still day 4
Nov. 17th, 2007 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieAfter about half an hour or forty minutes of stick-throwing, Marya went inside with Oscar trailing after her. She went into the spare room to take another look at all her suitcases and duffles and drum cases. Three suitcases, two duffles - although one was the smaller duffle with some changes of clothes - although in this case "smaller" was relative ' six drum cases, the padded bag with her cymbals, an assortment of stands and the pieces of the rack she mounted some of the toms on. Not to mention the boxes in the kitchen, the cooler, the grocery bag of Oscar's stuff, and the suitcase she'd brought back from her grandma's assisted living complex, the one with her grandma's afghan in it.
She'd wanted to bring her CDs, her laptop, some books and knicknacks, her pillow, sheets, blankets, maybe the sleeping bag in the basement. But if she brought the sleeping bag, she wouldn't need a set of sheets or really any blankets. She'd bring an old one for Oscar to sleep on, and she’d have her grandma’s afghan, and that should be ok. She'd still need her pillow, though.
"Ok," she said to Oscar, "no bedclothes. That's easy. I need to get the sleeping bag, though." She went back down to the basement, retrieved the sleeping bag, and brought it upstairs to put with everything else that was piling up in the guest room. "This still isn't going to fit in the car," she told herself. "Crap."
She dragged the suitcases and duffle bags back into her room, opened all of them, and started taking clothes out. She really didn't want to part with the Pepto pink prom dress or her pinstripe suit, but she didn't need all those t-shirts and undershirts and three pairs of shorts? Not so much. She managed to weed her pants and jeans down to four - not counting the pinstripes - two flannel shirts, two Oxfords, the pinstripe suit, her Pluto sweatshirt, a long-sleeve t-shirt. That was the big suitcase. She filled in the little empty spaces with underwear and socks.
The second suitcase, emptied out, was now refilled with the pink prom dress, a few t-shirts, two tank tops, two pair of boxers, socks, undies, bras, the flannel penguin pj's. She put everything else back in her dresser, including the yoga pants. She was going to California. They had yoga supply stores out there.
She took some pairs of undies and an extra bra out of the second suitcase and put them in the smaller duffle. She still wanted to keep the smaller duffle so she wouldn't have to unpack everything every night and then morning when she wanted to change her clothes. She'd push it under the front passenger seat or something. She added the long-sleeve t-shirt, a few regular t-shirts, a flannel shirt, her cargo pants, and her pj bottoms. If she rearranged everything else in the other suitcases she could fit her Fair Isle sweater in one of them, and then she only had two suitcases and one smallish duffle. Well, two duffles, and did she need all those shoes? She took the bright green Chucks and the Mary Janes out and put them back in her closet. She wasn’t sure she'd need the peacoat after all - California, she reminded herself - but what if it was cold along the way? Or maybe the weather had changed out there and it got cold in the winter now. It could have happened. And anyway, it was a really good coat, really warm, and Marya wasn't quite ready to part with everything that wasn't immediately practical.
She could put some towels in that duffle, though - a bath towel, a hand towel, a washcloth. Her CDs, too. She still wanted to bring them, although she had no idea what she'd be able to play them on. She'd downloaded her entire CD collection onto her iPod, so it wasn't as if she needed all the separate CDs. It just seemed wrong to leave them all here. Maybe she'd take her spare house key to Cassandra's place on her way out of town, and tell Cass and Spike that they could have the CDs and sheets and whatever else Marya was going to leave behind.
Marya was a little surprised that she was feeling particularly generous towards Cass, who had after all left her for another woman, but it was the end of the world in a way, and after tomorrow Marya would probably never see Cass again. It didn't hurt to be nice to her. It didn't even hurt to want to be nice to her. It was a little weird, though.
And in the meantime, Marya had gotten rid of one suitcase and now just had to go through the house and make sure she was taking everything small and valuable, and any random bits and pieces that were important to her or might be important to her dad. She already had the shoeboxes from her grandma's room, but there was also her grandma's nice jewelry, a throw pillow her great-grandma had embroidered, some photo albums, some books she'd liked. Marya's grandma had been more of a sentimental person than Marya was, but Marya's dad had inherited it and had taken some things with him when he moved out to California. When Marya inherited the house, he'd only been on the west coast a year and a half, but he came back to move his mother into the assisted living place and also to take more stuff home with him, so Marya could make the house more her place and less her grandma's place.
