Done.

Figure A: Susan passed out on the living room floor.

Halfway through our full day of manual labor, we discovered belatedly that there was no water at our new house. The landlord had unfortunately forgotten to tell us that he had shut the water off and after hurriedly calling the water district, found again unfortunately that it would take 24 hours for them to send someone out to turn our water back on. The rest of the day later, it took us exactly five seconds to determine that we were not desperate enough to use the public shower located in wide open view next to our pool so took advantage of our 24 hour fitness memberships, walking in with a full day’s worth of sweat and grime and walking out happily squeaky clean in our jammies.

Moving Day.

Took a day off to move, clean, and set up house. See y’all on the other side!

Death By Packing.

So...many...boxes....so...so...many....boxes.....(die)

Unpacked.

Moving day is this WEDNESDAY but the closest thing to packing I’ve done so far is lugging a grip of flat boxes home from work. Achievement of this grand feat has been sending so many pat-on-the-back neurons to my brain that I have since believed that the great bulk of the work for moving has been accomplished and that I deserve a break for all that harrowing work done.

Young Me 5

This year I was halfway through freshman year, the shock and dismay of being rejected by Stanford after being so thoroughly convinced that I was to go there (on what completely deluded basis I know not) having by this time been completely absorbed by the unexpected awesomeness that was the University of California, San Diego. The most awesome factor, however, was most detrimental: the food card (insert angels trumpeting and sparkles sparkling), a prepaid card I could use in any cafeteria at any time to swipe any food I could ever possibly want in extreme excess. I happily bought myself a buffet for every meal and consumed whole pints of ben and jerry ice cream practically in replacement of water. I ate with vengeance all the foods my mama never let me eat for sake of my weight, and stocked my teeny dorm fridge with ice cream I could eat all through the night and also during the five minute walk to the dorm cafeteria to buy more. Them was good times… A time of freedom, a time of wealth in food points, a time of new clothes because for some reason all my old ones done gone and shrunk on me (read: FRESHMAN 30).

Young Me 4.

I distinctively remember this year being immensely stressful thanks to SATs, AP and honors classes, graduation looming, having no idea what I wanted to do with my life or what college I’d go or if I’d get into any at all, and probably most significantly thanks to my mama and every random family member informing me every ten seconds how fat I was. Looking at pictures from back then, I do now heartily agree with their sentiments, but back then I was a sensitive teenager, stressed out enough as it was trying to produce decent practice SAT scores, and also trying to get to the cafeteria before they ran out of Pizza Hut breadsticks. Best. Breadsticks. Ever.

Young Me 3

1998 was a tumultuous time of tween angst culminated from a sudden move clear across the globe to a new school in a new country (USA), an immense growth spurt that shot me up from a dogged history of being the teeniest kid in class to one of the tallest, and a crazy wild-haired old coot of an eighth grade science teacher that never turned the lights on and in the dark detailed daily different scenarios of how the demise of human kind will surely occur with aid of transparencies and sometimes creepy and terrifying movies that would rob us of our appetites for weeks. With his face hovering over the transparency machine as the only light source in the room, he whispered with frightening shadows cast over his old wrinkly face that the sun would grow several thousand times its size and swallow us up, but not before detailing what the heat would do to each of us, and also gave us the impression that none of this was just theory but stone cold FACT, and that it would happen not in a billion trillion years, but TOMORROW.