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Looking back at the past month, my days have been stretched between southern Virginia, middle Virginia, Greater New York, British Columbia, and a dinner somewhere in there in Seattle. I’ll be back in New York next week, then off to Charlottesville after that; possibly on a jury in mid-November, then back home for a west-coast style Thanksgiving.
Good grief.
I love the adventure of the “now” season of me. The travels and the new discoveries; the first times and grand introductions. It’s a whirlwind, and it’s intoxicating.
At the same time, though, a part of me is really looking forward to settling down. I’ve always kind of delighted in the idea of a slower routine, a life of being first a wife (not a lawyer), a mate (not merely a cocktail friend). A life of comfortable chores and errands and dates to the grocery store.
Don’t get me wrong, there will always be excitement in my life—I’m not looking to go all down-home and boring or anything, no siree. I think maybe I’m just finally seeing the bridge to that grown-up life I always imagined, off there in the distance, and I’m seriously considering crossing it.
About this time last week, mid-day on a Thursday, found me in a teeny tiny Laundromat on a quaint little main street somewhere north of New York City. A little old man jumped up to help me with the (okay, kind of intimidating) grey beasts, while housewives and household help taunted and teased Jerry Springer’s guests in the background. It was one of those perfect early fall days: a little bit drizzly, and cool enough for a scarf. Quiet as you cross the wet pavement, the sidewalks dotted with those little yellow leaves—the leaves that so boldly stick to your shoes, your windshield, your doormat, each doing its part to liven up the landscape. Little signs of coming change.
I’d never been to a Laundromat before (oh wonders of always living with facilities on-site!), so it excited me, perhaps, more than most. Seriously, though, I just loved it. Such a new thing! So outrageous! Laundromats had always been TV things for me; something you’d see on Friends or similar. Parts and pieces of that ethereal make-believe world that everyone knows isn’t really real life, but seems just entirely romantic just the same.
My fellow launders, however, were quite real, and quite charming. I really jumbled what I presume was a regular gathering—none of them hid their curiosity about me and my presence—but they made no mistake that they wanted to include me in their circle. Little old ladies, woman folding sheets, elderly gentleman flirting softly with all of them … then me, in my cutie little shoes and tied up mad hair, crashing through the door with the PhD’s over-stuffed basket of young-person laundry. Invasion! And yet, somehow, I fit.
They all eventually left—kudos to them for getting an early start, but I’ll sleep in, thanks—and then it was just me, the fluorescent lights, and the distant whir and hum as things got clean.
It was then that I realized, I liked that life. I could do that life. Start to finish, chaos to folded perfection, there was something calming there. A natural progression. Things come in and things go out; strangers come and old hats leave.
There’s a rhythm to everything, I’m learning. I’ve just got to find my next beat.
Coming home from work tonight, I was somewhat distressed to learn, at the currency exchange desk at Reagan National, that the U.S. dollar is worth less than its Canadian counterpart these days. When did that happen?
I wasn’t looking to exchange much; just $60 for cabs and the like when the PhD and I head up to Victoria next week. That bought me? $56 Canadian. Bummer. I upped it, paid, and went on my merry way.
On the train home, I was looking over the receipt, still trying to rationalize it. I mean, wasn’t Canada always cheaper? It was. That’s why we’d go there in high school; same JCrew, better exchange rate! Wooo! Those days, it seems, have passed.
Tucking that slip back into my purse, though, I saw it. Right up on the top of the receipt—“Travelex—CASH ADV.” You see, unthinking, I ignored all the cash I had on hand the minute I saw the little visa sticker in their window. “Points!” I thought. “How brilliant. Canadian dollars and points.” It didn’t even occur to me that those dollars were, in fact, the purchase, and that purchasing cash is subject to hefty, hefty interest rates. Rates that start right away. As in, that $56 is probably costing me $62 now, and probably $65 by the end of this post; all I see in my head right now is a little meter just spinning on and on at an alarming speed going “cha-ching!” each time it passes the dollar mark.
I tried to call the bank right away to explain. I was put on hold for the next available representative, which was all fine and good … until they told me that my estimated wait time was 66 minutes. Over an hour? Are you kidding me, Nordstrom? What, have they got but one sad little person in there answering phones? LAME. I put it on speaker for a bit and started doing other things, till it’d been 20 minutes, I was still in the 50s in terms of time left to wait, and it’s not after 7pm so those minutes count, calling as I was from the cell. So I hung up. I’ll call again later, and hope they’ll realize that I’m such a good customer and they really want to waive that interest fee, and this was all such an innocent, if stupid, mistake … right?
That was the little oops.
The big oops is (for once!) not mine, but I expect I’ll spend most of the rest of tonight dealing with it.
A friend of mine was engaged last spring, over Easter weekend. A week later, she called it off. Sad, but good, it seemed at the time; we worked through that, grew close, and she started dating again.
I met her most recent boyfriend, a really sweet guy she seemed totally serious about. Then, last week, out of the blue—over. Done. He was out. She realized, she said, in something like an almighty flash of brilliance that she was still in love with the ex-fiance, was never going to be able to move on, and oh, good gracious, breaking off that engagement was the stupidest, worst thing ever, and she just had to make it right! Right away!
Oops. Big oops.
She’s dropping everything and moving to him ASAP, and I’m presuming (though she hasn’t said as much) in with him. She quit her job this week, and we’ll be packing up her apartment tonight. (her new apartment, mind, with a one-year lease that started Sept. 1).
As if this wasn’t all problematic enough, add this twist: ex-fiance lives in England. As in, the country. As in, “cannot work in without a visa.” As in, “leave to enter 60 days, employment prohibited.”
Nice work, sweetheart. Really nice work.
She’ll get it corrected, and it’ll all be sorted out in time. For better or worse, she’ll know, which sometimes, I know from a bit too much experience, you just need. I still find the suddenness of it irrational, and the “oh okay, I’ll just emigrate” mentality a bit rushed at this point, but there’s always so much to every story that we just don’t see. Sometimes the most outrageous circumstances will suddenly make sense, will suddenly fall into place, with just a bit more information, a new perspective.
It’s difficult to explain, but I think this is the right call for her. I think she has to do it. Finance charges and legal alien status, hours on hold and embracing the wild unknown head-first: sometimes these are just the costs of doing business in this life filled with the potholes of our own missed judgments. Great thing is, though, that—one way or another—the status quo is always restored. Progress and growth never quite stop, and shopping is always cheaper somewhere.
