Letter #5

Dear Rowan,                                               July 5th     Wichita, KS

I hate my life. In general at least, there are a few details that are really nice. This job is so many levels below the gutter ranking that I gave my last job that you would have to go sewer spelunking to find it, and even then you would need to prepare for a deep dive. I did not realize before that the customers from my last job were saints. They actually cared about their devices and were concerned in getting them fixed. They knew that their little electronic gadgets, as wonderfully handy and useful as they were, they were still privileges, not rights. They were willing to work with the disembodied voice on the phone to troubleshoot and get their gadgets fixed, and they were grateful for my assistance when those gadgets did get fixed, and grateful for my efforts even when they would have to take their electronics into the shop. The customers at my new job (which I refuse to disclose, if only out of self respect, and no, it is nothing dirty, just degrading for my level of education) seem to think that the services this company provides are a right, not a privilege. And its not even a phone, its strictly for entertainment! These people could not troubleshoot their way out of an open paper sack, with a map, or instructions that said "go out the open end." Most of these gene pool rejects think that, no matter what the problem is, I have a magic button on my computer that will instantly fix their device. Even if it got dropped, or they spilled their beer on it and now its smoking heavily. And of course that is not their fault, our gadgets should apparently be beer-proof. And heaven forbid they have to actually do any troubleshooting, even something as supremely difficult as getting off their butts to make sure the darned equipment is plugged in (and I have gotten more than one call where that was indeed the issue. Apparently they thought you just set it in proximity of other devices needed to make it work, and it would do everything else itself), or turned on. Yes, most electronic devices do have a power button, which you need to press to get them to turn on and work! If step by step instructions are needed, I know I am in for a long call. The more steps there are for a person to go through, they dumber they seem to get. Even if they need to push the same darned button repeatedly, they find it with no problem the first time, and before the troubleshooting steps are finished I have to describe what the button looks like, its location relative to the customer, and what they are supposed to do once they find this suddenly mysterious button. Its like once they are on the phone their brains have a time limit after which there is a period of diminishing returns, culminating in the statement "just send out a tech!" And these are the customers who have made sure I understand that they are technologically savvy, and really didn't need to call because they know exactly what they are doing, it is just that their gadget is abnormal. Average customers begin with the tech demand, then the call goes downhill from there when I try to explain that the issue they have taken ten minutes describing to me can, indeed, be fixed with the simple push of a reset button, but that button is actually on their device, so they will have to go over to their device and push it themselves. Someday I am sure we will have holographic techs like the doctor on DS9 who can appear, push the button for them, then disappear again, just so they are not inconvenienced by having to take those four steps and extend their finger to push that one button.

And to add to my pathetic rant, I am still living in that same rat hole of an apartment, as there does not seem to be anything better within walking distance, biking distance, or even really driving distance of downtown Wichita. I have looked at several apartments, and it turns out that this pathetic sink hole is in fact a really nice apartment. Most of what I have found are listed as apartments, but with communal public spaces. Somehow what I picture as an apartment does not resemble a frat house, without the high general education level or quality of character of college freshmen. Or there are a few apartments which are in fact studios with a curtain for the bathroom, and the studio area is just large enough to fit a single bed and a one-person table and chair space, with the kitchen being a part of one wall, usually adjoining the bathroom curtain. Now, I will say that I have been avoiding looking at anything with with a lease longer than six months, since if I cannot find a better job by then I am throwing another dart.

Among the as yet limited bonuses for living in Wichita, they have an amazing fireworks display for the 4th of July. There were 12 different fireworks shows in the Wichita area, and if you went up onto the roof of one of the tall buildings downtown (which they let you do, I didn't even have to try and sneak up to the roof) I could see all of them. Plus there was a party on the roof, which was fun even if I didn't know anybody, except a few acquaintances from work. Other than the fear of electrocution from lightning strike, this would be a great place to come to and storm-watch. Everything is so flat I feel like I can actually see the curve of the Earth. It is a little disconcerting, really. All the week leading up to the 4th there were parades and festivals, most of them with free food, which was great, since most of it was home cooked real food, not prepackaged boxed stuff.

