Address change

To all of you who I have given my address to, I memorized the zipcode wrong. Here is the official address that I will have in California for the months of July and August:

The Fabulous and Talented Amy Sedan
922 Camino del Sur
Goleta, CA
93117

*be sure to put "and Talented" in as I'm sure I will need an ego boost :) *

Mood swings

I'm now in the scared, slightly anxious, and nostalgic part of my departure. I've started to say goodbye to a lot of people including my favorite Megan Deluca (because who else reads this faithfully??). I think I've comprehended the fact that I'm not going to see these people potentially for a long time. While that makes me sad, at the same time I look at all the people that I've grown closer to because of large distances and that makes me feel a lot better.

In fact, I think that I had some really great conversations and growth in friendships when I was gone for a semester and that is a good indication of what will happen when we all start going our seperate ways. A good way to keep in touch, as Megan noted, would be to start our own blog. I'm not sure how good I would be at keeping two up, so I would probably just stick to the group one, but at least I would still update you. So go for it, Megan, you know you want to set it up.

So to go with the title, I should note that while it's finally dawning on me that I'm actually leaving for a very long time, I'm putting off everything that I need to do until the very last minute. This is actually not very usual for me seeing as I love to plan and I love to be as prepared as possible. I think it's a very high form of denial plus the fact that I have so many hugely important things that are constantly going through my head that I just push to the back until I want to deal with it.

Let's add to all this that I'm blogging at 10:00 at night when I haven't packed, my room still looks half-lived in, and I just spent the past 8 hours just hanging out with Megan and Jonathan. I'm procrastinating in facing the future that will inevitably come in 2 1/2 days whether I want it to or not. Am I saving myself sanity or not? I like to think so...

Well, off to pretend to do something productive and then get ready for bed and play Spider Solitaire. Haha, I know myself so well.

It hasn't hit me yet

that I'm moving to California for good in 4 days. I have partially packed up my room, but there's still a lot out and I keep going out to dinner and hanging out with Jon a lot, but nothing seems really final.

I mean, I will probably be back in August, but it will feel really weird because by then I will have a routine in Santa Barbara. I haven't really said goodbye to Charlotte - I guess because that's sort of impossible and a little too sentimental. I have all my memories of growing up here and those won't change whether I'm living here or not. Still, it's something that will probably hit me the second I'm on the plane - I have late reactions that way.

There's still so much more to do and I'm supposedly working 11 hours every day although I think that we're way ahead of schedule so I will hopefully be off earlier than that every day.

I have to go to work now, boo.

I'm an adult

Today I did a lot of things that made me realize that I really have grown up.

I opened a new checking and savings account at a different bank because my current one is not in California! I am officially 21 which means that I don't need to have a parent co-sign with me, but I had my mom come with me because she's the accountant in the family and knows when I'm getting screwed over or when I'm getting a good deal. It was nice to have her there just to okay what I was doing.

I also bought a very expensive jewelry box as a graduation gift to myself from some of the money I got. It's beautiful and will last me a very, very long time. It's wood and is 8 or 10 inches high and a little wider and is made out of really nice wood that is varnished and polished. There are all sorts of fun compartments for earrings and bracelets. All this to say, I made a very grown up purchase because it is truly a piece of furniture that will go wherever I go.

I packed up my room - meaning I've been throwing out all my college notebooks and only keeping a few select papers and throwing out all the junk I've collected over the years. It's actually really refreshing to be keeping only the necessary items or ones that I really like and starting over in a new place. I don't feel like I'm toting a whole lot of crap into a new segment of my life.

I told my mom that I drink - this is a BIG deal. To my family, this is like me deciding to move in with my boyfriend. Except even that doesn't shock people nowadays. Hmm - I'll come up with an equivalent. Well it didn't go over well, but I'm 21 so there's nothing she or my dad can say to stop me and it just made me feel like I really am a grown person that can make my own decisions and stick by them. I have absolutely no regrets and still don't feel bad about myself. I've made choices and they have become a part of who I am. So my mom and I have been pretending like I never said it and I suppose that's fine for me for now.

Well, that's about it I guess. Tomorrow starts my marathon of work in which I will spend the next 10 days moving Williams-Sonoma to the new store at the other side of the shopping mall (about 50 feet no joke). So I'm working 10 hour days and I have to get up really early. Hence why I am signing off now.

The end of my relaxing summer

Well, I tried to enjoy the days that I had nothing to do, but they drove me crazy. I guess maybe I just like to complain, because now I'm so busy that I'm getting really stressed out.

I think the real problem is that things don't really hit me until they're almost upon me so then I get stressed out in short spans of time. This time I'm looking at two weeks of hell followed by a 6 hour plane ride and then 3 more weeks of insanity.

I am working right now from 8 to 10 hours every day until the day I leave except for next Monday and Tuesday. Not only is this long hours, but it is hard labor and not a lot of rest time. Let's add to the mix the fact that I have no time to practice, no time to work out, and no time to pack for leaving my house and moving to Santa Barbara as well as getting rid of all the stuff in my room that we can't move to San Fransisco.

I'm also getting really sick of explaining to everyone and their mother about why I'm going to Santa Barbara, why my family is moving to San Fransisco, exactly how many days left I have in Charlotte, and what I plan to do with my life. I feel like a broken record and wish that I had a tape player that could answer the same questions over and over.

