One day shortly after I moved into my apartment, I was going up the stairs to my door and saw a folded white piece of paper hanging by a rubber band from someone's doorknob. The paper had the apartment number written on it. I had to know what was written in it. So, even though I was probably being watched through one of the peepholes on the four front doors on that level, I pulled aside the corner of the paper and read what I could see, then ran away. The paper said that the lease on the apartment was about to expire and invited the owner(s) to renew the lease.
Last week, I was going up the stairs to my door and saw a folded white piece of paper hanging by a rubber band from my doorknob. (Actually, there were two, because one of them was a notification that I was late on my rent and they'd need me to report to the main office as soon as possible to have one of my fingers removed, but that's irrelevant.) I took the paper inside and read it. It noted that my lease was about to expire and invited me to renew the lease.
Once I was done laughing this weird screamy hysterical laugh at the concept of living in this apartment any longer than I had to - once I got the horror out of my system - joy was able to move in. That paper was another proof that I'd be leaving soon for Korea.
More proof are the calendars telling me there are only two weeks left. Just two weeks to get all my work done, which would take a full two weeks, but on top of that: get things moved into the storage unit, go through fourteen feet of clothes and decide what we need, take 5 boxes of clothes to the post office and spend $5,698,475 to mail them to Korea, figure out why Comcast is still charging me for internet in the house I moved out of two months ago, see if the passport people have any idea what happened to my marriage certificate they never sent back after processing my passport, go to two more doctors' appointments and one more vet appointment, go to my last sewing class, go to a family reunion, dig through thrift stores for another suitcase, coordinate desk and computer packing so that I'll have the longest amount of time possible with computer access, and scrape bird poo out of the carpets. Just off the top of my head.
But, like I've been telling everyone, I'll find a way to get it all done. I kinda have to. Especially the computer part.
Sometimes, once in a while, I'll remember what all this is for. I'll stop thinking about the millions of things on my to-do lists and imagine the day when finally (after three plane switches, a camp-out in an airport waiting room, and not having a shower in over 24 hours) I'll see Joe again. I picture the moment I'll stop forgetting how tall he is, when I'll remember what he looks like when he's not two-dimensional on a computer screen. I'll imagine the sweet relief I'll feel when I know that we are finally in the same country again and that, if a zombie apocalypse were to occur, he'd only have to travel a mile to get to me rather than across an ocean and a continent. Because if a zombie apocalypse were to occur right this very second, I know I'd never see him again, and that's really sad.
Thirteen days to go. Thirteen thousand things to do. I got this.
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