Oh! And remember I told you about the Arkansas River Trail? It is a wonderful, magical place to be on a summer evening. There are fireflies everywhere! Apparently fireflies like water, and the trail runs along the river, so it is a trail full of wonderful, whimsical blinking bugs! I had never seen fireflies in real life before, just on tv. They are so amazing to see in person! I actually climbed a tree along the trail just so I could sit above them and watch them. I must have been up there for at least an hour, just watching the fireflies blink. And I can play with them too! If I blink the little flashlight on my keychain just right, I can get fireflies to come to me! 

Right up until I got my first grumpy customer call when I went back to work after my weekend when I first discovered the fireflies, they made Wichita feel like a worthwhile decision, which is the first time that has happened since I have been here. The other thing I discovered that weekend, which was the first time I went down onto the Arkansas River Trail, is the wonderful smell of running through sweetgrass and prairie sage fields in the morning. It is intoxicating, and would be even if those runs were not the best parts of my days right now, excepting the fireflies.

There have been a few more tornado warnings in the past month and a bit, but nothing that has come close to Wichita. I am certainly not sad to have been missed by the weather this tornado season. Locals here tell me that the tornado season is over now, except for a smaller season in the fall, but apparently spring is the big time for tornadoes, so if we have made it into summer without getting hit by one, we should be ok until the season comes around again next year.

While we may not be getting tornadoes, we are also not getting any rain. The locals say it probably won't come until Fall now, which means the world around here is turning brown. I understand why so few houses have manicured lawns now, it would cost too much to water them and keep them green. Instead folks seem to go for a sort of desert yard, with rocks and weeds in place of grass and shrubbery. Between the cost of watering, and the ticks, who would bother to keep up a good lawn? I would be too worried about the ticks to go into the yard to have a picnic or lay down and watch the clouds, even with a blanket. Bugs can move fast over blankets, all it would take was a minute or two distracted, and they could be eating you, like little buggy zombies gnawing away!

I got your letter! I am glad to hear that the great NYC is just as crazy and hectic as ever. If it wasn't, I am not sure what I would think about it, of all cities that one is supposed to never sleep and never stop. I am not sure I could stand that sort of pace though, I come from a small town and the mad dash of the city seems overwhelming. I mean, even lazy Wichita seems rushed compared to Arbuckle! I am afraid I don't feel very brave for moving out here, I just feel lost and adrift, and I feel like maybe this was a really bad idea after all. I don't know, things just are not working out they way I had imagined. I feel like I went from spinning my wheels in Arbuckle to spinning my wheels in Wichita. Same stagnation, different city. You would go crazy trying to live out here with me, it is so slow that I am nearly going crazy and I am used to the laid back rhythm of a smaller town than this. Somehow the anonymity of a bigger town makes it seems slower paced, since there are not people I know all around to pass the time with.

It sounds like we are both searching for something to give us the kick start we need to get our lives going. But we will find it, both of us, I just know it. I just don't know when we will find it. But if it doesn't show up soon I am going to hunt it down, pummel it into being the future I want it to be, then drag it up to New York so you can get things started for yourself too!

Here's hoping for better days and a bright future for us both!

Your friend,

Emily

Letter #4

Dear Rowan,                                                May 13th     Wichita, KS