I will say that I'm putting the fact that I'm 21 to good use. 8- and 10- hour workdays call for a nice glass of wine at the end of them and today I bought 2 wine glasses and a bottle of merlot all for myself for the rest of this week. Hurrah!

Oh and Megan, I read the book "The Mermaid Chair" by the same author as "The Secret Life of Bees". I highly recommend it if you haven't read it yet.

That's all - I'm off to go relax some more because I totally deserve it today.

West Coast family

Well apparently my previous blog didn't post, so we'll try it again.

Okay so for the big news: my family is moving to California! nononono, Amy, you say. YOU'RE the one moving to California. And I would say, you're wrong again because my parents are moving there too (copycats). My mom got this great job that is perfect for her in San Fransisco and so they're moving out asap.

So the pressure is off of me to marry a "surfer dude" as my dad calls him because that was the only reason he thought he would get a chance to move out west.

I'm really excited for my parents and I think it came at the best time possible with me all graduated and looking for adventure and not really being tied down anywhere. Most of my close friends are gonna be strewn about the US next year anyway, so it's not like I'm missing out and we're growing up and moving places. Of course, I am on the opposite side of the continent which makes travelling to see people difficult, but oh well. Now our whole family will be in California including my relatives in Santa Monica - we're just lined up along the coast like little ducklings. Or something.

Aunt and uncle in Santa Monica, me in Santa Barbara, and my parents in San Fransisco. It's one big party.

There are some down sides: I'm only going to be a resident of North Carolina for three more weeks. I have to clean up my room like I've never done before and start getting rid of the memories, trinkets, and junk that have accumulated in my room since 4th grade. I will be working my butt off at Williams-Sonoma (80 hours the last week I'm here! No, that's not a typo) and won't have much time to pack. Our house will be a wreck b/c my parents have a list a mile long of stuff to do to make it ready to sell. Well, the list keeps going. But it's still exciting....

So, yeah my life is no longer boring - haha.

Serves me right

I shouldn't have said anything about life being boring because it came to bite me in the butt.

I'm not at liberty to say, but there are some BIG changes happening in my life right now. I'll of course reveal all in due time.

Santa Barbara, here I come!

Well I have an apartment now. After all the craziness of last week, my parents told me to just go ahead with what I had planned - thanks for making the process so easy! Not. So my place is with 4 other girls and I have to share a room, but she apparently has a bf and isn't there very often. And it's just for two months, but I have a place to go when I drive into the city! Yay! (Oh and it's 3 blocks from the ocean..... bwahahahahaha)

These past few days have been really not fun what with the stress of work and then coming home and being stressed out with everything else, but today is my Saturday and I'm hoping that things will get back to somewhat normal. I've been eating all the junk food I can get my hands on just because that's what my mind needs to stay sane when I'm working long hours. Unfortunately, my body really doesn't like that.

I think probably the best part about this past week was when I got to go out with Jonathan on Tuesday night after the most stressful day at work that we'll have all summer (we had a regional visit where everything had to be PERFECT) and we went to an Irish Pub during Trivia Night and then to Brixx for tiramisu and wine. I fell asleep the instant my head hit the pillow because it was the first time I had relaxed in a long time.

Wow, my life is boring right now. But I'm okay with boring for now - it just doesn't make for very fun posts.

Decisions

I have joined the ranks of people that are going slightly insane right now for no real apparent reason. I have rapid mood swings, but when I'm not having a very strong emotion, I feel completely wiped of any emotion whatsoever.
I gave up on the whole temp agency thing and resigned myself to working at Williams-Sonoma for the sixth year in a row. Enter my apathetic feelings in which I go into work, go into automatic to do my job, and leave. Fortunately I love the people I work with which makes life a lot easier. I just had so many fights with my parents about the fact that I wasn't earning any money that I just finally broke down. Now I'm super busy and it's a good thing because I really was going to go crazy with nothing to do.
On the other hand, housing for later this summer is drama. I thought I found a place and was really excited that I had gone off and done something on my own that my parents actually approved of and gave me the go-ahead and then my mom calls me telling me that we might have leads to some other people/rooms to rent and that I should put my apartment on hold. Grrrrr... I wanted to have something finalized!

I think I need a new environment, I need to be on my own, and I need a new job that challenges me. Fortunately, all this is less than a month away from me.

Just when I thought I was mature

I then decide to go out with a 30-year-old. Gosh that sounds so much worse than 29.

Well, I had fun dancing and boy it makes a difference to be with someone that really knows how. The only catch is that you end up feeling incompetent next to this person that is making you dance in circles. I thought I improved by the end of the night though...

The funny part is that going into this, I thought I would totally have the upper hand and be the one to decide if there was going to be another date, but by the end of the night it was him that was being unresponsive. I definitely felt the 9 years difference between us because we just didn't have anything to talk about. We're just in COMPLETELY different parts of our lives. He thinks its fun to just take a weekend trip to the Bahamas and I'm wondering how I'm going to pay to fly to Cincinnati in a few months. Also, he was the one that decided we should go (I think I wore him out working hard for both of us :) ) and he said nothing about anything in the future.

Sad. Just when I thought I was the one in control, he goes and takes even that from me. Well, all I can say is that I looked hot, so that's gotta count for something.

Oh man, if there are more pepole that read this besides the ones I know, I share waaaaay more about my life than I probably should in a blog.