I’m in my new home, surrounded by boxes, but I have furniture and Internet, so I’m more or less back. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. There was the frantic packing, then my furniture was picked up on the 6th. I spent a couple of days clearing out my old house, got to my parents’ house and collapsed for a day, then took off on Friday the 10th and drove two days, arriving here Saturday evening. I had an air mattress and featherbed to sleep on and my patio lounger, camp chair, laptop stand, and a TV tray table for furniture to last me until my stuff arrived on Wednesday. It was supposed to be delivered Wednesday morning, but it didn’t come until almost 5, and it took a long time for the guy to unload it because his local helper never showed up. I got the bed made up and collapsed. I got a lot of unpacking done yesterday but ran out of steam today and have mostly been catching up with online stuff, since the Internet got connected today.

Sunday, I did some grocery shopping to get basics to live on, then spent the rest of the day taking walks around the neighborhood and just relaxing. That evening, the person who used to live in this apartment, with whom I’ve been chatting on Facebook, came by with a plant and some food, and we had a good chat (it turns out we have a ton in common). Monday, I walked downtown (about 20 minutes away) to see about getting my Internet set up, then had a fairly strenuous hike home, since my home is on a big hill. While I was downtown, I stopped by the visitor center to see if there was anything going on in town to do while I waited for my furniture. It turned out that the lady working in the visitor center is a neighbor, and she let me know about my other neighbors. I hit Target in the afternoon to get a bunch of things for setting up my house.

And then I had to wonder what I used to do with my time because the Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul effect kicked in. I didn’t think I watched that much TV, but I guess I was online a lot because suddenly without Internet I felt like I didn’t have a lot to do. Monday evening I got out the laptop and started editing a book. I have a nice little back porch that overlooks a shady lawn that’s surrounded by trees, and it was lovely sitting out there to work until it got dark enough that I had to go inside. Tuesday was likely to be rainy, so I didn’t want to go anywhere. I sat on the porch and worked for a while, then took a walk but had to rush home when it started raining. I had lunch and took a nap and did some more work and reading.

I think part of the reason the time felt a bit empty was the fact that it’s so quiet. I hadn’t realized how noisy my old house was, but it backed up to a six-lane major road that had constant traffic on it, day and night, plus I was near a major airport, with constant airplane noise. My neighborhood now consists mostly of 100+ year-old houses. It’s a narrow street that winds up and over a hill. There’s maybe one car going by every hour or so. I can sit on the back porch and listen to the leaves rustling in the wind, and I can hear bird songs. I love it, but it definitely changes my perception of the passage of time.

I may need to pretend I don’t have Internet to gain a lot more time to write, read, and do other things. There’s a lot I need to Internet to do, but I think it eats a lot of time. I need to find a good balance.

I think I’m going to like it here, but there are some adjustments to make. For one thing, my home is much smaller than my old house. I purged a lot of stuff before I moved, but I’m still having to work to make room for everything. I’m only going to be living here for about a year until I find a house to buy, so I may just have to get used to tighter quarters. There’s also a different sense of scale in the town. I used to live in the suburbs in Texas, where everything was planned around cars and very spread out. My new town was established before the American Revolution and most of the center part of the city, where I live, was built and developed before cars were common. That means everything is a lot more compact, and there’s not a lot of parking. I’m having to re-learn how to parallel park, as there’s not even a parking lot for my apartment building. It’s all street-side parking. Thank goodness for that back-up camera on the new car! The upside is that just about everything is in walking distance. I’m a block from the big city park, a few blocks from the library, 20 minutes from downtown, where there are a lot of shops and restaurants. There’s also a neighborhood pub not too far away. I mostly just need to drive for major grocery shopping, and the nearest Target is in a neighboring town, a pleasant drive toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. I hope I never get totally used to seeing the mountains as I run errands. That’s the sort of thing you should be in awe of.

Then there’s temperature. I just about came down with heat exhaustion while clearing out my old place. When I got here, I had to turn on the heat. It’s a bit warmer now than it was the first few days, and having the furniture helps. This is essentially a “railroad” flat, so it’s all one long room, and then a bedroom, and that big kitchen/dining room/office/living room got pretty cold, with wood floors and bare walls. It seems a lot warmer now that it’s not so empty, but I still need blankets at night, which I love. I sleep better when I’m burrowed under blankets.