So much for a wonderful new start. I am in a rather horrid city, in a rathole of an apartment, and now I have proven that it can always get worse. The only stupid job I could find in the dustbowl of a town was at another call center. I couldn't even get a full time job waiting tables. It seems like everything here that is hiring is just hiring part time only, with flexible schedules so you really can't have two part time jobs since they need to be "flexible" which translates as "you need to be available any time of the day or night we decide to schedule you, on short notice." So, needing to have some sort of income to make my status here a little more stable, and having put in applications for weeks with no response, I applied at a local call center, and of course they are the only place to give me a job offer so far. I am going to keep applying at other places, and hopefully about the time that the training is done at this place, I will be able to quit and go to a better job before I ever have to take phone calls. At least I will be working for a different company. They can't all be as depressingly draining as my last job, right? The only really lucky part of all this I suppose is that it is an inbound call center instead of an outbound one. I don't think I could handle making outbound calls. And this is tech support, so I shouldn't have to sell anything, which is good. I didn't like having to do sales at my old job, and all I had to try and sell there were warranties on things people already owned. And really, if you are calling for tech support and you don't have a warranty, shouldn't you probably get one while you still can since it looks like you are going to need it? Maybe if they had let me say that instead of the usual "our warrantee is great" pitch I might have sold more of them, or at least felt better about trying. Of course, that job said it was just tech support too, so we'll see.

In other news, it appears that I arrived in lovely flatville just in time for the tornado season. At least I live in a basement apartment. It's almost like a storm cellar, I would just need to board up the windows, and they are so small that wouldn't take much lumber. At least it is flat enough that you can see anything coming from all directions for miles. There really isn't a way for a storm to sneak up on this city unless it forms right above us.

I'm sorry to be so negative, it is just that I thought this was going to be a wonderful new start in a new city. I had some sort of grand impression of getting out here and turning my life around, really getting going out here, and instead I am living in a rathole of an apartment instead of my cute little house, in a city where no one cares to know who you are, even the neighbors, instead of in a town where you saw somebody you knew who would say hello to you whenever you went out, and starting almost the same exact job that I left, which I detested and quit. It just feels like my lot in life is to be the nobody voice at the other end of the phone, who customers can insult and abuse because they know they will never meet me. But maybe this job will be different, maybe the customers will actually be polite and understand that I am jut doing my job. Yeah right, but I can hope.

So far I have not seen a tornado, and I am just fine with that. I did see a truck that was in a tornado that came through one of the next towns down the highway from here. Apparently tornadoes can bring hail. Really big, golfball-sized hail. And lots of it. This truck had no windows left intact, and the hood and roof looked like a giant blue golfball. It was like some very obsessive person attacked the truck with a ball peen hammer, and did no stop hitting it until the whole surface of the car was dimpled. The guy driving the truck said his house looked about the same on one side, where the wind had been blowing all one direction really hard. And he is going to need a new roof. But this guy is a local, and so where I was horrified, he sounded like it was just something you did every year or two, like mowing the lawn, (seriously, I think that is really as often as some people around here mow their lawns).

Oh! Speaking of lawns, have I mentioned the ticks yet? A few different people have told me that if I want to walk in the grass, even a nicely mowed yard, I should wear high-top shoes or better yet boots, and wear long socks, which I should pull up over my pants, so that ticks can't climb up under my pants and bite me. And when I come back inside, even if I did pull my socks up like that, I should still strip and check to makes sure there are no ticks on me. They recommended that I get a full length mirror since the apartment does not have one in it, just the little mirror over the sink. They did reassure me that I only have to worry about ticks during the spring, summer, and fall though, since it snows and freezes here in winter so much that a tick couldn't survive. Somehow I do not find this entirely reassuring.

I think I will just stay inside and knit instead of going for a walk in the park for a while. If for no other reason, I want to see if people really do pull their socks up over their pants and wander around in public that way, or if the folks who told me that just wanted to see if the new girl in town would make herself look ridiculous. I am not sure what to knit though, since they tell me it gets hot enough here during the summer that  you can barely stand it, but they did warn me not to wear shorts unless I was going to wear long socks too, again for the ticks. Or I could wear skirts with pantyhose, apparently they don't usually bite through pantyhose. I think I will just stay off the grass. I suppose I could start knitting myself a winter set, since they say it will get very cold here. But they did point out that I don't need to worry about the snow piling up too bad, since the wind blows so often and strong here that it just blows the snow away. Great. So no brimmed hats for the wind to catch. Got it. But a hat, scarf, and mittens set could be fun. That will at least give me a place to start, although it will not take me all the way to winter to finish one cold weather set. Do you want a hat, or scarf, or mittens? I could knit you something, just tell me what color or colors you like! Or if you are really ambitious (and want an excuse to wander around a craft store) you could go and find a yarn you like, then tell me the brand and colorway. Just remember I am not in what I would call a crafting mecca here, so if you can't find it in a chair store, I won't be able to find it here. I think I will get the hat started right away, since I know it always helped me at my last job to have knitting with me. It gave me something to focus on, which kept me slightly saner than if I was just sitting staring at a cubicle and computer screen all day. And of course no games or non-work-related things on the computer either. Wouldn't want us to destroy the sense of monotony and angst by amusing ourselves between calls.

