August 10, 2003

Pain. I am in so much pain. It must be miraculous that I danced today because it is almost midnight and I cannot walk without severe limp. To complicate matters, I am tripping over boxes—not a big deal ordinarily, but now is absolutely agonizing. I have been trying to work—hang pictures, put books on shelves—I am getting there, but I can feel the pain even when I am not walking. Good thing I don’t have to dance for a couple weeks!

Unpacking is WAY harder than packing. I am not having fun. My life here has already begun and I want to go enjoy it, but I feel like a kid who has to clean her room first.

I am not having trouble adjusting. The only thing I miss so much that it hurts is not a thing anyway; it is my Bobbin. Everything else was nice and good and stuff, but I am adjusting okay because of all I have here. Everything cancels everything else out in one way or another. But the factor left over is Robin.

I am actually a bit surprised by how well I have adjusted so early on. I can hardly believe I am in LA. But you know what? Except for church, nothing is the same. Where I live is so NOT LA that I am in my own pretty little world up here. I am not even IN the San Fernando Valley. I live at the base of the San Gabriel mountains down the street from the Angeles National Forest, yet 29 miles from the ocean. This is not the despairing life I had before. So it is fine. For months I have been visiting here so much that Tyler and LA became simultaneous homes. I could never be in one without thinking the other. Besides that, it is like I said about all my traveling—a city is a city. Everywhere I go becomes a place I know within a few days. It just isn’t a big deal like it used to be years ago. So now I am here, but in my heart I was here March 12—and I never went back. And yes, I still find it utterly INCREDIBLE that March 12, the day I came back to the Valley, was nine years to the day I left. Oh, yeah, sure, another coincidence.

Where do people think coincidences come from anyway?