closure

Hm, it's been a while.

Closure. It's the only thing I could think to title this and I think it's apt and multi-layered, as all thoughtful, literate blogs should be. Also, I'm an egomaniac.

Honestly, though, things are ending all around me. My employment is the obvious one -- no bids to buy the club, so pending court approval tomorrow morning, we are closed for business later this week. Finally. We lasted far longer than anyone anticipated, and arguably we should have been gone three months ago. Jokes on them. I've been getting paid to essentially sit on my hands.

And I moved out of my apartment. The cats shipped up A-OK. I worried though, a great deal. Scooter had a seizure just as I was putting him in the crate. But I couldn't turn around and make other plans, so I just held my breath for eight hours until I got the all-OK call from N. They are adjusting well. I got everything out a day early. The room looks startlingly sparse. A lot of decor projects I never got to do. But it's no longer home.

Temporarily, I've taken up residence at my brother's house. On my second night in, I cooked dinner and discovered bits of teflon scraping off the very well used pots and pans, so a few days later I tricked my brother into dropping me off to do some shopping on his way to work. When he returned, a new twelve piece cookware set awaited to be broken in. It's odd being back here -- I lived here for about 8 months when I first moved to Atlanta, and now I'm back on my way out. I will have only lived in two places in this city in my four years here. I don't think I've ever known such consistency before.

The house is isolating, though. Convenient to everything but close to nothing... for someone without a car it makes things a challenge. And inevitably, the most direct path home has the steepest hills to climb. So when I'm here, I'm HERE until I MUST be somewhere else.

So with work winding down this week, my mind turns to my inevitable exit. I've been monitoring the prices on airline tickets and initially I was concerned that a short turn around means higher prices. But then, I realized that were I to wait the ten day deadline to get the better price... well, that's ten days of doing nothing -- and living expenses would cost the same as the extra amount for the ticket. I plan to hit the ground running at my next destination. No time to sit and wait for a better deal. I have to go out and find it.

So the long and short of it all is that things will be changing very quickly for me in the next week or so. I sort of hope it all comes down on Wednesday... such that I can file my unemployment and fly out by Sunday, making a new start on the new week. I've never been so lucky, though -- this mess has been nothing but unpredictable. So, I wait. And we'll see. But finally, I'm closing this chapter, four years after it began. And for the next one, I have a pretty good idea where I'm going with the story. I don't have to wing it.