The neighbors are really nice, and I think I’m going to fit in well. Apparently, the lady at the visitor center told the other neighbors about me because they’ve stopped by. One brought over a plant and a pretty notebook. Another brought me the info on the recycling center so I could deal with all the boxes. I knew I’d probably landed in the right place when she said if I needed anything during the unloading of my furniture, she was across the street at the other neighbors’ house, where they were all watching Lord of the Rings.

It may take me a week or so to get totally unpacked. The plan is to spend the mornings working, then doing the unpacking in the afternoons and evenings. I’m going to have to unpack and organize in phases because I need to empty and clear out boxes in order to have room to set up the shelves and other stuff I need to be able to put things away, so first I’m just sticking things on shelves or in closets, and then I’ll have to organize the shelves and closets. I re-read Rydding Village book 2 while I was waiting for my furniture to arrive, during that time without TV or Internet, and now I just have some minor revising to do. I’m trying to get back into the swing of a regular writing habit after all the disruption.

I’ve been doing a big closet purge over the past couple of weeks. I haven’t drastically changed size over the past few decades, so most of my old clothes still fit (though some fit better than others or fit differently). That makes it a little harder to know what to get rid of. I’ve been forcing myself to put on clothes and be honest with myself about whether I would wear these things again. It’s like playing the home version of that What Not to Wear show, in which they’d ambush a fashion victim, haul her entire wardrobe to their studio, make her show off her favorite outfits, then tell her what was wrong with what she was wearing and what she should wear instead before going through her existing wardrobe and tossing all the things that didn’t work. Alas, I’m skipping the shopping spree and makeover that came after that step.

I think the bulk of what I’m getting rid of will end up being my old suits. In my first job out of college, I was working in the public information office at a medical school. We dealt with the school administration, major donors (basically the city’s social elite), and the media. On a given day, we might end up sitting in a meeting with a dean or vice president, escorting a news crew to an interview, or interviewing a civic leader about their latest donation. That meant this was not a casual office environment. The policy was that we had to dress every day as though we might have to meet with the university president. Unfortunately, my salary didn’t really support the kind of wardrobe the job required, so I had a pretty big wardrobe of relatively cheap suits, things I bought on sale at Casual Corner or The Limited, with the occasional bargain clearance item from a department store.

Most of the time, this wasn’t too obvious, since doctors, scientists, and reporters aren’t necessarily known for their style. My suits looked pretty sharp, even if they didn’t come with a designer label. There was the occasional awkward moment. For instance, there was the day the president’s assistant called over to our office to see if any women in the office were available to go to a luncheon. It was one of those society “ladies who lunch” events as a fundraiser for one of the departments (there was a “friends of” organization) and they had some last-minute cancellations, so they were trying to fill the empty seats. It happened to be a day when I’d worn my favorite suit, a Chanel-style black-and-white houndstooth number, so I was feeling pretty confident.

Until I got to the event and found that the “entertainment” during the luncheon, before the speaker, was going to be a Chanel fashion show. There I was in a suit that was obviously meant to look like the Chanel style, but very obviously didn’t have the logo on the buttons.

And then I realized that the woman I’d been seated with was Margot Perot (wife of H. Ross). I was a little intimidated at first, but she turned out to be very nice and actually kind of funny. The fashion show was the sort of thing in which the models walked around the room during lunch and stopped at each table to explain their outfits. Fortunately, it was the resort collection, so there were no suits to stand in sharp contrast to my fake Chanel suit. Mrs. Perot and I ended up snarking about some of the crazier outfits together. Even better, the swag bag left at each place contained a full-size bottle of Chanel No. 5 cologne. That more than doubled my pay for the day.

But when I put on that suit now, I feel like I should be on the field playing linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys. All my suits from that time have giant shoulder pads. I have great memories of wearing those suits and how grown-up they made me feel, but I can admit to myself that I will never wear them again. Even if I have an occasion to wear a suit, I wouldn’t wear one of these.

