Autumn. I can't help being bitter. I try to shake it off, but these persistent 80F days and the tease of coolness in the evenings just make me ache. The pumpkin patches are out down here, but it feels like pants on a cat...they just don't belong.
This time next year I will be putting the finishing touches on our move. I will have a new job lined up and the UHaul booked. We'll be shopping for an inexpensive couch, and I'll be dreaming of real curtains.
When I close my eyes in the hot tub at the Y, I'm rather quickly transported to another place. I'm in my own hot tub, in a screened-in porch...it's early evening, I've just come in from a run, and Les is bringing me a glass of wine...
These can't be just dreams. I can make them real. The cynic in me tells me that it's no different than folks who wonder what they'll do when they win the lottery. I scoff at these folks, consider it a waste of time to speculate on something like that. But what makes my dreams different? And am I reaching too far? Dad used to talk about owning a popcorn store. Was he just talking to hear his head roar, or were there dreams inside that skull that he didn't let slip out, because responsibility plowed them under?
The hot tub is quite a few years down the road...I get that. So are the chickens and a house outside of the city limits. But that doesn't make them unreachable. I'm no stranger to hard work...given our situation, Les's head and all, there are them that would say it's unrealistic to want those things. But I've become an idealist, a dreamer in my adult life, and I simply won't let them go until I'm certain they're unattainable. If that makes me a fool, so be it.
The weekend lays out before me, full of promise...Mom's next trial isn't for 2 weeks, so I can get some serious work done in that apartment this weekend, provided they replace the AC compressor today. Life slows down when you're stuck sweating in an apartment. I can actually feel my brain go numb. We've been opening up here and there at night, but the damn apartment holds heat like a frickin' sauna...the east-west exposures and metal roof combine to create a blasted oven. We opened up last night and I went to sleep with it still reading 81F inside. But I'm not going to make excuses. Things need to happen in that place this weekend...I just won't bake if they don't fix it. There's so much that needs to be done, boxes to be gone through, areas cleaned...one step at a time.
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