I’ve been toying with the idea of making a lasagna all week. Not enough motivation though. Cooking requires going to the store first and somehow that’s too much effort. I even pondered making vegetable fajitas since at least I have all the ingredients for those, but that requires too much effort too. Anything that necessitates washing dishes first just isn’t going to happen.

I lounged in front of the television tonight and watched sitcoms I didn’t recognize. This past year or so I’ve only ever watched ER. Tonight proved that I haven’t been missing much. I guess I knew that but every once in a while I like to prove it to myself.

While brushing my teeth, I caught a glimpse of colored lights through the bathroom window. Looking out, I could see – far away through the darkness across the park that stretches behind my house – the carnival midway for the May Fair. The ferris wheel stood tall and motionless. Since the fair doesn’t start til tomorrow, I can only assume they were in the process of setting up and testing.

I opened the window and heard nothing but wind and birds. Tomorrow night the air will be filled with the echo of fair noise. I think I’m glad I’ll be missing it.

I caused trouble in meetings today. First I asked what the change management process was going to be – again. And yet again, I got no response. But hey, I have to keep asking. People know I’ll ask. They expect me to. Heh. Then I asked when design would freeze. The wishy-washy answer didn’t satisfy me, and so I pressed until they admitted there *was* no freeze planned. Then I asked just what it was that I needed to do to escalate the design freeze. Ooh, the looks I got for that one!

Yeah, me bad, but hey, can you blame me? I’m getting thumbs up and high-fives from people in the halls. I’m such a rebel. Here’s where this whole ‘can’t do it without her’ position I hold comes in handy. It’s not like they’re going to get mad and decide to boot me off the project. They know better. Besides, I’m not always a pest. 99% of the time I’m actually quite helpful. It’s just every once in a while I can’t stand it any longer and I have to speak up. I have my favorite soapboxes, see, and I keep clinging to this hope (silly me) that if I holler long and loud enough, someone will eventually listen to me. I’m sure it will work. Honest. One of these days.

I shouldn’t be too hard on them – the poor confused souls. It’s not their fault they don’t know the answers I’m looking for. It’s the fault of the ones who are higher up the food chain who are leaving the rest of us dangling. But still, I get such perverse delight out of making management squirm. Remind me of this when I move into management and someone does it to me, would you? I’m sure I’ll need the wake-up call at some point.

I got home late – a trend that seems likely to be the norm for the next few weeks – and my arrival was even later due to the necessity of stopping at various stores to get critical items. Food for me. Litter for the cats. And while wandering the aisles I found something else I had to bring home.

Six tiny practice golf balls are now careening madly around the living room floor. If I stop typing and listen hard enough I can hear the miniature whiffle balls whacking into furniture, followed closely by the skittering of claws on wood. The little holes in the balls mean that they can be scooped up with a clawed paw and tossed – an added dimension to the normal ‘bat and chase’ theme of most of the rest of their (5,378) toys.

I’m sure by tomorrow morning all six of the balls will have been rolled underneath furniture that will require me to get down on all fours with a yardstick in some torturous position to retrieve them, all the while accompanied by a chorus of plaintive beeps from furry bewhiskered faces. But it’s worth it. Really it is.

The alarm rings and I roll over. It’s time to get up but I do not want to and neither does he. “We could just not go,” he suggests, but I know that if we don’t get up and go to meet these friends, that we will linger too long and not get the rest of the errands done.

We meet friends for brunch. My friends, really – someone I knew from years ago, and coworkers of D (whom I’d only met once before). We eat waffles slathered in syrup and toasted pecans and sip coffee, and talk with enthusiastic voices and laughter. We sit once the food is done, he and I, hand in hand as we talk with the others, wanting this time to linger because when it ends this means more of the day is over and the time we are simultaneously waiting for and dreading is closer. We hug our hellos and goodbyes.

I tell him I need time to myself to do something, so while he busies himself on the computer I drag out paper and crayons and pens and write notes. When my sisters and I were little girls and daddy would fly away on one of his many trips we would make notes for his suitcase – awkward handwriting on construction paper; sometimes glued cutouts, and sometimes just simple scraps of lined notebook paper. I continue the tradition, and then tiptoe into the bedroom to tuck them into his backpack.

I am avoiding crying. I will not cry. I will be calm and happy for him. I will not cry. Not yet. If I tell myself this enough times it will be true.

There is a list of things to buy. Film and batteries for the camera. How many rolls should he bring? Are these the right size? Are you bringing a jacket? Did you pack all your medicine? I stop myself – he is not a child going to camp and I am not his mother. I’m only his fiance – worried and clinging and wanting his reassurance that he has everything and so therefore everything will be fine. It is not that he is going away – he’s done that before. It’s that this time it’s so much further, and I have no way to connect with him. He goes to another continent, halfway around the world, and for the next month I must rely on sporatic email and even less frequent phone calls to know that he is all right.