Next, I need to cull dresses and skirts. I have a lot of dresses and skirts I love that still fit and that look good on me, but I need to be honest with myself about how many I need. When I go to church, I’m usually in the choir and wearing a robe, so I don’t dress up too much. I like to wear skirts and dresses for conventions, but I haven’t been to one since the pandemic, and I don’t wear the more structured dresses for that sort of thing. I usually bring something knit that I can throw in a suitcase. I may force myself to pare the collection down to a dressy little black dress, a dress suitable for funerals, and a few dresses suitable for weddings/concerts/the theater.

I also have a good-sized collection of formal or cocktail dresses, thanks to years of writing conferences that included formal banquets. Some of them are clearly out of style, but a few still look good. I might as well keep a couple because I’d rather not have to buy another formal if an occasion arose. I still have my senior prom dress, but it doesn’t look very “80s prom,” so I’ve actually worn it a few times (admittedly, at least one of those times was a “flashback prom” costume party).

One thing that’s helping with this process is keeping in mind the life I want to have. Late last year, as part of a class on goal setting and scheduling, I did an exercise in which I imagined what my ideal life and an ideal day in that ideal life would look like. The idea was to help set goals that will lead to that life and focus on projects and tasks that lead to that life, but it also helps here. Does it fit? Does it look good? Do I feel good in it? And would I wear this in my ideal life?

Forcing myself to put on these old clothes has really brought back memories. I have to admit that I kind of liked dressing up for work, though I also like that I get to wear sweatpants or shorts and t-shirts now. Speaking of t-shirts, that’s another collection I need to purge. I could probably wear a different shirt every day for a month, but I got so many of these through special events, so they’re souvenirs in addition to being clothing. I’ve heard the suggestion to make a quilt out of them, but I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t use such a quilt (my grandmother made quilts, so I already have a quilt collection). I may take pictures, then donate them.

I was lucky enough to be in the path of totality for the eclipse, but I was worried because the forecast was for clouds. Fortunately, the clouds mostly dissipated right before the eclipse began. There were wisps drifting in and out, but the clouds parted for totality.

And I have to say, that was one of the most awesome things I’ve ever experienced. It was early afternoon, but it was like night. The street lights came on. I could see what I later learned were Venus and Jupiter. It got a lot colder all of a sudden. I went to the neighborhood park across the street, and a number of other people from the neighborhood were also there. A cheer went up when totality occurred. I had my Walkman radio on, since the classical radio station had a special playlist. As the eclipse was starting, they played Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, music from Close Encounters and ET, and stuff like that (watching the sun go dark during the Close Encounters music was eerie). As totality approached, they played a lovely version of Clair de Lune. Then as totality happened, they played the “Sunrise” fanfare from Also Sprach Zarathustra, aka the 2001 theme. That was absolutely perfect.

I didn’t take any pictures of the eclipse itself because I don’t have the equipment for that and I wanted to focus on the moment, but this was what the world looked like during totality. It’s hard to believe this was about 1:43 in the afternoon on a mostly sunny day.

One thing that struck me was how light it got the moment a sliver of sun reappeared. It was still sort of dim and twilight-looking, but it was still noticeably daytime, not the night of totality.

Now, of course, I find myself wanting to work an eclipse into a fantasy novel. It was a magical moment, so it seems like a time when magic can happen. I know it’s kind of a cliche, especially the whole loophole in a “night and day at the same time” sort of curse (like in the movie Ladyhawke) but sometimes the cliches happen because something is true.

This week I’ve been distracted by a jaunt down memory lane. One of my good friends from my college days died recently, and on the Facebook group for my college friends we’ve been sharing memories and photos of him, and that set off a big sharing of memories and photos, in general, as all of us have been digging out and scanning pictures from that time.

It’s funny, I thought I had really vivid memories of my college days, but some of these pictures are bringing up things I’d totally forgotten about. There are people I don’t recognize until someone mentions their names, and then memories flood back, or there are names that don’t ring a bell at all until I see them connected to a photo and then suddenly remember the people well. That’s meant I’ve been having a constant flood of nostalgia, and I’ve spent way too much time checking to see if anything new has been posted or digging through boxes of my own photos.