How is life for you? I hope doing much better than for me at the moment. How is work going? Has spring arrived for you yet? They tell me that it is beginning to come to Wichita, but unless you count the brown showing some green intermixed in the grass, I am not convinced. There are very few trees to speak of, and it appears they must not wake up until later in the spring. A few people have planted flowers in their yards, but somehow store bought flowers just don't feel as springish as budding trees or blooming daffodils. But maybe I just haven't found the right part of town to wander for the view yet. I do need to go down to the river and explore around there. I have been told of a nice park, with miles of jogging trails. I really need to get back to jogging, it always makes the day better if I have managed to fit in a run at some point. The trail is called, quite inventively, "The Arkansas River Trail" and apparently there is even a troll to be found somewhere along the ten miles of paths, so that gives me a bit of something to hunt for. If I find him I will email you a picture.

And of course there are museums, and theaters, and restaurants, and all sorts of other things that a city bigger than Arbuckle has to offer. I have just been so tied up in apartment hunting, then moving in, then job hunting, that I have not really given the better side of Wichita a chance, since the job and apartment sides of Wichita have turned out to be rather wretched at the moment. But things will get better, right? They just have to, this is a new start after all. And new starts are good things, so this will become good at some point here soon.

That's all for now, hopefully my next letter will be to tell you that I got a wonderful job, found a gorgeous new apartment, and have been cavorting around all the attractions that Wichita has to offer with a ravishingly handsome man. Until then, stay safe and happy!

Your friend,

Emily

Letter #3

Dear Rowan,                                       April 20^th          Wichita, KS

Well, I have arrived safely, and found an apartment so I have a roof over my head. That is really all I have to say that is really good news. Wichita is . . . flat. It is certainly a good deal bigger than Arbuckle, and seems to stretch on for miles comparatively. But it is really not so very different from Arbuckle or Bend at first glance, except for the size. The whole city seems dusty, and has a feel of poverty to it. There are nice enough buildings in the historic part of downtown, but even they feel like they were really nice once, and are clinging to their pasts for all they are worth, because their present condition is one of disrepair or minimal and unskilled repair, making them look more like Frankenstein's creations than buildings that were built whole and were once beautiful.

The only apartment I could find at a decent price is a basement of a tiny little house. The main floor is rented out as its own apartment. There is a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and main room. When you open the door there is a "landing" about twice as deep as a normal stair step, then the stairs plunge precipitously down under the house. The edge of the floor above sticks out over the stairwell so that if you were to come down the stairs upright, and were a few inches taller than me, you would hit your head. Fortunately I am short enough to just miss it without having to stoop, since the stairs are so steep that bending down may be hazardous. The stairs empty into a narrow "hallway" that branches off to the main room and bedroom on the left, and the kitchen and bathroom on the right. The hall is narrow, and the wall opposite the stairs is brick, having once been a central fireplace and chimney column for both levels of the house. The fireplace is sealed up though, and it did not even seem to have a mantle before, just a hole in the bricks which has since been badly bricked up.

The landlord is an older woman, I refuse to call her a lady, who complained the whole time about how tired she was of continually showing this place, when in fact she had not been down into this apartment for years. Every surface that had once contained water, sinks in the kitchen and bathroom, the tub, even the toilet, had a covering of dead bugs. And all she said about it when I was rather nauseated was that maybe she should have had someone down to clean the place. She wouldn't even have done it herself, and she is the one renting it out! The fridge is stuck into an unfinished, unsealed hole cut into the drywall in the kitchen, which backs into the space below the stairs. I shudder to think what may be living in that hole, since there seems to be just an empty void behind the bulk of the fridge.