As a result, aside from the fancy jewelry, which Marya's grandma had thought she might want, and some photo albums and some of the furniture, most of the really important, sentimental family stuff was out in California. Marya was suddenly, stupidly grateful her dad had done that, because it meant less stuff she had to take with her.
She put the fancy jewelry in a box and stuffed it in the suitcase with the afghan - that was now officially "Grandma's suitcase" because it had her grandma's personal stuff in it - wrapped the photo albums in a couple of plastic grocery bags and put them in with the shoes and her peacoat. There were things that had been hers when she was little down in the basement, random mememtoes her dad hadn't wanted to take with him and her grandma hadn't wanted to throw away, but Marya wasn't keen to revisit a lot of her childhood and didn't have the time to go downstairs and see what was there and what she might want to take with her. She had a stuffed penguin that her grandpa had bought her when she was seven, and a green stone ring her first girlfriend had gotten her for their three-month anniversary, and she wanted to take those. But as she made a circuit through the house to see what she was leaving behind, it occurred to her that pretty much everything was just stuff. She had a good memory. She didn't need to take things with her in order to remember people she knew and things they'd done.
And she really didn't have the room, and she was more and more unsure of what it would take to cross the country and what she'd find when she got to the other side. She might get to California, look around, and decide to come back. She might bring her dad with her, and if she did that, she'd need room for his stuff too.
Although there was always the possibility that they'd be able to find a U-Haul rental place and just steal a moving truck.
Four days after the end of the world and she was already thinking like a criminal. Her dad raised her better than that.
Marya stacked up a few books she hadn't read yet and a couple she'd happily read again and carried them into the spare room where she tried to find places for them in all the suitcases and duffles. She put World War Z in her little travel duffle, although a book about a zombie plague and a kind of apocalypse maybe wasn't the smartest thing to take with you to read when you were venturing forth into the great unknown of a kind of post-apocalyptic world. Although on the other hand, if she ran into any zombies, she might be better prepared to deal with them. That wasn't ever a bad thing. Maybe she should look for a machete in her travels, just to be on the safe side. She already had a cleaver and her grandma's ginormous kitchen knife.
Oh, she should find the mag-lite flashlight in the basement. She'd gotten extra batteries for it at the grocery store but hadn’t thought to actually look for the thing. And she should bring up her hiking boots too. She could leave those rattling around the back of the van, or under the front seat, in case she needed them. She was just starting to realize that she'd have to cross the Rockies and she had no idea what the weather or the terrain would be like. She might need the hiking boots.
Oscar hadn't left her alone since they'd come inside, but at least he'd let her repack her clothes in peace. He kept following her up and down the basement stairs and in and out the various rooms, whining occasionally and acting nervous. Marya had been doing her best to ignore him. She didn't want him to think she was abandoning him, but she could understand how he might think that, but at the same time she didn't have the time to stop and try and convince him that she was taking him with her.
She found the flashlight and her hiking boots in the basement, brought them upstairs, put the hiking boots on top of the duffle with all the shoes - she could just get the duffle closed with them in there - and took the flashlight into the kitchen. She surveyed the boxes and grocery bags of food and kitchen equipment and figured she should go through all that too. If California was anything like here, the grocery stores would be abandoned and still practically full, so if she needed staples, she was pretty sure she could find them.
On second thought, no, she was taking all that food with her so she'd have something to eat on the trip, not so she'd have something to eat when she got where she was going. She didn't know how long it would take her and she wasn't taking any chances on being able to find food on the road. The way things were looking, there wasn't likely to be an open diner or highway truck stop or cafe or anything.
She took the frying pan and pot out of the bag they were in and put them away. She wasn't planning to camp out and build a fire, and if she did, it would be for heat. On third thought, though, it would be nice to be able to heat something up at night. She wished she had some camping cookware - it was made to be carried and so was smaller or at least lighter than the stuff she used in her kitchen, and sometimes the handles even screwed off for ease of packing.
