Detaching from DC, Baby

Detachment - something I'm trying to learn from this trip. To say goodbye without being ripped apart. Not getting so enmeshed with other people, basing my whole being on their every whim and mood. Forgetting myself in my willingness to be loved and liked by the all-important THEM.

I had to bid farewell to my new NASA buddies today. I'd grown pretty fond of Colin Fries, the archivist. He'd been so supportive and insightful. I'd love to work there with the team again. I had to also bid farewell to my daily commute from Friendship Heights to Federal Center South West, the wind funnelling up the streets as I walked to the NASA building and signed in ... & then back at tea time to "our" house in the evenings.

Not that I haven't felt lonely, an outsider, at times in the house (especially when the happy young couples congregate!), despite my room mates' good intentions. Crazy, kind Jon has been my saving grace, but he's working and exhausted a lot so I've felt pretty lost at times - I haven't wanted to become too dependent on him either. Boys - however lovely - just aren't reliable! I've been watching tons of "Sex and the City" on my laptop which just makes me laugh and laugh and long for NYC again! My hormones are all screwed up too - I've got my period much too early! At least that explains why I was feeling so damn miserable - and why my face looked like Mount Fuji a few days ago!!

But still, for all the ups and downs, DC's now familiar and been home for longer than anywhere else and so it's got its own special place in my heart - even the booming basement monster of a boiler which wakes me constantly, the cold which I couldn't cope with without Jon's extra quilt. People smile at me here, talk to me. The African American community are especially friendly. I loved Barbara at NASA security who called everyone "baby" - I like being called that!!

I met Margaret Weitekamp today (a curator at the National Air and Space Museum) who wrote the big book on the Mercury 13 (early women astronauts) - she's very sweet and it was wonderful getting my scholarly feminist mind out from under the dust again! I'd love to work as a space historian! If only I'd done that! Maybe I should go back and get another PhD! Uh, nah. I'll just write a bestseller on it all instead! After that, I had lunch with Jane Odom, Nadine and Lana - chief archivist, administrator and a feloow researcher in the Ford House of Representatives cafe. It's oddly interesting being in all these federal buildings. Cheap eats as well.

Still, I'm broke again - and a bit scared. It's very stressful living like this, lurching from one financial crisis to the next. My next trip, I'll have to be rich!! I'm borrowing money for a week from Jon while I wait for my dad's cash to clear. These days I wonder what on earth I could do with my over-educated brain and excellent communicative talents which could get me some money - if only I didn't love writing and freedom so much! I've thoroughly loved blogging though - so maybe I should be a journalist. Not that that pays well ... Travel writing would suit me, I think - crossed with self-help!

With any luck, I'm heading off to Albuquerque tomorrow and will be visiting Santa Fe on Monday. Then it's Houston on Tues night and more NASA business and interviews - that I'm very excited about. Jon and Pete are concerned about me travelling across the country without cash, but I've already paid for this stuff, so it'd be a shame not to go - even if I may have to take things easy over the next week and do less sightseeing than I planned. I think taxis in Houston might be a problem. Yet I will survive! I keep going somehow!

Yeah, it'll be weird to be on my own again - and good too. I need my space, as the NASA t-shirt slogan goes. But I won't be quite on my own ... My one indulgence this week was a silver space-suited teddy bear. I've decided that given my research topic it's a she - I think she's called Millie, after Amelia Earhart. I just needed something to hug - I'm missing physical affection very much. It's one of those things you don't think about when you plan a trip. The loss of touch.

Still, I am living without it and I am starting to see how I lean away from myself, unroot myself through giving in to the tidal forces of emotion within which aren't always to be trusted. I think I'm getting close to finally understanding that Buddhist truth about watching thoughts and not investing in them - they're only clouds passing. Just like I'm passing through. Onwards, once again, baby.

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