There is no dishwasher, and the stove is electric with the wire rings, none of which set flat, and there is only one rack in the oven. Apparently the last tenants must have taken the other rack with them when they left, because she swears that there used to be two. She very generously said I could buy a new rack or new stove rings if I wanted to. Not that she would buy them, or reimburse me for the purchase, just that I could buy them if I wanted them.

The bathroom is the largest room in the whole house, partially because it is also the laundry room. There are plugs for a washer and drier in a large closet in the bathroom. There is no washer or dryer, and she again generously told me that if I wanted them I could buy them, otherwise there is a laundromat a few blocks away. Even if I did want to buy a laundry set, I have no idea how I would get them down those stairs, around the corner into the hall, and then through the tight squeeze and ninety degree turn into the bathroom.

The bedroom has a single-wide bed frame in it, but no mattress. Apparently the last tenants took that too. Sadly, a single bed is all that would fit in this tiny room and still allow room for standing up to get dressed without having to go out into the main room. There is a closet, which is just deep enough for a hanger, although I think that once there are clothes on my hangers things will hang at an angle. The closet has sliding doors, which is great because otherwise I am not sure you could fit a bed in the bedroom at all, unless it was one of those like in old movies that could fold up to the wall.

The main room is large enough for a TV and a chair, or maybe a love-seat as long as you were ok having that be the only furniture in the room. I don't know where even a nook-sized table and chair would go for eating on, the landlady just said to use TV trays that can fold up. She is such a classy lady I can hardly stand it.

In her ad she said that there were mostly basement windows, but that the main room had a full sized window. Well, if full size means a bathroom window size, then yes, it is full sized. It also has a beautiful view of concrete, weeds, and trash. It is a completely sunken window, with no view at all, and no real light to speak of since it is on the worst side of the house for sunlight. The basement windows are the little, two panel type that peek out onto the lawn, and if you were trapped in the house, you would be in big trouble because I don't think you could fit a toddler through these things even if they opened. Which they don't, because there is a layer of dirt and weeds that has built up over the bottoms of them, effectively reducing their light input to a brownish haze that wouldn't even be bright enough to find the light switch on the wall by. Speaking of lights, apparently the last tenants ran off with the fixtures as well, because there are just bare bulbs in all the rooms. Again, the landlady said I could buy fixtures if I minded the bare bulbs.

The upstairs neighbors are gems too. There are three broken-down cars in the two driveways that go to the house, one from the front and one from the back. The unshaven man who was sitting in rusty lawn chair on his porch, (which is just big enough for the door to swing open, so the door can't open if you are sitting on the porch) in a wife beater tank top and paint plastered jeans that he had hemmed by walking off the backs of them, said he could move one of them so I could park in a driveway instead of in the street. Of course he finished his cigarette, yelled back into the house while folding up his lawn chair, and out came a woman with rats-nest hair, wearing a matching tank top and cut off daisy dukes, carrying a filthy toddler in an also matching tank top and a diaper (They must sell wife beaters in family packs around here). A black lab mix, probably around 8 months old, came bounding out of the house with them, and the guy promptly put it in a plastic kennel beside the front door. They all piled into the least decrepit looking car and pulled out, belts screaming in protest, and left. I don't think he meant me to use that spot, since it is the closest to his door, but hey, he left it open. He can move one of his other junkers if he wants to park somewhere else. That dog has been barking its head off quite happily ever since, at least as far as I can tell. After a while I just tuned it out.

The only really good thing about this apartment is that it rents by the month. It makes me wonder if all the things she said the last tenants took when they left were ever here at all. And she said that the last tenants stayed here for four years. I can't imagine living in this rat hole for four years. The only reason I took it at all is that I already spent about a month's rent on a hotel room, and since this place rents by the month I don't have to worry about a long term commitment. It is also in a residential area within walking distance of downtown so I won't have to worry about driving downtown to find a job.