She had the cooler, a box of food, a grocery bag of food, a grocery bag of miscellaneous kitchen stuff and silver, and that big glass cake plate. Crap. She meant to try and pack that. Maybe she could still stuff it in one of the suitcases between all the layers of clothes.
But first, dinner, since she was in the kitchen anyway and she was kind of hungry. She took the cheese and orange juice and chicken salad out of the cooler and found a knife and fork. She gave Oscar some kibble and fresh water, and turned the radio on. Nothing but static. Marya scrolled through all the stations but only two came in - the college station and, weirdly enough, Spanish language talk radio. She didn't even know there was Spanish talk radio in town. She guessed a Spanish-speaking DJ had found the station and was using it to broadcast to his community, which was actually pretty cool. She wished she understood enough Spanish to know what he was saying, though.
Marya finished the chicken salad and ate some cheese - and cut Oscar some pieces when he begged - and thought about what she had left to do. She had clothes, she'd packed her drums, she'd gone through the kitchen, everything that was likely to spoil first had been cooked or eaten, she'd packed her grandma's good jewelry and a few things her dad might want, a few things she'd want, she'd packed Oscar's stuff, she had clothes for the road, she had the sleeping bag and the big flashlight, she'd packed the necessary stuff from the bathroom. What was left? She didn't have an extra tire for the van, in case one blew, but she had all the necessary tire-changing tools, and she was hoping she'd be able to find gas stations or garages along the way. Those could function perfectly well without people, couldn't they? She'd look for someplace on her way out of town and hopefully she'd be able to get herself a good spare tire for an emergency. She should also probably try and find some coolant and windshield wiper fluid too, just in case. She was really glad the van had had a checkup and oil change a few weeks ago.
She washed her silverware and the container for the chicken salad after she was done with dinner and then went into the spare room to see what she could do about the cake plate. It took some rearranging and repacking, but she finally got it wedged in the middle of the big suitcase.
And now she was done, or at least she was as done as she could be. Tomorrow she'd pack the van, pray everything fit - and make it fit if she had to - and she'd roll out of town. She'd stop at Cass' apartment and give her the spare key and say goodbye. She had some maps in the glove compartment of the van and she wasn't worried about being able to find her way. She just hoped her dad was still there.
words: 2437
total words: 26,290
She'd wanted to bring her CDs, her laptop, some books and knicknacks, her pillow, sheets, blankets, maybe the sleeping bag in the basement. But if she brought the sleeping bag, she wouldn't need a set of sheets or really any blankets. She'd bring an old one for Oscar to sleep on, and she’d have her grandma’s afghan, and that should be ok. She'd still need her pillow, though.
"Ok," she said to Oscar, "no bedclothes. That's easy. I need to get the sleeping bag, though." She went back down to the basement, retrieved the sleeping bag, and brought it upstairs to put with everything else that was piling up in the guest room. "This still isn't going to fit in the car," she told herself. "Crap."
She dragged the suitcases and duffle bags back into her room, opened all of them, and started taking clothes out. She really didn't want to part with the Pepto pink prom dress or her pinstripe suit, but she didn't need all those t-shirts and undershirts and three pairs of shorts? Not so much. She managed to weed her pants and jeans down to four - not counting the pinstripes - two flannel shirts, two Oxfords, the pinstripe suit, her Pluto sweatshirt, a long-sleeve t-shirt. That was the big suitcase. She filled in the little empty spaces with underwear and socks.
The second suitcase, emptied out, was now refilled with the pink prom dress, a few t-shirts, two tank tops, two pair of boxers, socks, undies, bras, the flannel penguin pj's. She put everything else back in her dresser, including the yoga pants. She was going to California. They had yoga supply stores out there.
