It's June 3rd. That means buzz o'clock has just started up again, as has hurricane season (again!?). It also means there's about 360 or so days til we move back North. That means that by this time next year, soon-to-be husband and I will be back in our apartment in Brooklyn, surrounded by moving boxes and two very discontent, suddenly yardless dogs.
It's an appropriate time to look forward and back. Too bad there's not much time for that, as our wedding is in less than three weeks, and it occupies a lot of my time and brain space right now. The final weeks of preparation have just boiled down to an ongoing "OK what else needs to be done" state of semi-alert. I can only compare it to the last few hours before you have a big party, when you're running around cleaning and cooking and going down the list of errands and tasks, when everything has to happen before the first guests arrive, only this event is exponentially larger, and in a different part of the country, and way more expensive.
But! By way of commemorating this "one year left" mark, a brief look back and ahead.
We haven't been here a full two years, but it's been two full school years, and time has gone both slow and fast. Sometimes this place seems frozen in time, but it's in constant flux, even if that flux is encroaching plant life and decay. New businesses and homes do appear, and the sun and the moisture do their utmost to soon age color to that pastel and undermine that wood.
It's been a long enough stretch that the sign for Glorious, seen here in October 07:
Is now in a state of faded and peeled glory.
(Many times I've feared the same affect on myself, though lately not.)