HIDWtS: Secret club.

For seven months, I have been stumped, not by a puzzle or a game, but by a shuttle.

When I board my shuttle in the mornings, it is already nearly full. I figured there must be another stop somewhere, but there is only one listed on the schedule. One morning I worked up the nerve to ask a fellow passenger where this might be. Her answer was snottily unintelligible, so I didn’t ask for clarification.

I am no stranger to the world of secret clubs. Why, I have been excluded from some of the very best of them. So I got the hint: the first shuttle stop is a secret, and one I have to figure out for myself so I can crash it and make the secretive people really unhappy.

It’s not that I want to ruin anyone’s good time. Except that I do. I really, really do. I am, in fact, kind of a jerk when it comes to secret clubs. It’s not about entitlement, but rather about figuring out the puzzle of it. I can be annoyingly persistent when there is a puzzle involved.

However, I have an even stronger trait that often trumps my puzzle-solving desire: I am easily distracted. So easily distracted, in fact, that for seven months I kept meaning to figure out where this stupid secret stop was, but something would always distract me in the morning, like:

• I need to mail this letter, so I should find a mailbox.
• I am cold so I will just stand here where the wind doesn’t blow so hard.
• I am thinking about a story I am writing.
• I am thinking about homework.
• I am reading (while walking, ill-advised but I do it anyway).
• I am knitting (while walking, even more ill-advised, but I do it anyway).
• What would happen if I was a sleeper agent and was suddenly activated?
• What will I eat for lunch?
• What would a suddenly-activated sleeper agent eat for lunch?

Last week, I was so tired that my exhaustion overrode any distractions. Instead of turning one way to walk to my usual stop, I turned the other way. Before long, I was standing in a group of people who looked like they were waiting for something. I was too tired to do anything but stand there too. I vowed that if nothing happened before 8:15, I would hail a cab. Before I had to deal with that impossibility, my shuttle showed up. I sat in an empty row, sleepily victorious.

HIDWtS Rating: That feeling of awesomeness wrapped in disbelief of my own ignorance. Kind of like a bacon-wrapped scallop, but replace the bacon with Tofurky.

A weekend off.

After seeing FunkyPlaid off on Friday morning, I vowed to have a weekend free of packing and moving. I would like to say that it has been blissful, but mostly it has been sort of pathetic because I have had a headache for the past two days that ibuprofen won’t touch.

Still, it was good to catch my breath, and thanks to FaceTime I have chatted with FunkyPlaid twice already, which makes the distance a little shorter.

The cats are unhappy. Zen follows me around constantly; if I am in another room for more than thirty seconds, she joins me. Torgi, on the other hand, has withdrawn to his only hiding place left, the linen closet, where he sleeps the days away. At night he wanders throughout the house, meowing for his lost parent. He hasn’t gotten the hang of sharing the bed with Zen if I am the only human buffer. Occasionally she will sniff him or lick him the wrong way and he twitches and she thwaps him and then we are all awake.

In just a few days, the fall semester begins. While I am looking forward to my classes, I get sleepy just thinking about homework.

One good thing about living alone: I am fully caught up on sleep, whether or not I want to be. It is very easy to go to bed early when there is nothing else happening in the house.

Zen just sat in front of the door to the empty garage and wailed. I know.

The storm before the calm before the storm.

FunkyPlaid’s penultimate day in San Francisco is here! And my title is wishful thinking, a little, because while yesterday was certainly a storm of activity, I do not think either of us will get any calm today.

But here! Here is my calm. Also I daydream about knitting, and read about people killing each other with fancy swords.

I have not forgotten How I Decide Where to Sit, but the only thing I have been observing during my recent shuttle rides is the inside of my eyelids.

Yesterday was my half-birthday, which FunkyPlaid always remembers, even when he is packing up his entire life to move to another continent. I shouldn’t be surprised by this anymore, but I am. He presented me with the cleverest camera bag I have ever seen. It is a single-strap backpack contraption that swings around so I can open it quickly and grab my camera, even change a lens, without taking it off. It also has a billion other useful features that will come in handy while hiking around Scotland and holy crap we are moving to Scotland.