This friend was pretty much responsible for me having the college experience I had. I lived in a high-rise dorm on the honors floor, so basically it was geek central. It was a co-ed floor, with the girls on one wing and the boys on another. I moved in early because I had to do orientation, and I met someone else who’d also arrived early, and we hit it off, so I’d been hanging out with her and with some other people we’d met. I’d met some of the people on the floor when we had meetings, but I wasn’t really part of that group.

Then on Halloween, a Friday, I rushed home from class because I had to deliver something for my Pumpkin Pal (like a Secret Santa, but for Halloween), and in my rush I just threw my backpack on my bed and didn’t lock my door when I ran to deliver my gift. I got back to my room to find that my wallet was missing from my backpack. I went down to the dorm office to find the police there because there had already been multiple theft reports. This guy had apparently been working his way through the dorm. My friends came by while I was waiting to talk to the police, heading out to go do something, and instead of waiting with me until I made my report, they left. I was pretty devastated. I hadn’t lost much, since it was just the wallet I carried to class, so it only contained a few dollars, my student ID, and my driver’s license, but it still felt like a violation, and then to have my friends ditch me when I really needed support was even worse.

But a guy named Eric who lived on my floor saw me talking to the police and stopped to make sure I was okay. He then invited me to join the group that met in his room every afternoon to watch Star Trek before heading down to the cafeteria for dinner. That may have been the most comforting thing possible, since that had been my family’s routine when I was in high school. My parents worked at the school, so we got home together in the afternoon, and then we’d watch the Star Trek rerun before dinner.

That day, I got a whole new group of friends that I stuck with the rest of my time through school, and I’m still in touch with a lot of them now online. And it all happened because someone I barely knew reached out to me when I needed a friend. It turned out that most of the people in the group had been brought into it by Eric. He was essentially the one who made the group what it was.

One thing I find interesting about seeing those old photos is that the boys I thought were cute actually were. When I look at my crushes in my yearbooks from junior high and high school, I wonder what I was thinking, but most of the guys I had crushes on from college are still cute to me (their past selves are cute to current me. I don’t know what most of them look like now). There’s one that I didn’t remember at all until people started posting pictures, and now I think he was cute, but I don’t remember if I crushed on him then. There were a couple of pictures of him in my collection, but I don’t know if I was taking pictures of him because I liked him or because he was doing interesting things. Nothing happened with any of these guys because I was very much not cute then, and I was pretty awkward, even for the nerd floor.

Actually, looking at those pictures makes me want to go back in time and stage an intervention with my past self. For one thing, I’d tell myself to grow my hair out. I didn’t learn until later that my hair shouldn’t be worn short because it won’t have room to curl, so it just makes a frizzy cloud. Some of my fashion choices were questionable. Yes, it was the 80s, but the things I thought were great were weird even for the 80s. And I’d tell myself to be more open to possibilities. I was very set on a plan and didn’t want to deviate from it, even when other opportunities came up. I chose a major and stuck with it, but it turned out to be a bad fit for my personality, and I didn’t actually enjoy it. Meanwhile, other things had come up, but I didn’t take advantage of those opportunities because they didn’t fit with my major. I don’t know what other direction I should have gone, but I should have let myself be more open to exploring. There was no guidance counseling at my high school, so I didn’t know what was out there, and going to a large university, I should have let myself explore enough to find a better fit. I’d probably have ended up doing the same thing I’m doing now, since that was the real plan all along, but I might have been happier along the way.

That sounds like the plot of a paranormal women’s fiction book — the middle-aged woman having a mid-life crisis getting the chance to either relive her college days or travel in time and visit her college-age self. Most of the things like that, like Peggy Sue Got Married, seem to involve parents who choose not to change their lives because they still want to have the kids they had, but what if you haven’t had kids and wouldn’t miss the kids that would have been if you change your life? There’s the TV series Being Erica, in which the heroine goes back in time and relives certain key times in her life. She doesn’t actually change the past, but the changed perspective on the past changes the way she faces the present. But she’s in her early 30s, so it’s more chick lit than women’s fiction.

I may have to add this to my idea file. Like I need more things to write. In the meantime, I have a funeral to go to this weekend, and the bright side of that is that I’ll be seeing some old friends there.