She took some pairs of undies and an extra bra out of the second suitcase and put them in the smaller duffle. She still wanted to keep the smaller duffle so she wouldn't have to unpack everything every night and then morning when she wanted to change her clothes. She'd push it under the front passenger seat or something. She added the long-sleeve t-shirt, a few regular t-shirts, a flannel shirt, her cargo pants, and her pj bottoms. If she rearranged everything else in the other suitcases she could fit her Fair Isle sweater in one of them, and then she only had two suitcases and one smallish duffle. Well, two duffles, and did she need all those shoes? She took the bright green Chucks and the Mary Janes out and put them back in her closet. She wasn’t sure she'd need the peacoat after all - California, she reminded herself - but what if it was cold along the way? Or maybe the weather had changed out there and it got cold in the winter now. It could have happened. And anyway, it was a really good coat, really warm, and Marya wasn't quite ready to part with everything that wasn't immediately practical.
She could put some towels in that duffle, though - a bath towel, a hand towel, a washcloth. Her CDs, too. She still wanted to bring them, although she had no idea what she'd be able to play them on. She'd downloaded her entire CD collection onto her iPod, so it wasn't as if she needed all the separate CDs. It just seemed wrong to leave them all here. Maybe she'd take her spare house key to Cassandra's place on her way out of town, and tell Cass and Spike that they could have the CDs and sheets and whatever else Marya was going to leave behind.
Marya was a little surprised that she was feeling particularly generous towards Cass, who had after all left her for another woman, but it was the end of the world in a way, and after tomorrow Marya would probably never see Cass again. It didn't hurt to be nice to her. It didn't even hurt to want to be nice to her. It was a little weird, though.
And in the meantime, Marya had gotten rid of one suitcase and now just had to go through the house and make sure she was taking everything small and valuable, and any random bits and pieces that were important to her or might be important to her dad. She already had the shoeboxes from her grandma's room, but there was also her grandma's nice jewelry, a throw pillow her great-grandma had embroidered, some photo albums, some books she'd liked. Marya's grandma had been more of a sentimental person than Marya was, but Marya's dad had inherited it and had taken some things with him when he moved out to California. When Marya inherited the house, he'd only been on the west coast a year and a half, but he came back to move his mother into the assisted living place and also to take more stuff home with him, so Marya could make the house more her place and less her grandma's place.
As a result, aside from the fancy jewelry, which Marya's grandma had thought she might want, and some photo albums and some of the furniture, most of the really important, sentimental family stuff was out in California. Marya was suddenly, stupidly grateful her dad had done that, because it meant less stuff she had to take with her.
She put the fancy jewelry in a box and stuffed it in the suitcase with the afghan - that was now officially "Grandma's suitcase" because it had her grandma's personal stuff in it - wrapped the photo albums in a couple of plastic grocery bags and put them in with the shoes and her peacoat. There were things that had been hers when she was little down in the basement, random mememtoes her dad hadn't wanted to take with him and her grandma hadn't wanted to throw away, but Marya wasn't keen to revisit a lot of her childhood and didn't have the time to go downstairs and see what was there and what she might want to take with her. She had a stuffed penguin that her grandpa had bought her when she was seven, and a green stone ring her first girlfriend had gotten her for their three-month anniversary, and she wanted to take those. But as she made a circuit through the house to see what she was leaving behind, it occurred to her that pretty much everything was just stuff. She had a good memory. She didn't need to take things with her in order to remember people she knew and things they'd done.
And she really didn't have the room, and she was more and more unsure of what it would take to cross the country and what she'd find when she got to the other side. She might get to California, look around, and decide to come back. She might bring her dad with her, and if she did that, she'd need room for his stuff too.
Although there was always the possibility that they'd be able to find a U-Haul rental place and just steal a moving truck.
Four days after the end of the world and she was already thinking like a criminal. Her dad raised her better than that.
Marya stacked up a few books she hadn't read yet and a couple she'd happily read again and carried them into the spare room where she tried to find places for them in all the suitcases and duffles. She put World War Z in her little travel duffle, although a book about a zombie plague and a kind of apocalypse maybe wasn't the smartest thing to take with you to read when you were venturing forth into the great unknown of a kind of post-apocalyptic world. Although on the other hand, if she ran into any zombies, she might be better prepared to deal with them. That wasn't ever a bad thing. Maybe she should look for a machete in her travels, just to be on the safe side. She already had a cleaver and her grandma's ginormous kitchen knife.
