The Man is out on 24 hour patrol, and I'm at home with my computer and a stack of unfinished thank you notes listening to the Weepies. It's Wednesday night on the home front, my second-to-last Bullis Wednesday. And so begins the countdown of lasts.
The biggest last that I'm faced with is that this week is the last time to prove to myself that I can live without deadlines or due dates, that I can motivate without the promised reward of good grades or someone else's approval. It's been three and a half months of tanking out on myself in that regard, but who knows? Perhaps I will suddenly be injected with some alien ambition and will find myself doing more than stagnating.
What a weird, weird few months. I've made friends, watched stupid movies, gone tubing down a silk-green river. I've spent hours writing (and weeks purposefully not writing). I've read my Bible (and avoided reading it). I've had many mugs of coffee (and almost as many of tea). I've gone for walks in the burning sun, seen seven circling vultures, watched a snake coil sinisterly, laughed at yellow butterflies. I've felt the ocean spray on my face and laid awake at night longing for rain to come. I've seen the hill country in the light of a lowering sun and read books the wind tried to tear from my hands. Most importantly, I've loved the Man so intensely that the thought of him leaving...is not a thought that I want to entertain.
And next Friday we'll squeeze all our belongings into our sun-roofed silver car except for what can't be squeezed, and we'll leave behind "my" back road, Saturday breakfasts at La Madeleine, the toaster oven that won't work at the same time as the coffee maker, the fuzzy TV, the boxes full of the Man's MRE's, the miscellaneous gear hiding behind the armchair, the laundry basket I dragged up and down the stairs twice a week, the Do Not Disturb sign, the scratchy white towels, the view out my window...and a thousand newlywed memories.
There are rumours that there's a home waiting for me somewhere in DC. I hope so.