I already went and got a cheap new mattress and a few things for the kitchen, milk and eggs and such. The mattress was kind of fun to get into the apartment, since I had to slide it down the stairs, then slide down the mattress to get below it and maneuver it into the bedroom. When I really think about it, a slide would be so much cooler than these precipitous stairs for getting down into the apartment. Then you could have a rope ladder or something to get back up again. Or the convertible stairs to slide things like in the movies, so they could be stairs when you needed to go up, but you could flip them down to be a slide for coming down. That would add just a touch of awesomeness to this otherwise rather vile abode. Tomorrow I plan on getting everything I can clean taken care of in this little dung heap, then unpacking. And the day after that, the job hunt begins! Once I get a nice steady job, I am going to look around for a better apartment in a better neighborhood. And of course I need to find the best coffee shop in walking distance, because I don't want to sit down in this little cell writing any more than I have to. This place is just temporary and all I really need it for is a place to sleep at night. But at least I have a place, I am out of the hotel so now I have a physical address, which always helps when putting in job applications, and I have a plan for getting this new life on track. Things can only look up from here, right?

I'll write again when I have any news, job, cool coffee shop, meeting the man of my dreams who has been waiting for me here in Wichita, you know, just any little news like that. I hope you are doing great, and you can write back to the address on this letter until I find a better place!

Your friend,

Emily

Letter #2

Dear Rowan,                                             April 5          Bend, OR

Darts are a stupid way to pick a new place to live. Or maybe they need to be thrown by someone who is no good at darts. I put the map up on my dart board, threw my dart, and hit it right in the middle, so it looks like I will be moving to Wichita, Kansas. This may not be as horrible as it somehow seems right now. I was looking for a city that was bigger than Arbuckle or Bend (which is not difficult) and I certainly found one. I was looking for a city in a state a good distance away from California and Oregon, and Kansas is definitely far away. I am sure that the pictures on the internet of Wichita do not do the city justice, so I am refusing to place my judgement by what I can look up. I will experience it for myself. I have no grand ideas about finding a lovely little house as soon as I arrive, so I am just taking enough of my stuff to get me by in an apartment. I am leaving all my furniture, since I think I should be able to find an already-furnished apartment, or else supply what I need from secondhand stores (except for a bed, that I will get new once I know how big the bedroom is in my new place). Upon the advice of several friends who have left town and rented places in other cities, I am not putting down a deposit on anyplace until I see it. I have heard too many horror stories about signing a lease sight-unseen.

And thus begins my grand adventure! I have a destination, and everything will change when I get there! . . . Right? It really has to, doesn't it? Wichita is so much bigger than Arbuckle or Bend there have to be more opportunities there than there are here. It will be great, I'm sure of it. Wonderful, I don't know if I am convincing you or myself, or maybe both. I would say that at least I will be living closer to you, but there will still be a few thousand miles difference between us, so I am not sure that it really counts.

I think all I really need to take are my clothes, bed stuff, bath stuff, and kitchen stuff. I am not even going to take my movies until I get settled in. I am putting most everything into a storage locker, and I can pull things out of it once I figure out where I am going to settle. At least I have Netflix and a laptop, that will cover me for movies and TV for a while. I wonder what the weather is like this time of year in Wichita? I am afraid to look online to find out, I am afraid I will find out it is miserable, or that the city is ugly, or that it is in the middle of a horrible depression and there are no jobs to be had. I know that I am just worrying to scare myself, but I can't help it. Other than for school, I have never made a big move like this before. How did you do it? You make moving about the country, and living in all sorts of places, and making new friends, and everything look so easy! Is moving still scary for you, too? You always seem so excited, and I feel so terrified and unsure. What if this is wrong? What if I am meant to stay in Bend and work at my old job and make the best of it?

