We are here.
Yesterday morning we woke at four thirty and were on the road by five thirty. There are few things more depressing that sleeping the last night in an empty, meaningless house, with an early morning, a long, hot drive and no home to get to, waiting at the end of it.
It's also oddly exciting. It's like free fall. We huddled up in the deep dent our bodies made in the quickly deflating air mattress, our heads close together. There was nothing distracting us from what is real, and what is necessary. No stuff cluttering up the view.
I've felt so alive lately. It's uncomfortable and makes me tired. I can't hide behind a routine; I feel everything immediately.
I'm not made for that kind of sustained, emotional intensity, so I've been living, at every possible opportunity, inside my own head. It's driven Keith crazy on more than a few occasions, when he's called my name, or waved to me, or otherwise attempted to get my attention, and couldn't, because I was sunk down so deep into myself.
I'm going to have to reread all the work I've done on my story in the last few days, because I have no idea how much of what I wrote is true for me, or true for the story. It's a fine line.
Keith's mother read my rosemary faerie tale and was enthusiastic about it, and wants me to send it to Disney so they can make a movie out of it. Now she wants to read this new one, and send the rosemary one on to her sister, who wants to read it now that she's heard so much about it.
That's all very encouraging. I'm not sending the new one out though. It's not finished, first of all, and I don't want to lose control over it. I don't mind, so much, losing the rosemary tale.
Keith is off looking at a house we found on the military website for rental homes. We found quite a few. Well, we found five, but that seemed like quite a few. He should be calling me soon, I'm anxious to hear from him; I really hope this house he's looking at is in a good neighborhood. It's available immediately. Immediately works for us.
The drive down went better than I expected, though there were two times when I nearly had a break down. Once, just outside of Atlanta, in heavy traffic, when Keith changed lanes and I couldn't follow him because sixteen wheelers were barrelling up at ungodly speeds in the lane to the left of me, followed by a steady stream of cars. And our exit was coming up, but I didn't know what it was, and I couldn't see the HD, because I was stuck behind another truck.
That was bad. But worse was when we got off the highway to find a hotel and then had to get back on, and Keith had the space to move across three lanes of traffic to get to the entrance ramp back on the highway.
But I didn't. I had to duck and freakin' weave through traffic coming up from behind me, breaking, accelerating, jerking the wheel, until I got to the ramp behind Keith. I've never been so freakin' furious in my entire life. I was swearing at the top of my lungs and got the girls all worked up in the back; they were like a chorus to my profane rage.
I wore broken down, ten year old Merrell clogs, no socks, a wrinkled cotton skirt, a disgusting, wrinkled, stained, too large white linen shirt, untucked, with the sleeves rolled up. I waited in the car while Keith got us rooms.
We got a nice one, after Keith wore them down. There are few people who can stand up to that man for very long. I happen to be one of them; the hotel clerk was not. We got a room on the ground floor and took up five parking spaces in front of it, with the car trailer , HD and my car.
We're in the very back of the hotel, though, and there aren't too many people back here. Thank goodness, because the girls keep barking at suspicious noises, smells and sounds and as you can imagine, one of those keeps popping up every few minutes.
He just called. That house did not work out, but he is off looking at another one and another realtor called. Sigh. I think I'm going to go watch some mindless TV.
