But I have promises to keep... and miles to go before I sleep... and miles to go before I sleep...

Nobody really seemed to understand that I was leaving for Ukiah.
Whether I was more amused or insulted or just plain baffled by their reactions, I could not say.
Every time my father heard mention of it, he would frown and ask where I was going. Sometimes he plays dumb like that because he thinks it's funny and I thought, at first, that this was what he was doing... but he was seriously just not listening. My mother really did treat it almost like some sort of joke. She kept on saying that she couldn't believe that they would come all that way just to get me and, as the date drew nearer, she began to ask repeatedly, wonderingly, if I was really going. When I mentioned to Amanda that I was leaving town, she said that she'd never heard of the place, although I had, without doubt, mentioned it many times before and recently, too.
Overall, I didn't really know what had gotten into them. The only thing I could tell for sure was that when Angie and her mother really did show up at the house, my mother was flustered and embarrassed and surprised and I knew what she was thinking: that now that these people really had come and proven themselves to be serious, she had better make some arrangement for bringing me back that would be more convenient for them, lest she look like a bad mother - FAST.
I'm the sort of person who travels well. The drive was about three-and-a-half hours and quite warm, but it felt only a third what it was and soon we were driving through Hopland and Angie was telling me that this was where she'd grown up. It had a neat sort of small-town feel and I admired what I could see of it.
Then we were in Ukiah.
We picked up Angie's brother from the restaurant where she works and got a pizza and headed for their house.
Angie's home was a bit of a surprise to me. I had not pictured her as living in central Ukiah, but I had not anticipated the cabin, either. It was a place not unlike those in stories or in my father's descriptions of places he would rather live or the picture in my head of the sort of property I might enjoy purchasing someday, myself.
The way we were driving soon turned into a narrow, unlit, unpaved, twisting and winding road lined with dense trees on either side. Terri steered the car along at ten or fifteen miles per hour and the gravel crunched steadily beneath the tires and nothing could be seen outside of what the high beams illuminated. Together, we were working our way through the pizza. Angie had to help me pick out the slices from their cardboard background in the dark and I began to wonder, as we worked our way higher and higher through the night, just where in the hell, exactly, these people lived. We edged along for some twenty minutes, or that was my guess, and met only one car along the way. Both drivers politely switched off their brights with all due haste and then carefully managed to work their way around each other, the path really only being wide enough for one vehicle to comfortably pass.
When we parked and got out of the car, I saw nothing. It looked as if we were just in the middle of the forest. There were no houses, no cars, no people... only the road we'd come down, the clearing in which Terri had stopped the car, the surrounding forest and, for some reason, a lone white bucket, which I believe had "compost" written on the side in pen. I asked Angie again as we were unloading where in God's name her house was and they all just chuckled. Chris went away up the road and Angie and Terri led me along an uneven little trail that wound through the trees.
Eventually, it opened up onto another clearing, and there was the cabin.
It may have been dark, but I knew when I saw it that this was no ordinary house.
This stay was going to be like a camping trip.
This trip was going to be an adventure.
This adventure was going to be exactly what I needed.
They hadn't been living there too long; they'd moved from another area of Ukiah around the beginning of summer break. The cabin was "off the grid", they said. I gathered that this mean they had no electricity. In fact, I hardly even got to see what the cabin was like until the next morning because it was so dark inside. I could tell how to get around and I had managed to make out the wood stove, the tables and beds and shelves... there was a kitchen, a living room, and two bedrooms, which had not doors between them, but were separated by walls and, curiously, by height. Of any details, however, I hadn't the faintest idea. I could not see what hung on the walls or rested on the counter, nor could I gauge exactly how far up off of the living room floor the bedroom I was staying in was. Getting up and down was a bit of a hazard that first night and I clocked myself pretty good on the entrance's low frame, as well. It only takes me once, though, to tell where I may hit my head.
The chihuahua was shy of me and skittered away until Terri scooped her up and asked if I would like to hold her. She mustn't have weighed even three pounds, she was so tiny. I stroked her and carried her around a bit before setting her back on the floor and her legs had worked into a frantic run before her paws connected with the linoleum.
We used flashlights and a lantern with a crank on the side that you turned to charge it up. I rather enjoyed the lantern. It was a fun little gadget.
Angie's mum went off to stay with her boyfriend and I was to take her bed... and I felt sort of funny about this arrangement at first, but then decided that it was best to just not think about it. They had invited me up and they had planned on my sleeping there and I shouldn't've felt as if I had turned anybody out.
The cabin did not have a bathroom. Twice that first night, Angie led me down the path, across the road, through the dried creek bed, past the playground, and up the hill to the old school with the community restrooms, kitchen, and lounge.
I felt pretty relaxed sleeping in the cabin. It was dark and quiet and the bed was comfortable. The crickets were the loudest thing about the place and what really kept me awake for a while was the brightness of the moon shining directly in through the nearest window... but it was a welcome light.
I do so love the moon.
It was full that night and loomed huge and bright the whole trip through, framed by these amazing clouds that were layered upon each other, making them appear almost black against the night sky.
It always took me twice as long to get back from the bathroom at night as it took me to get out there because I had to keep on stopping to admire this.

