Five days to go

I am leaving my life in Colorado, and I honestly don't think it could come at a better time. I have officially been out here for more than seven years now, and I've found what's important to me out here, so it's time to find some place else and find myself there. And no, I'm not trying to be all hippie and "find myself" but I do need to find my place in life.
Colorado has been wonderful to me. I love this place, and I feel like I've grown up here because I moved here when I was 18 and am leaving now at 25. Those seven years I've become truly independent, even (gasp) an adult. I've dealt with the worst life can throw at me and the best, and everything in between, and I've grown as a person during the time.
Most of my friends have also moved on and left Colorado, which is unfortunate, but I know if they are true friends we will cross paths in life again. That's also the problem of living in Colorado for the purpose of school and then spending two years at a ski resort. None of those are very permanent, especially the ski resort, where I probably crossed paths with countless people who I will never see again, and yet, oddly, still have their phone numbers.
Nor do I intend for my departure from Colorado to be a departure from my friends and my memories of this place. Nor is it permanent. There's a very good chance that I will find myself back in Colorado some day. If that happens however, I have no idea of when.

Moving out to Washington has been a bit of an ordeal, since neither Zach nor I have ever been there before. It all started when he decide to go to his helicopter flight school out there, just about a month ago. He was still waiting to hear from the army, but would have only accepted a couple of positions, and had just turned down his potential jobs at Copper. So when he decided to go to school out there, he asked me to come with him. I figured it was about time to move on, and if he left me in Colorado I wouldn't have much left, or so it would feel like. So we're in the process of packing up and moving to Olympia, Washington, where, I am convinced, everyone has an aunt and uncle that live there. Almost everyone I've told about the move has told me such, unless everyone I know is somehow related. We have a little house we're renting, a two bedroom, part of a duplex, which has a large fenced-in yard. By the way, did I mention we're bringing the puppies? So it will be the four of us, me, Zach, Skylar and Atka living there. Our little dysfunctional family.

So I'm sitting here in a sea of boxes, and actually, for the first time since I started working at Nine75, dreading going in to work later on. Not just because I have a lot of packing to do (which is true), but last night made me very glad that I was leaving because the people didn't actually care about me as much as they would like me to think. I had a huge day yesterday: Atka was sick during the night, I took Skylar in to the vet to get spayed, I took my car in to get a quick check up before we leave and to make sure all of the new bugs were out, I started putting together boxes, which led me to actually start packing, I picked Skylar up from the vet and had to do such a quick turn around and rush out the door for work, leaving my poor little puppy in her crate with her lampshade collar on after having just gotten out of surgery. I was already in the mindset that I didn't want to close, and the manager said she'd try to figure something out. So this leads into an incredibly horrible night at work, where I was splitting a large party and a section of tables with one other person, and she wouldn't let me do anything. She said there was no reason for both of us to do this, so I was essentially a busser and a cocktailer for her, while I had one table of my own the rest of the night. No one ever communicated anything with me for the rest of the evening. On top of everything else, my dad called to tell me that my mom was in the hospital. So I asked everyone if they wanted to help me out, and not a single person volunteered to help me out. Like I said, it made me glad that I'm leaving, which made me even more frustrated with the situation, having only two days left.

Skylar's surgery went fine, although they discovered that one of her ovaries was underdeveloped, which really shouldn't mean anything, especially since she will never be reproducing, but it still scares me after everything I went through with Raleigh. The vets wondered if it was somehow related in any way to her not really seeming to grow, although I just see her as being happy but petite. She's only 5 1/2 months old, and she doesn't need to be that big, especially since I never expected her to be more than 35 or 40 pounds anyway, so the fact that she's only 21 pounds doesn't bother me too much. I'm just trying to keep a positive outlook.

My mom went into the hospital last night with stomach pains. They aren't sure exactly what is wrong with her, just some kind of blockage in the digestive system, which is worse for her than most people after her colon cancer. Best case scenario is that it's a gall stone which will get rid of itself. And that's where I'm staying. With everything else going on in my life, I'm trying to stay away from worst case scenarios. This is a big step for me, because that's usually exactly where I fall. But with Skylar and my mom, I know everything's going to be okay. Skylar's a rambunctious, active little puppy, and my mom is strong and has been through the worst that a person can go through, so this is (hopefully) nothing in comparison.

So I'm just going to get through the next few days and by Thursday I'll be in Washington, and more or less starting a new life all over again.

Can you tell I'm trying to put off packing? :)