Sunday was our journey through the 'heartland' of California. We passed cows, sheep, vineyards, orange groves, you name it. What was so funny was, once we got to Sacramento and checked into our room, we rode around Fair Oaks to find my library and see the neighborhood before we went into downtown/midtown for dinner. And thinking 'we're in the city now...' we were flabbergasted to have to stop in the road in Fair Oaks Village to let chickens, a rooster or two, and a peacock go by. HILARIOUS! And, of course, Brooke had us cracking up making jokes about having chicken for dinner, fresh from the road. "Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and in the road there’s chickens. Mommy ain’t got no money so it’s chicken fingers again...Gonna sacrifice it right here on the coffee table..."
Anyway, once we regained our composure and sufficiently roamed in Fair Oaks (found the library!), we found our way into the downtown/midtown area and drove around a bit, trying to decide where to have dinner. Thinking we'd found a local place, we had dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory. Turns out it's a chain on this side of the country, but the location we went in sits beside railroad tracks and used to be a train depot, so it is super rad on the inside -- even has an old car inside that you can eat in! I actually wondered if it had been a church at one time. Not the be-all end-all Italian food, but decent. I liked it as much for the atmosphere as I did for the food!
The rest of the night was fairly random. Rode around seeing what we could see, bought some junk food at Wally World, and some eat-and-run breakfast food for Mom and Brooke to have the next morning en route to the airport (they had to be there at 5:30 AM..before the continental breakfast opened in the hotel).
Though this continues into the next day... it was odd dropping them off at the airport that morning, but it didn't really hit me, didn't really begin to settle in until I checked out of the hotel at noon and all of a sudden it was like "Okay, the road trip ohmygoshI'mmovingtoCalifornia part is over...I live here now." Fortunately, one of my soon-to-be colleagues 'took me in' and let me stay in her guest room while I looked for a place. Whodathunk...I found my apartment on my second day of looking. Moved my clothes into the guest room at Jami's Monday afternoon, moved it out and into my own place Friday afternoon. Craziness!
The only time the stress of all I had been through, and was still going through, in the process of a total-life-upheaval, hit me Monday night and I had a self-contained mini-meltdown. The good thing is, I've fought anxiety enough that I could still manage to step outside myself and know "This is why this is happening...this too shall pass...give it a few days, get my own place, start my job, begin to re-establish a normal life, and all will be well with the world." The good thing about having had numerous anxiety attacks -- you have enough of them, you recognize them for what they are and can teach yourself to maintain sanity somewhere in the back of your mind while the physiological effects of the anxiety work their way through you!
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