one hundred twenty-eight

I've been distracted this week. I've put off all blog posts, yoga, health foods and term papers. I have managed to busy myself with the small things, though.

Yesterday, Joe, who's in town for the week, helped me take our sofa in from outside. The couch came to us from the Salvation Army. That is, SA rejected it and Joe brought it here. The cat hair-encrusted mess was slip-covered, and I've spent the last two years trying to forget what is underneath.

When we hauled the mess outside to be picked up with our other garbage on Thursday morning, our lamp fell over. This is nothing new: it's been less than level for a year. This time, the concrete bottom that worked as a balance complete shattered. I drug the lamp outside and propped it on the couch, then added old closet doors (used as a partition) and a broken dining room chair. It amounted to an odd sort of modern art.

We went about our day and came home near dusk. The couch and lamp were gone. Now, I'm looking around my room for other small things that can be shed from my life. This anxiety of school and long-distance for four more months is one of them.

Joe leaves tomorrow. He's been with me this week, sitting next to me as I get my reading done for class or drink a beer and watch CNN or drink a coffee and watch Democracy Now (all while doing reading for the term papers I'm not yet writing).

It is our last week like this, and today is our last full day. Joe will not spend another week in Muncie, will not visit me as a student. In May, he'll help me move. He'll watch me walk across the stage and leave this place. He'll visit me this summer, in Ohio. But our time long-distance college student visits comes to a close today.

He'll go back to St. Louis tomorrow, be a graduate student and bookstore employee and writing lab tutor and contract faculty English professor. I'll be behind on my translation and ahead on my reading and ready to do all of my final presentations. Final in all ways.

This week, we bought our wedding bands. When he slipped the band onto his finger and rested the hand on the glass display case, I realized how close everything is. The next time we see each other, there will only be the summer. We will be tan and smiling and packing for our life together.

Joe's asleep right now. I should be reading about managing PR departments. I should be making diagrams and presentation boards. I should be stoppping Baby from chewing the carpet under my bed. I should be packing my belongings into cardboard boxes.