Every sort of Event in my family can be expected to be a giant ordeal, so while I was grateful for my family's help (and their cars) moving my earthly possessions today, I was sort of bracing myself for a verbal bloodbath. Or, at the very least, having to navigate the minefield of exasperated sighs of contempt and careless finger-pointing for obstacles beyond anyone's control. Maybe Nick's presence as an Outsider forced everyone to be on their best behavior, prevented everyone from letting the heat, and the stairs, but mostly the heat, bring out the worst. As Nick and I drove back to Columbus, I felt relief slowly seep into me like cold water. How could it have been so easy? I'd been holding my breath all day for nothing.

I stayed in my crappy apartment, the Leaden Cave, for three years. My apartment became a character in my life, a silent villain, my excuse for floundering. I had cryptic reasons for staying but I know I was just resigning myself to another year of quiet misery to avoid that one week of Moving Hassle. I'd like to think that I'm not as eager to disappoint myself as I was before.

In a way, in just this one way, it's good that today was an Ohio State home football game. Nothing makes you want to shake off this town for good like enduring a Football Saturday. Don't get me wrong. Everyone likes to have a team, to root for the good guys. But there's fun and then there's destruction. This place is transformed into an all-consuming scarlet-and-grey zombie mob, shuffling through the streets, banging on your car windows, screaming in your face, and using Columbus as its own collective port-a-john while it stomps red and blue party cups underfoot.

Here I am next to my car, having accidental team spirit.

Ana hosted a Don't-Call-It-A-Going-Away-Potluck for me. Nick and Ana surprised me by making pizza soup - a dish that had, until last night, been only a conceptual inside joke. Last winter, in a feverish delirium, my active sites denaturing like it was going out of style, I demanded from my bed that Nick bring me "pizza soup". It became a staple offering of the restaurant/bar that Ana and I plan to open someday, tentatively called The Glory Hole. How do you make pizza soup? This incarnation was chunky tomato bisque with veggie ground beef in a bread bowl, topped with veggie pepperoni, green pepper rings, mozzarella and oregano. It certainly lived up to all the drunken raving about it we've been doing for the past year.

I thought that all those people around, handing me beers and hugging me hard, would bum me out. It didn't. I felt warm and content and the hollow, looming sense of dread that usually hangs out in the pit of my stomach didn't bother to show up to the party at all.

My love for the Silver Jews started on a math club field trip (really) when a days-old love put headphones on me and piped American Water into my sixteen-year-old ears, frames of the Blue Ridge Mountains suspended by the charter bus windows as we passed. Years later, my best friend, Leslie and I counted on Bright Flight and The Natural Bridge to last us all along the highway til we got to Graceland. I'm that awful sort of nostalgic, unconditional fan. It's all I can do to not close my eyes like a jackass at their shows.

Tonight I saw them play at Milo Arts, a startup venue that will hopefully come to book the sort of bands that the fallen Little Brother's boasted. The building was a Victorian elementary school, the women's bathroom still houses tiny gym lockers and a couple cobwebbed shower stalls. The show space itself reminds me eerily of my own (and really, probably everyone else's) grade school's multi-purpose room, right down to the metal-caged lights on the ceiling and the cinder-block walls coated in white. I couldn't shake the feeling that any moment I was going to get caught drinking a beer and have my recess privileges revoked.

In the process of packing/arranging my clutter into enigmatic piles/making a giant mess of the apartment, I came across my boyfriend, Nick's, one-eyed stuffed dog from childhood. Last year, Bernard stowed away in my luggage when I went to Europe, his little bean-bag frame slumped over in the foreground of many photos of Parisian landmarks. Nick found him sitting on top of the "return to Nick's house" pile. He offered to send him off with me to Athens. I prefer the idea of Bernard in Nick's room at his new place, one-eyed sentry over Nick's records, books, his bed, the rooftop under his window, and the Columbus streets below.

Tonight was my last shift at the restaurant. I stepped on a needle in my apartment yesterday, and it stuck me so deep that today I can hardly bear weight on my right foot. Work was unbelievably slow, which was good because I was slow, hobbling around, taking three times longer than usual to do everything. Brenda and Matt rode their bikes over to the restaurant to celebrate my final shift, which was unexpected and terribly kind of them. I was presented with a sweet card and a conspicuous paper bag, cloaking a 24 oz. bottle of Red Stripe. I guess I'm pretty easy to shop for.

It's moving season in Columbus, and I've got friends and two hands. I've spent the past week lifting two-ton oak dressers, endless long boxes of comics, top-heavy ailing TV sets, winding them clumsily around narrow staircases in 90 degree heat. All this toil, all this hassle, none of it's encouraged me to start putting my things into boxes, start arranging for myself to get myself somewhere else. I just don't feel like I'm leaving yet.

Prologue

I am going to begin this blog with an apology. It's how I start most things. Apologizing for things that aren't my fault, like nail-biting, is a habit I've been unsuccessfully trying to break for years. The delinquent habit-breaking has itself become a habit.

Here's me being a person for a year. It's not a big deal. However, it seems futile to suggest that someone starting an online minutiae parade isn't self-absorbed. So this is the apology: I'm sorry, but here comes a million words and pictures about my life. I hope that while I'm in this very beautiful, very strange place, it will make me feel less far away.