Saturday morning, the cat woke me.
She came through the window and landed on the floor with a solid thud that knocked me into consciousness. I'm not at all used to cats. I jerked awake hard and lay, listening, having no idea what had just happened. I sat up and looked around me, but there was nothing there. Then I noticed the open window, made the connection, and quietly hoped that it was only Moseretti and not some random wild animal entering the cabin. After a bit, though, the cat appeared and I stopped worrying. I lay back down to sleep again, as it was quite early yet, maybe five or six in the morning.
The bed dipped suddenly.
Uh-oh.
Cats make me nervous. I used to be kind of curious about them, used to rather like them... but then Kasey's Archie tried to bite me and, not three days later, a cat Amanda had been feeding tried to grab my arm and sink his teeth in, as well.
I'm told that this is just how cats play, but it makes me excessively nervous, nonetheless, and I'm finding myself increasingly wary of them these days.
I held my breath.
The cat sat on my feet.

We went to my first-ever farmers' market that morning. It wasn't terribly exciting, but it was interesting, to be sure. The farmers set up stands and sold vegetables or meat or flowers or soap or goat cheese or cloth or whatever it was that they specialized in and there were some musicians in the middle of it all, playing away and having a great time, by the look of it. One of the fellows selling goat cheese asked Angie to work, so I spent most of the duration with Terri at her stand, which was for Friends of the Farmers' Market. I passed around some pamphlets and said hullo to people and had a look at everything. Terri asked if I'd like to go shopping with her and I shadowed her about the place as she purchased food and other odds and ends and stuffed it all into a bag she'd brought with her for just this purpose.
She asked me suddenly if I liked lavender soap. I told her I didn't suppose I'd ever used it. She turned away from me, then turned back and thrust a small, round bar towards me with an ear-to-ear grin. "Here ya go!" I took it, shocked, and she bustled off. I hurried to keep up, sniffing the bar, thanking her and still not knowing exactly what had just happened. (I showered with it later. That stuff is so soothing on the nerves, it's amazing.)
I watched a cooking demonstration.
I listened to the musicians.
I sampled some food.
I read part of a book on organic farming.
I began to feel heavy.
I fell asleep.
They had, after all, gotten me out of bed around seven-thirty.
Terri woke me by placing a small bowl of food under my nose. Man, was it ever good.

I poked around the cabin and explored what I had been unable to make out the night before. I got better acquainted with the dogs and played with them and fussed over them and they warmed right up and tussled with me. I asked Angie to show me just once more the way to the restroom, now that it was light out, and learned quickly how to get around. We went to the barn, which had electricity, and watched The Terminal and Myth Busters.