We drive to the airport, consulting maps to make sure we’re taking the right freeways. I note the traffic in the opposite direction and joke that he’d better appreciate that what I’m willing to go through for him. We flash little smiles at each other and he asks me how I’m doing. Okay, I answer. Just okay. Don’t make me cry when I’m driving. Please don’t make me cry.

I fuss over his tickets after he checks in and bite my tongue to keep from asking a million and one questions. We sit at the gate, his arm around me, and wait for them to announce boarding.

I stand with him in line, but when we are close, I have to leave. I cannot watch him walk through the gate, away from me. I climb the stairs, gulping in great breaths, blinking rapidly. I will not cry. I mustn’t cry.

Above, I rush to the railing, looking over, feeling foolish for how I left, but he is gone. I catch sight of myself in the windows as I hurry down the terminal back toward my car. My eyes are red-rimmed, my face pale.

The traffic we saw on the way to the airport has not cleared, and my car crawls along the highway for nearly an hour before I break free. I turn the radio up loud and drive home. I do not want to go home without him there. I am not ready for that.

I call my parents. Please meet me for dinner. They come, understanding my reluctance to be alone. We talk about trivial things. They make me laugh.

I go home. The message light on the answering machine is blinking. I avoid it, going around the house, opening windows, turning on fans. I imagine everything that that message could be – none of it good. I tell myself not to be an idiot. I play the message. It’s nothing.

I crawl into bed and stay up as late as I can, reading a book until the pages blur in front of me and I can no longer concentrate on the words. The fan is a quiet hum of noise in the otherwise silent room. I turn off the light, and the cats creep slowly onto the bed, settling beside me.

I pull the sheets around me and watch the streetlight outside my window. And then I cry.

One year ago today, we went out with a friend, the three of us, laughing, having fun. We wandered around the fairgrounds and listened to bagpipes. You and she patiently waited for me to stop dithering and buy the stone dragon, and you insisted that if I bought it, I would have to name it.

One year ago today, we started the day with breakfast, chai latte’s and waffles with butter and syrup and whipped cream, all three of us ready for a day of fun. Later, you and she drank Guinness and I had Coke at a Mexican restaurant in town. That afternoon in the parking lot as we headed for ice cream, you and I teasing, you trying to tickle me, she yelled out “Just kiss her.” And I wanted you to but I knew you wouldn’t, that you and I were only ever going to be friends.

One year ago today I was back home and you sent me an Instant Message to see if I wanted to come over and watch a movie, and even though it was late and I was tired, I said what the heck and so I drove over and you put in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” with Danny Kaye, and I noted that I loved Danny Kaye, and we both remembered the last time I had done this, come over to watch a movie – “Drop Dead Fred” which was rather silly.

Fooling around, teasing, laughing, suddenly we were face to face, inches away from each other, and all I could think was to wonder if you would kiss me, and I knew that you wouldn’t and that was okay because we would still be friends and it would be an awkward moment and we would recover from it gracefully, the same as we did the last time it happened.

But I was wrong. Wondefully, marvelously, completely wrong.

One year ago today you kissed me, and I kissed you back.

One year ago today, I fell in love.

Richard leaves in exactly one week, so today we got all the registering out of the way for the wedding. We’d headed out to look at curtains and shades earlier this week and tried to register then, but were thwarted at every turn – one store requires appointments, one store’s registry machine was broken, and the last wasn’t the right ‘home’ version for us to do it at anyway. So on the way home, Richard called up the appointment-requiring one, and we made our plans for today.

We started with the local hardware store. It’s not a place I’d ever have considered, except that years ago when my older sister got married, her now-in-laws suggested it, and by golly, they’ve not only got a registry, but they’ve also got some pretty neat stuff to register for. Besides, where else could we write down different varieties of trees on the list?

The hardware store gives you a little booklet to fill out with numbers, by hand. Target gives you an electronic gun (after you spend ten minutes typing into their little screen) and sends you off to merrily scan UPC codes on anything and everything. They don’t follow you around – you’re all on your own.

Not so the other places. Both Penny’s and Macy’s not only made us fill out lengthy paperwork (by hand), but they took us around and did the scanning for us. The poor woman at Penny’s was having a hard time of it. She kept tripping over things (and boy can I sympathize. Half my life is like that). The woman at Macy’s came from Dublin, Ireland, so she had fun giving Richard tips for his trip while we were going through the setup process.

