In My So-Called Life, Angela Chase says, “there’s something about Sunday night that really makes you want to kill yourself.” Which is true. Sunday night should be about dinner and relaxation and The Walking Dead, but mostly it’s about dreading the next day and going back to work. I loathe my job to the point where I swing violently between near blackout rage and a perverse sense of resigned, defeated calm, so Sunday nights are particularly suicidal for me.

Especially after last night, when seconds before Sophia walked out of the barn, I said “I wonder if Sophia will walk out of the barn.” I know the show had to pick it up a little after the lag of the past few episodes, but dang. Sophia.

BUT.

Seattle in two days! Seattle in two days! SEATTLE IN TWO DAYS!!!

I have two working days until I get to wake up late(-ish, because at this point anything after 6am is late for me), take a shower, square away the house, and leave for the airport. Then I get to hang out at a bar near our gate, because I’m a nervous flyer and one strong screwdriver plus some altitude is just what I need to take the edge off. And THEN we fly to Denver, and THEN we switch planes, and THEN we go to Seattle where we can meet our friends! I’m so excited about hanging out with everyone that I’m only barely thinking about all the money I just spent on Christmas (plus rent, utilities, car payment, and vacation)! Only barely! Jesus Christ!

As excited as I am, I’m also trying to anticipate the moments where all I’ll want to do is go home. This is how I’m wired, I can’t help it. For some people (ahem, alcoholics), the happiest moment of their day is the moment they put their ass on a barstool. For others, it’s when they get in their cars to pick their kids up from school. The happiest moment of my day is stepping out of my garage and looking at the back of my house. Just minutes before that, as I am rounding that bend right after the daily clusterfuck at South Kingshighway and Chippewa, my brain screams “HOME HOME HOME” to itself, and it sounds exactly like Geena Davis in Beetlejuice. All day long I think about when I get to go home, because even when the kitchen is a mess and I haven’t folded laundry and that one corner of the basement smells like wet cat litter, I still get to be in the place where I am at the apex of my happiness. No matter how much fun I’m having or how excited I am, I know that there will be times when I want to go home.

During this trip, these times will occur at the airport (check-in, security, gate, tarmac), while waiting for/riding on public transportation (Graham’s responsibility, as I haven’t been good at bus lines since I was 16 and didn’t have a car), at any establishment with a confusing layout that doesn’t have signs to tell me where to order (even though everyone else seems to know exactly what they’re doing), at the top of the Space Needle (I’m afraid of heights), and at all points after we leave our friends’ house for our final destination (home). It’s not that I won’t try to be happy during these times. I’ll remind myself that nobody likes airports so what makes me so special. I’ll let Graham handle the bus. I’ll figure out how to get a drink no matter where I am like a proper Irish Catholic who’s related to my grandfather. I’ll know that Graham is really excited about the Space Needle and focus on going to the sci-fi museum afterwards (except now I’m doubly excited because I found out that the sci-fi museum is the same thing as EMP, which is not only another thing that Graham really wanted to see but is also a 25-minute bus ride from the mummified mermaid, which is only an 8-minute walk from the market, which is where we’re going to get food to cook for our friends on Friday!).

See, I’m mitigating my antisocial anxieties as best I can now, which leaves me plenty of room to stress out about how to pack so that I don’t get detained by security and how to get these stupid YouSendIt files into my iTunes* so that I can review the new Black Keys record while I’m in Seattle. ALL UP IN SEATTLE.

*If anyone knows anyone who can help me with this, I’ll be very grateful. The drag-and-drop method does not work on my iTunes for whatever reason, and I can’t figure anything else out.

EDITED TO ADD: It worked! Not the drag-and-drop, but a super tedious method involving compressed folders and opening songs individually in iTunes and then copying them to a playlist folder! It wooooooorked!