That happens about ten times a day now. I have packed up and moved so much in my life that the process is no novelty, but then I remember where we are moving to and I get all numb-tingly like I sat funny on my guts and they fell asleep and are just waking up, jangly nerve by nerve.

When I got home from work yesterday, FunkyPlaid and two of our friends were packing up the Uhaul to take our stuff to storage. At our storage place, two more friends joined us, and the whole experience went smoothly and quickly, once again proving that we could not be doing this without the help of so many terrific people.

There will be a few loose ends for me to knit tie up after FunkyPlaid leaves, but the toughest stuff will be done. I expected nothing less from him; even in the company of our extremely hard-working family members and friends, he is still the hardest worker I know. “Indefatigable” is the only way to describe his work ethic, even if I almost always mispronounce it.

After Friday morning, our home here will just be an almost-empty house inhabited by two confused cats and a bewildered swan, wombling from room to strange room.

Goodbye, books.

All of my books are packed. Such a relief! Everything left at this point is either going to purchases, swaps, or donations.

I turned the nestcam on for a little while today, just to break up the monotony. It amuses me to open a little window into my chaotic world.

Our friend Eric picked up his mountain bike today, and also left with a few games and a tea set I was going to bring to Goodwill. Knowing that he has some of my well-loved possessions makes me happy.

I was bummed to give away my VHS tapes of “The Maxx” and “Hey Vern! It’s My Family Album”, until I found out that they had been released on DVD. Onto the wish list they went! Although honestly I cannot imagine acquiring anything else at this point. The urge to toss everything I own is very strong just now.

Among other bizarre things, I found a wooden box containing coins totaling CAD$3.24, €4.07, £7.52, and 500mk, the no-longer-legal currency of Finland.

The last four days of FunkyPlaid’s preparations for leaving will be intense, so intense that I am avoiding thinking about it. There will still be a bunch of things for me to do after he leaves, plus my semester starts in a couple of weeks, but nothing will compare to this frenetic pace. Leaving the country! It’s a big deal! Who knew?

Everyone did. I was just pretending it wasn’t, nose in my books. Now the books are gone and I have to look at everything just as it is, big and raw and more than a little uncertain.

Stuffed.

Twelve and a half hours ago, I thought I was looking at a few hours of packing in my study.

It looks worse in here than when I started, and I still have more to do.

I had this lofty goal of getting rid of most of my stuff, but I neglected to think about how much time it takes to sort through all of it.

The worst was when I found an entire box of sensitive papers to shred. I knew why I had packed it; I had loaned my shredder to someone who had never returned it. Still, I felt horrible when I found that box. It was a giant symbol of all the physical and metaphorical crap I have been lugging around for ages.

Purging most of it should feel better than it does right now, but until this room starts looking significantly emptier, I’m going to be grumpy about it.

Knotted.

 

One week until FunkyPlaid leaves, and all I can think about is knitting. I imagine this is a classic case of something psychological, busily create create create while the house, our home, is slowly falling apart.

Right now I am focused on — no, obsessed with — a lace shawl pattern. The first tiny bit is pictured here. I chose this pattern in order to participate in a Google+ knitalong. Little did I know how the Google+ pseudonym stuff would blow up. More on that later. I have to go knit my world back together.

Jump-start on Caturday.

My day deteriorated somewhat, so I am getting a jump-start on Caturday with this photo of my in-laws’ cat, Jack. And then going to bed.

Tomorrow is FunkyPlaid’s going-away party. Two weeks from now, he will be landing in Edinburgh.

I don’t have a good ending for this post.

Packing highlights.

Although this is hardly my first day of packing for Scotland, it has been a long one, filled with Kleenex (yay, head cold) and boxes I never unpacked from my last move and lots of stuff I simply do not know why I own. And now, some highlights!

Weirdest discovery: my very first mobile. I tried to sell it nine years ago, but I guess that didn’t work. I will be donating it through Call2Recycle.

Packed for storage: my entire poetry library. I may regret that, but it will give me a good excuse to use the public library system while I am there.