We peered at more china patterns today than I think I ever want to see again. There are some truly hideous silver patterns out there (a lot of them, actually). We traipsed through displays of crystal expensive enough to make me cringe as I walked past (if anyone would trip and fall and break this stuff, it’d be me, see). And we plowed through linens, towels, appliances, and all manner of other items (heck, even furniture). In the end, though, exhausted and not wanting to see another electronic scanning gun for a very long time, we were finished.

One more hurdle down. Less than three months to go.

Moral has dropped on this project I’m on. Confidence is lower than it’s ever been. Even when it seemed as if the odds were stacked against us, there was still an undercurrent of hope. Not so anymore – not since the powers that be released their latest scope and timeline documents. The reaction from both business and consultants has been the same. What are they thinking? How can they just blithely ignore the recommendations; the mountains of facts; the downright begging of those they’ve hired to advise them to please, please, wake up and realize that we can not do it this way again. It’s failed twice before – unless they change things and change them significantly, it will fail the third time too.

They do not listen. They refuse to listen. They get furious when brave people risk their jobs to gather facts and send them higher up the chain than the ‘normal’ line of command thinks they should (while the rest of us cross our fingers, hold our breath, and silently cheer them on). Serious questions of how scope creep will be managed (or in other words, will it *finally* be managed this time?) are met with laughter from those who are supposed to be doing the managing in the first place. There is a hopelessness in the faces of those like myself who have been there since the beginning. It doesn’t matter how hard we try. This is bigger than us – bigger than the entire IT organization. If they will not take responsibility for what they are doing, we are only chasing a moving target once again.

They say that the third time is the charm. Not so in this case. They say that those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Unfortunately, sadly, painfully, unless something changes and the people who are supposed to be leading finally wake up and listen, this will most definitely be the case.

I’m trying to figure out where the time has gone. It seems like only yesterday we were still planning our move and now it’s been a week since we moved in. A whirlwind of activity over that time and suddenly there are less than two weeks til May 5th, when Richard flies away.

One weekend remains between then and now and it’s already booked solid. Three months before the wedding means it’s time to register and we have to do it before he leaves. We need to make some decisions on landscapers so we’ll finally have a front yard (before the neighbors start to complain). We need to have the quotes on the built-in office so we can figure out when to have that built and installed. Somehow I thought there was at least one more week in there somewhere and suddenly the time left is a lot less than I was prepared for.

A lot of people have wondered aloud why we were in such a rush to move in. Why not wait? After all, we gave our notice for the entire month of April. Yes we were excited about the house being done, but more importantly, he’s leaving and I did not want to move into this house without him – to have him come home to an unfamiliar place. We rushed, but at least he got to unpack his things. He’s wandered through stores with me searching for soap dishes and shower curtains. He figured out the quirks of the garage door opener. It’s his home too, this way.

I’m not ready. He’s ready – he’s been ready for years. This is his dream – this trip around Europe on trains and in hostels – just as the house was mine. But I’m not ready. I’m not ready to watch him walk through those gates and board a plane that will take him so far away from me for so long. I’m not ready to say goodbye.

How can it be this soon? There’s supposed to be more time. Why isn’t there more time?

Saturday we loaded a rental truck full of all the junk left in the old house and carted it away. We stood in mud ankle-deep and flung old furniture and trash into an untidy heap. To our right a pair of men emptied piles of branches from a beat-up trailer. To our left, another truck deposited a load of trash. We were the first three contributors to this new repository at the dump. I feel so proud.

That morning we went to the Starbucks in our old town for what will possibly be the last time. They know us there – what drinks we order and what pastries we always request. There is a little bakery and coffee shop in this new town, but it’s somehow not the same. The apple turnovers are flaky and sweet but they do not satisfy the craving for a cinnamon chip scone.

Yesterday we came with brooms and rags to clean out the garage and wipe down the windows and collect all that remained. Yesterday we ate lunch at the little sandwich shop down the street from where we used to live. He had grilled ham and cheese, oozing lettuce and tomato. I dipped my grilled cheese carefully in ketchup. We ate outside, enjoying the warmth of the sun. Once upon a time, we used to walk down here on weekends. We would eat those sandwiches with oreo cookie shakes and then end our lunch with a round of RoadBlasters – one quarter for each of us.

Tonight we turned in the keys to the landlord, and walked around the house for the last time. There is the window where Ashton jumped through the screen, and my roommate and I had to wake our neighbors to let us into their yard to fetch him – he was chasing their rabbit (the one who always escaped). The carpet in that room is ripped because that’s where the kittens lived when we fostered – a room full of purrs, small wet noses, and needle-claws who saw humans as trees to be climbed, with laps and hands to give food and affection. There is the towel rack that falls apart if you breath hard next to it, and the blinds through which Allegra would run at top speed, back and forth early in the mornings.