Ukiah doesn't have great weather. It's apparently either very hot or very cold and it wasn't shy about it, either.
Even so... I decided I liked it there.
It was certainly nice to get to spend some time with Angie.
We'd stay up until two in the morning or so, talking... and I began to realize how much I'd missed just having someone to talk to. I had so much to say to her. I was never great at coming up with conversation topics, but suddenly I wanted to talk to her about everything and we spoke until she began to tire and give less and less input and then my throat grew so raw that I began to cough.

Sunday morning.
Cat hitting the floor.
Didn't open my eyes.
Bed dipping.
Cat on my feet.
Moved my feet.
Cat waited a bit, then moved back onto my feet.
I shifted until I was almost diagonal in the bed and she settled for curling against my legs.

We went to Solfest that day. Solfest was amazing. Solar panels. Green building. Fresh-squeezed fruit juice. That station with the misting machine that I had to keep going back to because it was about a hundred degrees outside and the heat was starting to do things to me. Booths with merchandise. The bumper sticker booth.
There was a pottery guild that had set up a booth with some wheels. Angie really wanted to try it out and was doing that thing where she suggests it, in her quiet, mild way, but doesn't push for it or explicitly state that she'd like to do it. She only said that it looked cool and that she'd be too intimidated to do it alone and then kept on looking over. I noticed and then I thought back to all the ceramics classes I took as a kid and then I told her to come on and let's have a go.
Neither of us had ever used a pottery wheel before. It was interesting. I managed to make a sort of bowl and Angie made some kind of vase and then molded a small horse and we were allowed to let our creations dry in the sun for a couple of hours.

That evening, we went to Sunday in the Park, which was basically live music and food. We ran into Anthoula there and got to meet her father and two sisters and it was pretty cool. She glomped me, though, and I didn't know how I felt about that.

I'm getting tired, but I want to finish this entry tonight. I mean, this all happened days ago. I should have written about it the night I got back, not now, a week later.  -_-

Ever since Ukiah, I've been getting tired around eleven and turning in at about two and getting up around ten or eleven in the morning. I don't feel particularly bad about this change, but it is strange and I feel oddly pressed for time and as though I am sleeping much more than I am used to.

Anyhow.
The music in the park was good and then I spent my last night in the cabin. We went up to the community kitchen and Angie fixed us some food - fried potatoes, beef, and carrots. It was pretty damned good.
It was cold that night, so I shut the window when I went to bed and inadvertently shut out the cat while I was at it. I woke in the morning to her crying and, again, did not know what I was hearing. I rolled over and saw her standing there on her hind legs with her paws pressed against the glass.

Oops.

It was kind of cute, though.
I opened the window and she hopped inside and I shut it again and burrowed down into my sleeping bag because it was still quite cold, if not colder.
The bed dipped.
She did not sit on my feet.
She walked a full circle around my curled body, then stopped in front of me.
I kept my eyes shut and tried to relax. If I just stayed still and didn't tense up, maybe she would think I was asleep and move away from my head.

And the cat began to lick my forehead.

I opened my eyes and stared at her, wondering if this was normal cat behaviour. She stopped and observed me and I stroked her and asked her to go away so I could sleep.
Animals always seem to understand. I don't buy into that they-don't-know-what-you're-saying crap. Pets, and dogs, especially, spend so much of their time just watching you... and they do pick up on language, acquire odds and ends that they understand, piece it together.
The cat left me without another word (so to speak, I mean it WAS a cat, she never said anything at all...) and I passed out until it was time to go into town to eat. We hung out at Schat's a couple hours and then met my father in Petaluma for lunch and he drove me back the rest of the way.
When I was hugging Angie goodbye, I told her "See you in a month." and it didn't seem so bad then. It was a comfort, even.
Now, the truth of the matter is, there are twenty-nine days left until we all reunite in Santa Cruz.
I may move back even sooner than that if they hire me at the dining hall.
So... it ISN'T that bad.

But Drago's always made things seem easier.