I am in placeholder time, the time between fully here and fully there in which one's thoughts are distractedly trying to root in both places at once and -- usually -- failing miserably.

The twitter repost script is turned on, so you'll see my increasingly nervous natterings as the trip inches ever closer. it feels real now, real like the fine layer of cat fur Tenzing deigned to place on my bags tonight.

Jeff is gone to Seattle already; words sneak back east of his doings and his travels. The stories await my arrival for the telling; all I have right now are Adam's snapshots of Jeff, so familiar and yet so far away.

The house is quiet without him here. We fare better in separate places than most married folk, but the sense of oddness is palpable. We chirp affectionately from different rooms when we are both here, a quick echolocation and confirmation that never quite merits a full-blown conversation, and I have always wondered if we or our sibling cats first originated the idea.

It has been miserably hot here, the range of 100F/38C that makes even the hardiest of summer dwellers long for cooler days. How disconcerting to pack jeans, socks, and a jacket, knowing I'm likely to need all three tomorrow night. how strange, when I had to wash today's sweat-stained clothes because I didn't want to leave them dirty for two weeks.

I'm ready to go, and increasingly impatient. There is the googledoc, which I've maintained in a lackadaisical manner for quite a few months now, and suddenly it is real and now and tomorrow, dammit, and do I have my flight information and oh god where do I go for the rental car and what do we do if I forget something?

We breathe, that's what, and we make up a plan B and we laugh about my OCD tendencies -- because it's vacation, dammit.

We have Mariners - Red Sox tickets. We have plans for spice shops and restaurants, of hunting noodles and bubble tea, of sitting out on the deck and giving the sun no particular reason to get in a hurry to set. We'll go to a cabin hidden in the mountains of Washington and laugh into our single-malt, and we'll hug our friends as, one by one, they trickle home before Adam and I get lost in the woods for a few days.

My bag is full and my camera is empty. It's time to go.

Almost.