The backyard holds the deck where we hung the wind chimes and where, one year, we grew in the huge flower box to the left English peas, piles of pale striped Aremenian cucumbers, and one small stunted carrot. In the front is the window where Azrael used to sit, waiting for us to come home and put the key into the lock so he could bat at the turning knob. We walked past the kitchen I hated because there was never enough room; the linen closet where Zuchinni liked to hide until one of us would open it and be bowled over by a terrified cat; the water softener that overflowed twice, spilling enough water to soak under the walls into the dining room and saturate the carpet; the fireplace we never used; the hook where we hung the mistletoe.

I was still in graduate school when I moved in, six years ago, working toward a career in research and writing. In this house I discovered the joy of bottle feeding orphan kittens, the bitter acceptance that some would never survive no matter what we did, the pain of feline leukemia, and the true and hopeless hell of FIP. In this house I earned my independence and lived for the first time in my life entirely alone, never thinking I would ever find a reason to give that up. In this house I huddled in my room and told my grandfather I loved him over the phone as he lay dying in a hospital halfway across the country.

This was the house from which I was already dreaming my escape before I ever moved in.

This was the town I could never let become mine.

This was the house I would never let become home.

We had our first official guests in our new house today. In a mass get-measured-for-wedding-outfits exercise, my older sister, her husband and her two sons, Richard’s sister, her daughter, and her significant other, one of the groomsmen, and my parents came over, along with the seamstress, her assistant, and her adorable little 6-month old baby girl.

It was a wonderfully fun and hectic afternoon, and we learned a few important things about this house of ours:

• We need furniture. Desperately. Badly. The tiny love seat and trio of assorted chairs in the living room just isn’t enough to hold everyone. And eating with a crowd is a bit easier when there is a table – everyone ended up either perching on the stairs or settling onto the floor. On the plus side, all but two of the cats decided they wanted to pretend to be shy of strangers so our guests didn’t get too pestered for having food at whisker level, but still, it would be nice to be just a tad more formal next time.
• We need curtains. Or throw rugs. Pictures on the wall. Anything. Just as long as it could help soak up the sound. The down side to having hardwood floors, no carpets and minimal furniture is (as Sebastian – the cat who could double as a foghorn – has taught us) that sound echoes in this big half-empty house. Really really well.

But on the plus side, even with that many people over, the house wasn’t crowded. There was plenty of room for everyone and more besides – in the old house it would have felt crowded with fewer than this (a fact which often puzzles me as I recall distinctly having a Halloween party one year with over thirty people crammed into that shoebox we used to live in). This house has space to spare. Even when we finally get the furniture that we want there will still be room. It’s an unusual feeling, but a long-awaited one. We – and the cats – are thoroughly enjoying it.

After the flurry of all the must-unpack-now items, I’m unpacking slowly – organizing, shifting things around, getting settled. The kitchen has empty cupboards I don’t know how to fill. I have more counter space than I expected. I am in awe of how much space is in this house. I feel as if we rattle around in it. Our furniture seems so tiny in these rooms.

We put up hooks for our robes last night and felt ridiculously pleased with ourselves. It’s so ….well…adult to do this kind of thing. It’s an odd feeling.

It’s fading now, but every now and then I don’t quite feel like I belong here yet. It’s our stuff and the cats are here and I walk around and know where things are but still – this isn’t quite yet my house. It’s like we’re merely squatting in someone else’s beautiful house, and eventually they will come back and we’ll have to go away again.

We have two city-issued garbage cans. one gray and one green. We’ve got the utilities set up in our name now. We’ve got – hopefully – a mailbox key (which they have yet to deliver to us). And we have DSL – finally DSL.

The office comes next but that’s such a small task compared to the house itself. We’re getting a list of things that need to be fixed. A leaking sink. Scratches in a marble countertop. The electrical connections that run the gas fireplace in the master bedroom aren’t working. Nothing major, but still significant enough to note and get taken care of while we’re still under warranty.

There is an echo in the stairwell. We call to each other and the voices become garbled and difficult to understand. Upstairs you cannot hear the garage door when it opens or closes. The doorbell has a clean new tone to it – bold bells. The stone dragons are on the front steps. The stone goose is by the door.

I can look out the window next to my computer and watch birds fluttering around the yard. At night we lay in bed and listen to the song of birds in the neighbors’ trees. Occasionally through the window we can see (but not hear) a tractor in the farm beyond the street’s end, and when everything else is perfectly quiet, we can hear the whispered echo of the train horns as they pass through the edge of town.

I am more at peace here than I’ve been in some time. It’s not just that I have time off from work, nor is it simply that the house is done and we are finally moved in. It’s that we’re home. Finally home. And this time it’s really and truly ours.