The Arrival in Southampton

On the afternoon of Tuesday, March 10, I stood outside the Victoria’s Secret at 86th and Lex to begin my new life – starting with the Hampton Jitney. It’s a bus, decorated in a rich, dark shade of green. There’s a glossy magazine called, “On the Jitney,” there’s a host or hostess who comes down the aisle offering snack mix or chips and water or orange juice. Better service than you get from some airlines these days! The 1:30 Jitney gets to Southampton at 3:30 but the 2:30 Jitney gets there at 5:20 – that’s all right, I wasn’t in a rush.


The caretaker (I’m not sure what his real title is but he watches a bunch of houses in Southampton – there is no end to the maintenance required and he manages all of the comings and goings) picked me up (he keeps saying he doesn’t mind) and brought me to the house. He showed me all the thermostats, light switches and television remotes, and then he offered to take me to and from the grocery store; I had been prepared to go without food until the next day and then go into town myself, but I took him up on that. I felt like I was in “Supermarket Sweep,” going through the store as fast as I can. My mainstay meals – after months of eating out or at friends’ houses – are yogurt with fruit, ground flaxseed, wheat germ and granola (I took this from Debbie, who told me it’s her friend Joanne’s breakfast, modified), salad (yes, I’ll admit it, I am happy to be back in a land with packaged pre-washed salads, though I wash them – baby greens, baby arugula and now baby spinach, with goji berries, cashews and now pine nuts, feta cheese and ranch dressing), and scrambled eggs. That’s about all I’ve had so far, and so far I’m not tired of any of it! When I have more time to shop I might get things that require chopping and cooking, but I’ve been to the grocery store since, both with the caretaker and on my own, and I keep replenishing rather than branching out.

That first night, I unpacked my bags. Unpacked them for the first time since the end of November! I had rearranged and reorganized (especially when I got to California and caught up with my winter clothes) but never unpacked. The guest room where I’m staying has plenty of drawers (though I’ve since reorganized myself there too) and it was a treat to put everything away. I then went right to bed – somehow the feeling of turning the page to the next chapter left me exhausted.

I had a solid week before going on to the next place – so even though the travel had ended, I knew I had another trip coming up. My plan was to get my profiles and resumes into the job databases I thought would be most appealing to me – the Peace Corps, usajobs, and USAID. I knew it would take at least a day to get everything in to each one. What I didn’t realize was that even this was too ambitious – it may not sound that way but it was. First of all, there is only so much time I can spend on the computer at once without taking breaks. Second of all, I also had to work on the term paper (if a course is three days long can it be called a term paper?) for the class I had taken in February. And third of all, I had to prepare for the interview in Washington. But most of all, I had to adjust.