Moving Out

Well, graduation went relatively well. I didn't trip or do anything else to embarrass myself. I wore fancy shoes and, as I was walking up to the podium, all I could think about was how quiet the auditorium was and how loudly my heels were clicking on the wooden floor. You'd think I would be thinking about something infinitely deeper such as "now I am free to pursue my dreams and blossom in a new career". Nope, not me.

Even though I have a WHOLE month before I set off to my adventures, I am already starting to freak out about all the things I have to do. This is partly due to the fact that I have to move but can't store my knick-knacks (read: all the shit that I've accumulated during the year and am too chicken to throw out) at home. See, life is funny that way: my parents are moving to Madagascar, my sister is going up to Canada for her first year in college, my bro's getting a new job in London and I'm moving to Senegal...IN THE SAME MONTH. Talk about f-ed up.

My mom has the very tedious and horrendous job of clearing our entire house--attic to basement--of 14 years of accumulated junk. Don't misunderstand me, we are not a family of hoarders. But we do still have my notebooks from 1st grade with my shaky writing; my sister's 15 thousand stuffed animals all with missing ears and/or eyes; my brother's broken, model airplanes; my dad's experimental paintings and my mom's clothing from the 1960s. She's making me really nervous because she's convinced herself that she's earnestly started to pack when in fact, she just unpacking packed packages and moving items around the house. The house is actually LESS packed than it was 2 months ago.

I think the term they use in Psych 101 is transference. Basically, I'm seeing my mom's poor job at packing and freaking out about my own apartment. Yesterday I put an ad on craigslist.com about my furniture and today, I've had offers for all of it already! My stuff is selling like hot cakes. Shit, now I'm thinking that I priced all my items too low. D'oh!

Among the things I need to do urgently:

(1) Get a passport
(2) Get vaccinated
(3) Move out
(4) Pay all my bills and set up electronic accounts (who knows how effective the Senegalese post-office is?)
(5) Buy a decent pair of walking shoes
(6) Send some items to Senegal ahead of time
(7) Talk to the Human Resources Dept at my new job (I left 5 messages and they still haven't gotten back to me)
(8)Get a visa for Australia
(9) Take a chill pill

Who knew...I'm actually graduating.

Today's Graduation day. As my parents are fond of saying "who knew that you were smart enough to get a Masters degree?". Well no thanks to you both for boosting my confidence!

I practiced wearing my gown and cap yesterday and couldn't quite figure out how the long neck train should hang. Should the majority of the train be in the front or in the back? Do I hide my hands in the sock-like sleeves or actually pull my arm through the holes? I think I ordered my cap too large because it's flapping when I walk. Sigh...I'll just have to secure it with bobby pins. I finally managed to vest myself in a fashion closely resembling normalcy.

I have this recurring dread that my long gown will get caught underneath my heels and I'll come flying off the stairs and land with a loud smack right in front of the Dean. This actually happened to one of my friends during High School graduation. I wish I hadn't laughed then.