Oh, dear.

I started packing yesterday. Technically, I was supposed to start packing on Saturday, but I couldn’t quite face it. I pulled out the vacuum-free bags that make everything airtight and stuffed all my coats and sweatshirts and fluffy shirts into them and then flopped down on top of them to push all the air out. It was an exercise in silliness.

My brother and I have been home alone since Saturday. Our parents went to go work on a house in Vegas, and they were supposed to be home last night. They got too tired, though, so at midnight the house phone rings. I dive for it, praying it didn’t wake my brother, and when I pick it up all I hear is the dial tone. Then my cell phone rings (loudly), and I race back across the room (across the tile, wearing socks and slipping and half-falling all over the place). It’s my mother, of course. They ended up spending the night at some awful-sounding motel called Pete’s Casino, or Pete’s something-or-other. She walks me through how to get my brother ready for school, and then we hang up and I realize I have to be up and out the door in, like, five and a half hours.

Bleh. That said, I don’t know how high schoolers do it. I know I did, once upon a time, but I also seem to remember falling asleep in just about every class except the ones where I had to sit in the front.

This is all an attempt to distract myself from… Saturday. When I leave. Say goodbye to my dad and little brother. Get on a plane and fly to New Jersey. Spend a week with my mother, her brother, and his family. Then get on another plane and fly across the Atlantic.

Oh, goodness. I think it might be time to turn the TV back on. TV’s a good distraction.