Oh, she should find the mag-lite flashlight in the basement. She'd gotten extra batteries for it at the grocery store but hadn’t thought to actually look for the thing. And she should bring up her hiking boots too. She could leave those rattling around the back of the van, or under the front seat, in case she needed them. She was just starting to realize that she'd have to cross the Rockies and she had no idea what the weather or the terrain would be like. She might need the hiking boots.
Oscar hadn't left her alone since they'd come inside, but at least he'd let her repack her clothes in peace. He kept following her up and down the basement stairs and in and out the various rooms, whining occasionally and acting nervous. Marya had been doing her best to ignore him. She didn't want him to think she was abandoning him, but she could understand how he might think that, but at the same time she didn't have the time to stop and try and convince him that she was taking him with her.
She found the flashlight and her hiking boots in the basement, brought them upstairs, put the hiking boots on top of the duffle with all the shoes - she could just get the duffle closed with them in there - and took the flashlight into the kitchen. She surveyed the boxes and grocery bags of food and kitchen equipment and figured she should go through all that too. If California was anything like here, the grocery stores would be abandoned and still practically full, so if she needed staples, she was pretty sure she could find them.
On second thought, no, she was taking all that food with her so she'd have something to eat on the trip, not so she'd have something to eat when she got where she was going. She didn't know how long it would take her and she wasn't taking any chances on being able to find food on the road. The way things were looking, there wasn't likely to be an open diner or highway truck stop or cafe or anything.
She took the frying pan and pot out of the bag they were in and put them away. She wasn't planning to camp out and build a fire, and if she did, it would be for heat. On third thought, though, it would be nice to be able to heat something up at night. She wished she had some camping cookware - it was made to be carried and so was smaller or at least lighter than the stuff she used in her kitchen, and sometimes the handles even screwed off for ease of packing.
She had the cooler, a box of food, a grocery bag of food, a grocery bag of miscellaneous kitchen stuff and silver, and that big glass cake plate. Crap. She meant to try and pack that. Maybe she could still stuff it in one of the suitcases between all the layers of clothes.
But first, dinner, since she was in the kitchen anyway and she was kind of hungry. She took the cheese and orange juice and chicken salad out of the cooler and found a knife and fork. She gave Oscar some kibble and fresh water, and turned the radio on. Nothing but static. Marya scrolled through all the stations but only two came in - the college station and, weirdly enough, Spanish language talk radio. She didn't even know there was Spanish talk radio in town. She guessed a Spanish-speaking DJ had found the station and was using it to broadcast to his community, which was actually pretty cool. She wished she understood enough Spanish to know what he was saying, though.
Marya finished the chicken salad and ate some cheese - and cut Oscar some pieces when he begged - and thought about what she had left to do. She had clothes, she'd packed her drums, she'd gone through the kitchen, everything that was likely to spoil first had been cooked or eaten, she'd packed her grandma's good jewelry and a few things her dad might want, a few things she'd want, she'd packed Oscar's stuff, she had clothes for the road, she had the sleeping bag and the big flashlight, she'd packed the necessary stuff from the bathroom. What was left? She didn't have an extra tire for the van, in case one blew, but she had all the necessary tire-changing tools, and she was hoping she'd be able to find gas stations or garages along the way. Those could function perfectly well without people, couldn't they? She'd look for someplace on her way out of town and hopefully she'd be able to get herself a good spare tire for an emergency. She should also probably try and find some coolant and windshield wiper fluid too, just in case. She was really glad the van had had a checkup and oil change a few weeks ago.
She washed her silverware and the container for the chicken salad after she was done with dinner and then went into the spare room to see what she could do about the cake plate. It took some rearranging and repacking, but she finally got it wedged in the middle of the big suitcase.
And now she was done, or at least she was as done as she could be. Tomorrow she'd pack the van, pray everything fit - and make it fit if she had to - and she'd roll out of town. She'd stop at Cass' apartment and give her the spare key and say goodbye. She had some maps in the glove compartment of the van and she wasn't worried about being able to find her way. She just hoped her dad was still there.
words: 2437
total words: 26,290
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 08:04 pm (UTC)Okay, that just made me wibble for really no good reason. (Hi! I have dubbed today "catching up before dinner" day. :D )