approaching the end

I looked at my calender the other day and realized that there are only four more weeks until my job is finished. I can't believe how fast the summer has gone. Although there have been some long, hot days when the only reasonable thing to do is to trudge upstairs to the one air-conditioned room in the house to nap, for the most part I've been staying busy with knitting, cooking, cleaning, and working at the museum. I hadn't really thought about my visit to Seattle until a week or so, but I realized that I'm really looking forward to going home.

It's a nice change, after the years of building up my college life in Ohio, to return to the place that I still think of as home, although I haven't lived there since the year after high school. In many ways, I needed that break away from a watershed year that left me exhausted in all senses of the word and completely ready to go study my ass off at college. But still, almost four years later, it's that whole circle of life thing coming around again: after a period of distance, I'm excited to return to the places that molded my sense of humor, my taste in food, my appreciation for good old clothes and rainy days. And I'm really excited to hang out with my family and some very old friends.

Speaking of good old clothes: the outfit actually very much reflects both of my lives, which I sometimes think of as distinct but in fact are not. The skirt is silk chiffon that drapes crazily and makes me feel like a 6-year-old playing dress-up - a vintage find from Stella, my favorite boutique in the Northwest; the belt was on sale at a pricey off-the-rack store in the same town; the polka-dot shirt is silk, bought for $12 at Ratsy's vintage store in Oberlin; the socks, handknit by me, in Oberlin, out of Jitterbug bought in Santa Barbara while visiting a friend. The hair, now getting long enough as to be kind of ridiculous, is grown out according to a promise that I made to myself that I wouldn't cut my hair short again until I graduated from college. It's the sort of promise that a silly first-year girl in college would make, but, as with many of the things I've waxed poetic over (stop me, I'm getting maudlin here), it was appropriate at the time and so I'm keeping it.

Time flies.