Someone came to my blog via Jacksonville, TN and I just want to say to said person, I do not actually think that Tennessee is comprised of utter darkness. In fact, I think it would be pleasant to visit there. It was simply the only state adjacent to Kentucky that I could come up with off the top of my head. Ohio, in retrospect, could have done just as well. Perhaps Indiana even better.
That off my chest, I must say that today is a very bad day.
And just as I was writing that sentence, Keith came home unexpectedly, and he was having a terrible, awful day as well, so we collapsed into each other's arms and had a joint pity party which then turned into a tickling session which then......anyway, suffice to say, he has headed back into work and we each feel much better.
We hate it here, that is all there is to it.
Well, there is more. We're trying to pay off the, as I think of it, Tier 2 debt. Tier 1 was business and bank credit cards, which we paid off during the deployment. Tier 2 is the Star Card (the military credit card which can only be used on a military installation) and recreational vehicles, one of which is sitting on my own personal credit card, a situation I find most uncomfortable.
But mostly, we hate it here. Here is all well and good if here is where one wants to be. But we long for the glories of past days, now heavily glossed over with the sheen of nostalgia.
Oh, the gilded barbecues upon wide expanse of perfect deck, bedecked with blooming flowers and bordered by the very Rockies themselves! The neighbors loudly puttering about in their yard and putting their head's over the fence to converse, the birds flocking to the bird feeder, the broken hoop which saw many a drunken game of Around the World.
And the garage! Oh the garage! I will weep if I talk of the garage so we won't linger upon its sealed and smooth cement floor, finished walls and trim, shelves upon shelves of storage space and wide windows. Or the concert speakers which blared country music classics, or the wood paneled eight track player, which did more of the same, only more authentically.
The weather! The sun! The King Soopers right down the road with bags of baby spinach for only one ninety nine and the door man to whom I never spoke but with whom I felt I had a quiet, civic connection.
Friends a phone call away, however irregular those phone calls might be made and shopping just down Powers if one wished to shop. The gleam of the floors, the polish of the kitchen counters, the sound of sirens and traffic coming in the open windows and always the light.
And best of all, just an hour away, endless mountain tracks high up in the Rockies, drenched in clear, fresh air, that we could drive to anytime at all and have all our worries worn away by the roar and rumble of the four wheeler.
But now, alas! Everything smaller, put away, dreary, dark and unknown.
I must wrap this up, the girls are clearly communicating "Outside or Bust" which I ignore at my peril.
