Total ZEN

I am sans keys. Nope, no keys do I own. No car, no apartment, no safe or store keys! GONE! It is 2:30 and I am sipping a Guiness, about to read a book, and listening to the soothing rain rapping on the panes of my mother's windows. Ahhhhhh. The rest of my time in America will be spent with the people I care most about. I plan on taking many baths, eating tons of green grapes and drinking nothing but Guiness and fresh coffee. Seriously though.... it is so nice to finish work and get rid of our car and apartment. There is a little celebration in my soul and I love it! It just feels like the cosmos are aligned and everything is falling in its right place. ahhhh....

a farewell to excess

So today I packed up a sizeable portion of our accumulated crappola. I tell you what, wow. We don't even seem to have that much, but it feels so good to bag it up and haul it out. It's not that I don't like stuff, it just weighs you down. One thing I will not miss at all is our glass dining room table top. We got our table at a modern furniture store downtown and it is unique and sleek (hey that is a great rhyme), but it is a major pain to clean the glass ALL the time and it looks dirty five seconds after you clean it. I hope it finds a good home. Bonne Voyage, la table.

The major bulk of what we are storing is my book collection. Truly, I did make an effort to part with some books and I did manage to rule out about 4 books (and of those one was a duplicate). So what if I hoard books? I reread...and there are many I will get to in the future and am keeping around until that day (i.e. the "Great Books" collection I inherited from my grandpa).

If anyone happens to read this and has been fortunate enough to peruse our appartment and our various possessions please let me know if you saw anything you liked (sans pictures/art and books). We have a barely working t.v. that is maybe 10 years old in our room and a stereo that only plays brand new c.d.'s. If you love us, you will come take our crap!

first new items

It feels like our big adventure is finally drawing near! I just purchased a new back pack, a rear-view mirror (for the bike the Peace Corps furnishes), and a new pair of kicks to blaze down the the dunes of the Sahara. I have one week left at the S-Bucks and I am going to miss many people. Maxine and her cute sweaters, Dennis and his "pink tea" (and honking at me in the parking lot, scaring the daylights out of me), and the numerous Danny's (decaf Dan, mocha coconut Dan, and Mailman Dan). I won't miss some aspects of the job, though, and I'm glad to move on to doing something I am passionate about. Oh yeah, I will also miss Shannon and Elizabeth (enjoy my Hello Kitty umbrella, girl!) I'm off to do some more packing/shopping.
Oh yeah, it's April and it's snowing... in Missouri! I guess it's a nice send-off from the big guy upstairs. I want to be in the sweltering heat of Africa!!

Me without Jon

I just found out that Jon and I will be living apart for the first three months while in training. So, I kind of suspected that this was a possibility and was a little scared but now that it seems definite I'm just trying to brace myself. A part of me is afraid it will be SUPER hard, but a part of me thinks that it will make training that much more effective and might actually save us some extra stress. (ie. arguments that are pointless and are just a result of stress and being worn out). It will kind of be like being single again, and I survived as a single person for quite awhile before ole' Jon came along. Anyway, this is my little therapy session for myself where I try to work out how we will cope with the separation. This could be interesting...maybe even exciting.

Salut!