Jenna and I are trying to leave Philadelphia at 8:30 tomorrow. We're stopping at our alma mater for a couple hours in the afternoon before proceeding to The N. The N is a collection of cabins on a lake in the Adirondack Mountains where we're meeting my mom and stepdad. My mom's family used to spend time there in the summer when she was a little girl, fifty years ago or more. Most of the people who stay at the N have, like my mother, two or three generations of memories there. We'll be staying with them through the 5th, when we trade my station wagon for the van and drive to Jenna's family home near Boston.
The last week has been a lazy flurry of saying goodbye to friends, packing things up, buying supplies, and burning CDs. We are tying together the loose ends of our lives here in Philadelphia.
I think we've done pretty well at getting outfitted and packed. The car is full, and our room is empty, which is a good sign. I know it's too early to declare a total victory. There's still plenty of time for an "oh shit" realization that we left, I don't know, the tent or something behind in Philadelphia.
Most of the problems we've run into have resulted from procrastination.
Last night I almost had a stroke trying to find my passport. It turns out that it had accidentally gotten packed in with some stuff I took home the other week, and luckily I managed to get in touch with my mom before she left to meet us in the Adirondacks.
Some of the things I bought haven't come yet, which is a bummer. I'm down a couple books, which, unfortunately, aren't worth the cost of having them mailed to me at some checkpoint down the road. We're also leaving more of our things in the apartment than we probably planned to. My roommates can have them.
We bought some things on the internet - sleeping bags and bear spray, I think - which we had mailed to Jenna's house. Will those come in time?
I ended up taking different clothes than I planned on. The aluminum cookset still hasn't come - but the backpacking stove my mom lent us has a pot and pan. I didn't check in with my insurance company to double-check that they sent the settlement money to Jenna's house - they didn't (I guess that's mostly on them, though, since I'd talked to them about it). I don't know if the forwarding address I'm setting up will redirect the check to Massachusetts in time.
I didn't beat Secret of Mana :(
The expected moment of clarity still hasn't come. Maybe it will sink in on our way to the Adirondacks that we're now homeless and we're actually doing it. For months, it's all been little steps, small processes that are culminating in this weird adventure. I don't have traction on this experience yet.
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