This past Wednesday evening, we turned south at Barstow, and before too long, we hit the long downhill stretch of freeway - seemed like ten or fifteen miles of downhill. The sun was just starting to set, and our introduction to our new home city came with a magenta sky and lights beginning to come on in the valley below us.
We'd been driving for three days, staying in cheapo motels, gradually wearing down our humanity in the way that only long travel seems to do. The cats had become resigned to their new itinerant life, and mainly slumped around in the backseat, stress-numb and travel sick. Our car had served amazingly well on this trip - no hint of any issues (I suspect it was as glad as we were to be leaving Chicago winter).
And then we were here.
Everything here looks to me like those scrabbly little vacation towns along the gulf coast of Florida.
Franchise businesses are scattered among local independents, and everything's sun-bleached, dusty, and a little home-made looking. It all feels so, so spread out - there's really not much within walking distance of our apartment, whereas in Chicago, it was only the last couple years that I even felt it necessary to have a car.
So it's different.
We've been errand-running like crazy, trying to fill in all the gaps, trying to remember what exactly is still on the way (95% of our stuff will be arriving next week), trying not to exhaust ourselves. It's a strange in-between time, when we don't really live here yet, but don't live anywhere else. Neither Kitten nor I has a real job at the moment - I have prep work and lines to learn, and she's submitting for auditions, but nothing regular to act as a foundation, a ground wire, as ballast to keep us steady in the midst of all this.
Tonight we get to go out and see people other than each other for a bit. It'll be good. It'll be tiring. Neither of us is fantastic at small talk, and we're going to be around a couple (one?) people we've worked with but don't really know, and an unknown number of strangers. We'll see.
This weekend we can catch our breath a bit and get to know our new city a little. I hope it likes us.
No comments:
Post a Comment