countdown to new york: five days

today is monday. on friday i pack up my apartment and hilary's apartment and put it all into a budget truck (assuming that, unlike uhaul, they actually have a truck for us when we drive out to highlandtown to pick it up.), which we'll park in ridgely's delight, tightly padlocked, and then sleep at phong's house. and then saturday morning we'll have some coffee, have a shower, put on our sweats and jeans and tennis shoes, and drive off to become residents of the empire state.

things are all under control, i feel like. granted, i don't have a job yet, nor have i had a single interview. whatever, i'll temp. and i have a couple months' rent handled. i'm packing my apartment little by little, avoiding a scene like i experienced when i moved from 1010 to the waterloo (i won't tell the whole story, but imagine john artz and his huuuusband coming into my apartment to find a huge bonfire-looking pile of shit in the middle of the room and my many belongings stuffed into blue plastic grocery store bags. yep, let's try not to pull that one again.). i've set little goals for myself--pack books, pack the kitchen, call in a refill of pentasa--and am trying to reach them one at a time.

so i don't feel terribly stressed. in theory, at least. apparently, though, my body feels stressed. because i haven't slept through the night for about a week; last night i went to bed at 11, woke up at 3, then at 4, then stayed awake until 530, at which point i actually called my office to check in and make sure that our participant was coming (what is WRONG with me!), then laid there til 745. that's stress. oh, and. AND, at my haircut on friday my hairdresser, this crazy man from dundalk who always tells me about his heroin addict family, goes, "have you always had this scar here?" "what scar?" "this one." and he pulls my hair back and shows me an area the size of a nickel on the top of my head that is bald. BALD. not going bald, not thin. bald like a baby head. "oh, well," he tells me, "it's probably just stress. it happens."

i know it happens. my sister once lost her hair in clumps because of stress, and my mother said it's happened to her, too. and phong's had it. i, however, have never lost clumps of hair, and i find this disconcerting.

and, just in time to move to new york, the prednisone--which i now take every morning even though long term prednisone is NOT cute--has made me have acne like a 15 year old. so let's review: i'm losing hair in clumps and i have what looks like another head popping out of the side of my neck. i'm going to be a hot ticket by the time i get to nyc!