Thing I thought I would want to keep but don’t: my high school yearbook from senior year. I contacted my school’s alumni association to see if they want it. (Thanks for the idea, Unclutterer!)

Books, books, books. So very many books. Would you like some books? I have some up for swap at PaperBackSwap and Goodreads. If you are looking for a particular book, you are welcome to check out my library on LibraryThing and make me an offer.

HIWDtS: Bye-bye, lady.

Every once in a while, I encounter the N-Judah Greeter. He is a sweet man who says hello and waves to everyone who boards the train, and says goodbye and waves to everyone who leaves.

Most people avoid catching his eye, because that is his signal that it is okay to wave and talk. He spends a lot of the time in suspended animation, looking expectantly at each new passenger, hoping for eye contact. As soon as the person looks up, he waves and exclaims, “Hello!” Women get a “lady” tacked on the end. If the person does not respond, he repeats himself a few times, then stops and moves on to the next person.

If you, like me, respond, then there is a short script:

“Hello, lady!”
“Hello!”
“Where are you going?”
“Home!”
“OK, lady!”

On the way out, there is a similarly enthusiastic send-off. If it happens to be a Friday, as it was when I last saw the Greeter, he waves and says, “Bye-bye, lady,” then adds, “Have a good weekend!”

The Greeter has a thankless job. Because he is friendly on Muni, he is mostly treated like a hostile stranger. I have learned to take my enthusiastic greetings and send-offs where I can get them, because I never know when it will be the last time I see a place.

Except now I know. I know when my last Muni ride will be. I know when I will close the front door of my home for the last time, when I will drive to SFO for the last time, when I will get on a plane with my bags and my cats and fly over this giant place to a dream.

My beloved FunkyPlaid and I are moving to Scotland. Now that I can type that, it is real to me. He leaves in just over two weeks to get settled and start his PhD program, and I leave in just under two months with Zen and Torgi in tow.

Almost eight years ago, FunkyPlaid made this trip alone. I drove him to SFO and dissolved at the security checkpoint. I joked with him the other day that I won’t be crying this time, but who am I kidding? The moment is too big for me not to cry.

This departure is a culmination of so much planning, hard work, imagination, and passion, bolstered with support from our dear friends and family, and sprinkled with a bit of good luck and great timing. Most days it is difficult for me to picture the end result because there is still so much to do, and I find my motivation in knocking things off to-do lists. But every once in a while, I look up from the cardboard boxes and think of the adventure about to begin.

Bye-bye, lady.

HIDWtS: Instruments of torture.

O, hello. I am glad you are still here! The end of the semester was a little harrowing, but now there is a moment to breathe and obsess over seating arrangements.

I am not great at it yet, but for the past month I have been knitting while commuting. This is much more productive than dozing off, and it keeps my restless brain occupied.

There appear to be two ways of dealing with a knitter on public transit. One is to avoid. In the wrong hands, a knitting needle could do some serious damage, maybe even a d4′s worth. Very scary. Also, I have a terrifying presence, so anything sharper than an oven mitt in my hand is incredibly intimidating to the average person.

The other way is to ask a hundred thousand questions about knitting, how to knit, the history of textiles, and which things can be knotted together into other things. This always goes really well, because though I have been a knitter forever, I have no idea how even to approach teaching someone else how to knit. As far as I am concerned, I hold a piece of yarn near a stick and wiggle my hand and something happens.

As you might imagine, I am not very good at knitting. But persistent!

Although I have been dutifully observing the behavior that occurs when I take out my knitting on public transit, I have yet to discern the pattern behind commuter reactions. So far, it is about fifty-fifty, and evenly split down any defining characteristic I could choose to name. I am beginning to think that the division may have something to do with the annoyance of movement in one’s peripheral vision (avoid pesky knitters with their constantly-moving hands) or the well-known stereotype of knitter as affable and knowledgeable textile oracle who is secretly a crime-fighting superhero.

Maybe that’s not a well-known stereotype. It should be. Because, you know … never mind.

HIDWtS Rating: I cannot divulge this for fear of endangering your life, citizen.