But I can't do that. I can't stand to feel like I am just treading water and not making anything of myself. I want to do something with my life! I want to make a difference, even if it just to myself. I want to feel like I have done something big, something important, something that matters. I am not talking about winning a Nobel Prize or anything, just doing something more than punching my timecard and answering phones or flipping burgers all day. I want to do something that other people will be able to see, and that will make them say "look at the girl, she really has done something good." I guess that is what everyone wants, but just because everybody wants it does not mean that I can't want it to, or that it is not something to pursue, even if chasing it leads me halfway across the nation.

Maybe I will get to Wichita and it will be wonderful, and I will get a job that gives me time to write, and doesn't leave me feeling so drained and horrible at the end of the day that even watching TV is a chore. Then I could write that book I have been talking about and fiddling with since I was an undergrad and took those creative writing courses. This might be my chance to become a real writer. Not the starving-writer-living-in-someone's-attic type, but a successful writer. Maybe I can manage to at least write enough to keep myself afloat, and that can be my job. Then I won't have to worry about answering phones or flipping burgers. Maybe Wichita will be just what I need to get started. A big city, lots of new people to meet and new sights to see, it will be a whole new world for me, so different from little Arbuckle. I can hope, can't I?

I suppose I should stop writing and get to packing, there is so much that needs done before I can get going. I have someone who wants to rent the house already, I only posted it a few days ago. It's a single guy, says he needed a break from big cities and thought he would come to live somewhere quiet for a year or two. Well, it can't get much quieter than Bend. He seems nice enough, and he wants to rent the place furnished, so I don't have to worry about storing the furniture, just my personal stuff that I won't be taking with me yet. Which is great, since that means I can get a smaller storage space, which means it will cost less. Plus I will be getting rent from this guy, so that will add a little to my income, which should make the job hunt once I get to Wichita a little less frantic. Not a lot less frantic, but a little. I plan on getting everything packed up today and tomorrow, then I can drive everything I am storing over to the locker and pack up the car with all the stuff I am taking. Then I have to go through the house and really clean it to get it ready for my new tenant (I have a tenant! Weird). I am not entirely sure what to do about all the stuff in the fridge. I am trying to eat what I can of the things that need to be refrigerated since it seems a waste to throw them out. This has made for a few interesting meals these past few days, and getting more interesting as the ingredient list diminishes. The pantry stuff I am not worried about, since I will just bring it along. I am going to need to eat in Wichita too, and non-perishables will be really handy until I can get an apartment and get everything unpacked. This will be the cleanest I will have seen the house since I moved in . . . Ever. I mean, I cleaned it, and for parties all the public rooms could get absolutely sparkling, you just had to know not to open any closets or my bedroom door. This is going to be absolutely, completely clean. I even rented a carpet cleaner to get out all the mystery spots and stains that I usually just put rugs or coffee tables over. It will be a little strange to see all my furniture in it, but none of my personal stuff. But the guy I am renting the house to seems very responsible, I think he should take care of everything just fine. I put in the lease that he is responsible for all bills and all yard maintenance, plus any minor repairs. I will only have to worry about taking care of big things, and nothing big has happened in that house my whole life and longer, or at least so the last owner told me. So really, the house will be his problem and I just get paid for letting him use it, which is fine by me.

Just before I go, after I have packed the car, I think I should take a trip to Fred Meyer or Costco, strictly for drinks and snacks for the drive, they should be cheaper there than getting things along the way. Freddie's has cheaper gas than other places too, so I can stock up on travel goodies, fill the tank, and head straight out onto the highway. I would say that I am planning on getting an early start, but I know myself too well for that. But I do hope to get onto the road before noon. Then it is just driving until its gets late and I get too tired to drive, finding a little hotel along the highway to spend the night, and doing it all again the next day. Google says it is about 1,653 miles, which should take 24 hours by freeway, so that is about 4 days of driving, figuring on a late start on day one, and time to find a place in Wichita on day four. Things are going to be crazy the next few days while I get everything packed up and taken care of, so I will probably be too busy to really write, but I will write you just as soon as I get to Wichita and find a place. Here's to setting out on a new adventure! Wish me luck!

Your friend,

Emily