye doctors.  I'm going to a new one today. The woman I was on the phone with was incredibly delightful, so we're off to a good start. I picked that office solely based on the fact that the doctor has the same last name as one of my favorite comedians, Rob Huebel. Hopefully, he's sympathetic to a recently riffed teacher whose insurance runs out soon and gives me an incredible prescription for contacts.

Wish me luck!

Continuing on with the beginnings

Continuing on from my last post.

It was December at this point. Keith and I were still talking on the phone daily at this point. I made him sweat it a little bit and I didn't tell him I had received the letter. The letter was beautifully written. I knew he'd want an immediate response, but I felt that he made me wait a week to get his letter, and I also had a lot of questions, so I would write him a letter back in response. I wanted to make sure that he saw "us" as something he wanted for more than just right now, but as something he wanted for a long time down the road. I'm not going to pick myself up and move across the country just to find out he only wanted to date me for about six more months. I loved him very much and definitely saw a long future ahead of us, but I needed to know he was on the same page.

He received the letter about a week later and we said we would talk more about it and our future when he came back home for Christmas. He came home for a longer amount of time. He came down to Delaware the night before my last day of school before Christmas break. It was weird and exciting because I wasn't sure how to behave. I wanted to touch him, just hold his hand and smother him with affection, but I wasn't sure if that was acceptable yet since we hadn't talked about what either of us wanted. We went on a wild goose chase looking for Home Alone (because I was going to be showing it to my students the next day at the Christmas party), and as we were walking into KMart, he grabbed my hand. With that one small gesture, I knew he felt all the same things I did and that it was going to be okay.

The next day at school was unbearable. I knew Keith was waiting for me back at my apartment, and the entire school day was planned for a liturgy and then a Christmas party in the homerooms. Later that evening, there was a staff Christmas party at school. The weather had called for copious amounts of snow to fall, and during the day, it had started to snow. Many of the parents picked their sons up early, so then we were just left with a few stragglers whose parents couldn't come to get them earlier. Thankfully, we were all allowed to leave as soon as the students were gone, and I zipped home at 2:30, where Keith happily greeted me at the door with one of my cookbooks in hand. I had specifically purchased that cookbook earlier in the year for us to cook out of, but when we broke up, I just put it aside and didn't look through it. I had mentioned it at one point, and he told me, "You were right; this book has excellent recipes for us to try together." I couldn't understand how I could possibly love someone so much, but I did.

We went to the staff Christmas party that night, but it had started to snow harder. The weatherman was calling for 10-12 inches of snow. After the party, we left Delaware for his father's place in south Jersey because he was worried we would get snowed in. So, instead, we were snowed in in his house for four days, which was fine by me. We cooked and baked and cuddled the entire time. Keith and I spent practically that entire break together with the exception of Christmas Eve and Christmas.

From that point on, it was decided. I was going to leave my beloved East Coast and move out to California. At that point, I didn't have many ties holding me back east. Most of my friends that mattered the most were spread out (my best friend in Oklahoma, another planning for Maryland after graduation, etc). I hated my job. During January, I was so stressed out and upset from work, I could hardly eat and had a constant feeling of nausea. It got so bad, there was about a week and a half where I couldn't eat anything and I had to force myself to eat a cup of apple sauce since that was the most I could hold down. My brother moved out to LA for his job in January. I'm young and I've always wanted to live somewhere else besides Jersey (Delaware didn't count), and I always fantasized about living in a city at some point. I had always thought that city would be NYC, but I could still represent my beloved Yankees across the country in LA. Now the trickiest parts would be telling my job and my parents that I wanted to leave.

