A Cat, a Dodge Caravan, and Trader Joes

In six days I will be loading up a rented Dodge Caravan with a cat, another tiny queer person, a knock-off Eames chair, and about five boxes of Oscar Wilde/Jack Kerouac books and hitting the road on a 4-5 day journey that will rip me from my current home of New York and gently (except for all the ditches we’ll end up in when we hit a shit ton of snow) place me into the loving arms of Olympia, Washington.

I’ve only lived in NYC for two years, and since that time I’m pretty sure I’ve said something along the lines of “they’ll have to haul my stiff corpse out of this city” out loud at least twice, but I came upon an awesome job opportunity and had to go for it. I stayed in Olympia for 10 days over 10 years ago and liked it a lot, but honestly, all I remember about it is that the town is small as hell and if you sit at the local snack shack for long enough, you’ll see everyone who lives there at least once. Oh, and that there’s some weird water pump in a random parking lot that is supposed to be really fresh or something. All the local kids bring their jugs and bottles and help each other pump water into them. I’m laughing so hard as I write this. Did I just literally make this up? I’m pretty sure it’s real. So yeah, I don’t know much about the place that I’m moving to, except for the fact that I’ll be living there, lot’s of hot ladies live there, there’s a bunch of trees, and it rains a lot. It’s also been hinted at that no one has a job there, but guess what, I already have one and I don’t even live there yet, so let’s date.

The process of me organizing this move has been intense. I’ve pretty much been putting off packing until the last minute, because I feel like no one should have to do actual work on Christmas. (ps. Christmas for me starts on Dec. 1^st.) I talked to my new roommate on the phone last night and she seems awesome. I will point out that she highly stressed that I start taking vitamin D supplements right now, and continue taking them for the rest of  my life, because the lack of sun for six months out of the year there is “powerful.” She also said that I should buy a poncho. I assured her that the constant rain and lack of sun wouldn’t really bother me because I used to be goth. This seemed like an awesome thing to say at the time, but now that I think about it, probably sounded a little creepy.

I have a few concerns when it comes to my new chosen location, and they mostly deal with the fact that I eat tons of meat, say and write words like “fat” and “retard,” and I use regular tampons; I mean, I don’t own one of those Keeper things. Oh, and I JUST recently truly comprehended what Wikileaks is, and that’s only because I stayed home sick from work one day and watched tons of Saturday Night Live episodes on Hulu, and a bunch of the newer ones had skits about it. Anyway, I hope everyone likes meeeeeeee!

I’m also concerned because I saw the following picture on the Internet this morning and laughed really hard:

Oh shit, I’m gonna be banished to Tacoma.

Bonus Material: I just re-read the title I gave this piece and was like “Trader Joes?” and then I remembered why I put that there. The friend who’s helping me drive to Olympia is vegan so she is insisting that we stop at Trader Joes before we set out so she can stock up on snacks, otherwise she won’t be able to eat anything when we stop at truck stops and stuff. I thought this was so funny.