my eyes hurt

its true. all day today my eyes were hurty...or at least for most of the afternoon. i was thinking about it in a bit of delerium between interviews i was transcribing and wondered briefly if the pain was a result of my denial about leaving albuquerque. don't get me wrong, i know that i'm leaving...but the fact that its happening rather soon is still not quite on my radar. its there when i realize that i have only a few days to finish transcribing interviews (i finished 3 today) and packing all my worldy possessions, but then that panick quickly subsides into my current state....total denial. so maybe my eyes hurt from the tears that i'm forcing back. or maybe i was looking at a computer screen for too long today. regardless, i need to write a bit about my denial. this is mostly to assure my wonderful friends here that i'm not a total robot. don't let my ...hmmm...what's the word...stony, icy, no...um, ambivalent (?) tone and/or facial expressions fool you. ignore the fact that i don't quite choke up at the thought of missing life here. i fully assure you that its not because i don't have emotions about it. i do. i have a lot. i've met some freakin' fantastic people here and albuquerque has become home. it is not easy to leave. i know that. it makes my heart do crazy things at times and prevents sleep at night on more occassions than i will admit (but to which mike could probably attest since it sometimes results with my knee in the middle of his back.) the deal is...i can't think about it yet, because its gonna hurt too much. so instead, i focus on getting items on my big ass list completed and flit about in a haze about the fact that i leave this home in a little over a week. what i'm banking on is that my new path in iowa is going to be really great...and that i can come visit a lot. :)

so, please know dear friends that my exterior will probably not convey what i'm thinking and feeling right now. i've wanted to sit down and write cards to people and let them know how much they've meant to me over the past 20 months or so, but doing that now would make it all too real. its more likely that will happen when things slow down and i'm back in iowa. (just ask my texas friends how this went....it was a freakin' whirlwind when i left there which probably didn't hit me until after the truck was unloaded in ABQ.) i'll try not to be a total robot, but i can't guarantee that i won't be able to express how much you all have meant to me. i am blessed in so many ways to have the chance to move around, because i get the great gift of friends in varied places. it's crazy awesome. :) for reals.

okay, just wanted to clear that up real quick. :D i managed to cross three things off the list of fun stuff to do over the past 4 days and did a few things that weren't on the list but that i was hoping to do (see the simpsons movie, eat a breakfast burrito, obtain the 206 balloon fiesta postcard, etc.) the next few days will be busy and i hope very productive. (oh, i tried to go to juan's broken tacos but they didn't have any broken tacos...figure that one out. and i spilled a metric assload of wine in my car through no fault of my own, so now the saturn smells a lot like a vineyard. its been a busy week already!)

time for some sleep...i hope.