Leaving Staunton

I leave Staunton, Virginia in roughly 24 hours. This is surreal. It shouldn't be. I'm 90% packed. I closed my bank account. Theoretically, the surreal phase should be gone, but nope. Still feels like tomorrow isn't leaving day.

In honor of leaving this town, I thought I'd just write a quick post listing things I will and will not miss about it.

I will not miss:
1) Rednecks.
2) Evangelical Christians who blindly ignore Matthew 7.1 and think Halloween is Satan's holiday. (Satan is a Christian construct. Pagans made All Hallow's Eve. Candy companies took it over. If you want to hate Halloween, you need to start blaming Pagans or boycotting Mars and Nestle.)
3) Humidity.
4) Bugs that apparently find me delicious.
5) One-way streets.
6) Going to the ABC store for liquor.
7) Finding parking on Sunday mornings. (There are 4 churches within 2 blocks of my apartment.)
8) The undergrad upstairs who can't do laundry without a threat from the landlord.
9) Virginia labor laws.
10) Young, Republican women who try to convince me that Sarah Palin is good for womankind.
11) People who say the word Obama in the same tone I would use if I had to describe falling into a gushing sewer and having to claw my way out.

Things I will miss:
1) Jer.
2) Friends. (Seriously guys, you know who you are. You rock. I hope I keep running into you forever.)
3) My gerbil.
4) The Split Banana. (Greatest gelato ever.)
5) Blackfriars Playhouse. (How can you not love that space?)
6) All of Professor Cline's stuff down in Lexington.
7) Pufferbellies. (Greatest toy store ever)
8) Biscuits. (Only the South makes them right, and they're the only Southern food I like.)
9) The Easy Shop handsets at Martin's grocery store. (Set your phasers to buy.)
10) The Dragon's Hoard. (I get some serious geek points for this, Shaun. I know.)
11) Awesome stage combat classes with seriously skilled instructors.

Overall, I'm happy to be leaving the South. I don't get this region of the country, and it doesn't get me. That said, the good parts of Staunton are frakking amazing, and I will miss them. Mostly, I'll miss the people.

Ok, I drive out tomorrow. I will blog as much as possible on the road. Send me good avoiding accidents and police juju. We all know I drive too fast.

My gerbil is more hardcore than me...

and probably more hardcore than you unless you are Batman. Batman, if you’re reading this, rest assured that you are slightly more hardcore than my gerbil.

“Why is Leo more hardcore than me?” you might ask if you knew my gerbil’s name is Leo, which you now do. It’s really simple, actually. Imagine that you had cancer. Go ahead. It sucks, huh? You definitely care that you have cancer, right? That right there is why Leo is more hardcore than everyone but Batman.

Leo has cancer, but he doesn’t care. Not even a little. He just keeps doing what he’s doing. Sometimes, I talk to him about this. I wonder aloud to him at what point he’s going to start caring about his cancer. The humans noticed his cancer in March or April and were all, “Omg, Leo has a tumor on his belly. Soon, we will have to put him down, and that will be super sad since we just put his brother, Sirius, down.” But Leo just kept conquering a toilet paper tube as if to say, “Be cool, humans. I don’t even care. I’m hardcore.”

So, we decided to be cool like Leo suggested and the tumor grew and grew and we were like, “Leo, that’s getting really big. Don’t you think you should care about that?” and Leo kept nomming on a sunflower seed as if to say, “What did I say about being cool, humans? I’m hardcore. Don’t even worry about it.” And we didn’t worry about it. But we kept waiting for him to care…

Then one time in late May, he noticed his tumor and scratched it. We saw that he had been messing with it and thought, “Well, this is the end. He’s going to get himself infected, and we’re going to have to put him down. It’s a good thing he’s old and lived a comfy life.” And Leo just kept running in his wheel as if to say, “You’re still not being cool, humans. Yeah, I scratched it; it hurt; I decided to leave it alone. I’m still hardcore; I’m so hardcore that I think with semi-colons.” And we decided to finally, officially be cool and let him tell us when he was going to care and stop being so bad-assedly hardcore.

It’s mid-July now, and Leo is still hardcore. More hardcore than me, you, and everyone… except Batman.

You may now be asking, “Kitty, wtf was that all about? Why did you tell us about Cancer Boy the Rodent Wonder?” Maybe it was my way of explaining the pitfalls of adopting middle-aged rodents that you know have only 1-2 years left of life. Maybe I was looking around my study today, jotting down blog ideas, and heard the click click click of Leo drinking from his water bottle. It was probably that I mentioned my cancerous gerbil in passing in my first entry and felt the need to explain that Leo is not a poor, dying gerbil but a bad-ass, hardcore, nearly-geriatric gerbil who could totally kick everyone’s butts in an optimism competition.

I leave you now with a picture of his hardcore-ness, Leo. Imagine, if you will, that he is telling every one of you, “Be cool, humans. Be cool.”