one month!

Today (actually, tonight... actually, this morning at 1:15am) I returned home to Cincinnati a whole lot closer to being Erin Gannon, MA.
In the last three days I "finished up" all of the little things I have inexplicably been putting off for the last four months. I had to drive across the state to finish which I had been convincing myself I didn't have to do, but in the end it's out of my hands so I suppose it was worth it.
I spent hours at a print shop pretending to not freak out as we worked through problems printing my final copy of my thesis. I talked to multiple university employees in multiple offices while I smelled strongly of my own sweat and thinly veiled panic. I found secret joy in turning the final copy in while wearing my favorite Pogues shirt with a great Fugazi song running through my head. I had a few smiling-like-an-idiot-in-my-car-alone moments. Tonight, to finish off the victory lap of Ohio, I gave my dad a copy as a father's day gift.
In a few months you will be able to check my thesis out of the Kent State library. I bet it'll be FLYING off the shelf so you may want to reserve your copy early.

I leave in a month. I've already started awkwardly saying goodbye to people, although some of those goodbyes proved to be premature because of the aforementioned unexpected return trip to Northern Ohio. I'm incredibly bad at saying goodbye. I just keep saying "see you later" or my new fallback, "see you when I'm almost thirty" which is the adult version of the old "see you next year" said by soon-to-be clever third graders as they leave for their two week winter holiday break.
I will always remember pulling out of the Everett driveway with my motley friends singing to me and waving like fools. It was beautifully strange and wonderful. I suppose I'm lucky to have friends who are more adept at saying goodbye than I am.