Sarah

In two months, I am moving to Las Vegas.  No Rebecca Smylie/Lisa Piorczynski here.  I’m telling you up front.  I got a new job—a one-year stint (something legal)—and come July, I’ll be leaving DC and moving west.

And before we start talking about if I’m excited, if I’m sad, if I’m going to return to DC afterward, let me also say this: because of my new job and the variety of our other life events, we, the women of the Apron Stage, have decided to give our two weeks’ notice.  We will stop blogging on the Apron Stage at the end of May.

For true.

There are, it turns out, a lot of things I don’t know about this whole situation.  For one: I don’t know where I’ll be living in Las Vegas.  (I’m currently looking for a roommate or two.  Know any late 20s/early 30s cool LDS women in Las Vegas wanting to share a house/apartment?  Send ideas to theapronstage_at_gmaildotcom.)

Also: I’m going to Vegas to look for housing soon.  I don’t know where I’m staying the night of Sunday, May 23.  (Anyone want to host me?  I’m trying to avoid staying at the Golden Nugget.  Have a free couch?  I’d be lovely guest.)  (Note: Since the writing of this post, I have found a place to stay this weekend in Las Vegas.  The AS came through.  Thank you for your generous offers, team.  Thank you!)

And: I don’t know if I’ll return to DC.  I don’t know if I’m more excited or more sad.  And I do not know what will happen with me and Manfriend.  I don’t know any of these things.

But I do know this: I will miss the AS.  I will miss Rebecca, Lisa, Louise, their men, the guest posters—past guesters and those who should have been.  I will miss the Sunday evening powwows with the roommates, hashing out my next day’s post, eating Kim’s kettle corn, and losing to Steph at hearts.

And I will miss you.  I will miss those of you who commented, those of you who lurked, and especially those of you who outed yourselves in conversations with me at parties, at church, at work.  So often, it went like this: “How’re you, Sarah?”  And then before I could answer, “I mean, I confess–I read the Apron Stage.  I stage.  I know everything about how you’re doing.”  You have been so gracious with me, so generous.  I have spent the last nineteen months feeling very much like a Z-list celebrity.

Good goo, there are a million things to miss.

As I write this post, I am listening to the Glenn Close reading of Sarah, Plain and Tall, an audio book my sister Anika and I listened to every night for years, as we fell asleep in the room we shared.  Sarah is a lover of the sea, who moves from Maine to somewhere on the prairie, to be mother to two farm kids and, eventually, wife to their father.  During the month she visits them—before she decides to marry the dad and stay—the children are worried Sarah will not like their fields and their farm, and will choose to return to Maine and the sea she loves.  But Sarah assures them, “There is always something to miss, no matter where you are.”

There is always something to miss, no matter where you are.  I’m not sure why, but that comforts me.