My parents were mostly receptive. My mother was incredibly positive and understanding, although upset two of her children would be across the country from her. She knew how upset I was in Delaware and told me she'd rather see me happy and across the country than miserable and close to home. My father was more apprehensive. He worried about money issues. He especially worried about my job. How could I leave a job that I had for uncertainty? I was willing to take that risk. I don't believe in fate, but I do believe that everything works out, and throughout my life, it has. He also worried that I was doing this all for a boy. He likes Keith very much, but he didn't want me to shape my life around someone else and have it be for the wrong reasons. I explained to him that although Keith is a large pull, he wasn't the only reason. I was incredibly lonely. I wanted a change. I wanted to explore new places and different faces. He has since come to grips with it and is supportive.

I was worried about how to tell my job, "Hey, thanks for the job, but I gotta go," and still get a good recommendation out of them. In mid-January, we had a staff meeting where they mentioned we would be having a budget cut and some people may lose their jobs and we would find out before spring break. Since I was the last one hired, I figured I'd be the first one to go. I was pulling for this to happen because then it took off the responsibility from me. The Monday prior to spring break, I was called in for a meeting with the headmaster and principal. They explained to me that due to the budget, my position was cut form the school and they couldn't fit me in anywhere else. They also discussed how grateful they were since I came a month late into the school year to replace another teacher, and how I've had such a tough year with students and parents, but I came out with grace and dignity and handled things with wisdom beyond my years. They also articulated that they wanted to keep me there, and if they had the money, they would, but it just couldn't happen. It was such a weird experience; I wanted them to let me go, and not only were they doing so, but they offered such kind words and also offered to help me with references and building my resume, but it was still a little upsetting to be let go from my job. But, as I said, things have a way of panning out, and they did. Now I did not have to tell them I wouldn't be returning by choice and I could go on planning to move to California.

Plenty of work related things happened during this time, which I'm sure I will reflect back on at a later point, but for now, this is all that's necessary. I also would hate to bore any of you reading this to tears, since I've already posted two novels. But now you know what has happened to this Jersey girl, born and raised, that has lead her to decide to pick up her life and move across the country with no prospects and little money.

I guess you and I will just have to see how this pans out.

A New Start

So it begins. In a month and a few days, I'll be moving across the country to rather unfamiliar territory. Although it is not a completely blind move (as I have been to LA once before), it is still a big risk with a lot of questions in it.

To say the least, the big move is due to several factors that happened all at once. I was in Delaware for my job. I was feeling incredibly lonely. My boyfriend (Keith) and I had broken up just before I got my job due to location (him in LA and me in DE). My job was incredibly hard. Teaching private middle school turned out to be much more difficult than I had thought. I was beating myself up over it and feeling terrible. I was beginning the career I wanted, but I was at a complete loss. I didn't have any joy. If there's anything I've believed in, it is to be happy. What the hell was I doing in Delaware without friends, family, and with a job that was literally making me feel ill?

Keith came back east for Thanksgiving, and we saw each other twice. Both visits were difficult, as it was clear that there was still a lot of love between us; nothing had changed except our locations, which made it difficult to be together. We had a night where we spent the entire time talking. We talked about why we didn't ask each other if I could come to California. We talked about how we missed each other and how nothing between us changed. How we tried to move on to someone else and they fell short. There was a spark in the air and anything could have happened. If he asked me then and there to move out with him, I would have said yes. But he didn't.

Shortly after he went back to California, he sent me a letter. A romantic gesture, surely. But he told me that he was sending me a letter, but would not specify at all what it contained. This left me crazy. I waited for an entire week for this letter, all the while making lesson plans, keeping my students organized, and teaching them about racial inequality in the south in the book Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, as well as how to write a paper. Friday came, and I got his letter. I cried. He was asking me if I would consider moving to California to be with him. It was exactly what I wanted, but I still wasn't sure of how to respond. How could I leave the East Coast? What about my family? Friends? How could I leave a job, especially one in the economic climate? Especially for LA, which loves to hand out pink slips to teachers.

I was elated and incredibly confused at the same time.

For now, I will leave you there. I'm going to go and enjoy the pleasures of the backyard on a sunny day.