On My Mark, Get Set, GO!

At 5 o'clock when I lock up the dive shop, I'm not going to turn left onto Mason St. and drive across town to have supper with Durwood and an evening and night at home.  I'm not even going to be home tomorrow until nearly bedtime.  Nope, not me.  I'm going to drive up to Sister Bay to tuck myself into room #9 at the Edge of Town Motel and be ALL BY MYSELF for a bit.  Just one night and most of a day.  Can you tell I'm looking forward to it?  I am.  I need to be alone every once in a while and this winter has been a long one for togetherness around here.  Nobody's fault, just circumstances have kept Durwood housebound a lot because it's been a much colder winter so he hasn't wandered off for the afternoon with a long list of grocery stores to visit and until the beginning of February I felt like fried crap so I wasn't doing anything but moping.  But now I'm better and I found a way that I can be away for cheap and do a a little running away.  Just a little.  In about 3 weeks I'll be doing a little more running away, meeting a writing friend in Sheboygan for a couple nights.  That'll be good too.  By the end of March it'll start being nice-ish, fulfilling Mother Nature's promise that spring will come (right now I'm not sure) and the daylight will be longer too.  I purely hate these gray overcast days, I really do.  I know it's colder in winter if the sky's clear but oh I need that lid of clouds to be gone so I don't just fold into myself, slumped like a bad souffle with a frown on my face.

I forgot my knitting yesterday.  I know!  I was certain that there'd be no customers to keep me amused (or even awake) but I had a couple, well, one paying one, and I had my iPod so I listened to a book and surfed the web.  I totally forgot until about 9 PM that I always have knitting.  I have my "car knitting" a bag with a skein of dishcloth cotton, needles, and an ongoing washcloth.  How could I have forgotten that?  When I didn't see my knitting bag next to the desk I even went out to check if I'd left it in the car.  I could have gotten my bag of emergency knitting then.  Why didn't I?  I do not know, but you'd better bet I won't be forgetting it again anytime soon, either bag, the official knitting or the salvation knitting.  Sheesh.


February 28--Philip Webb, Cabinet.  "Where would you put it?"  "In that niche next to the window in the dining room."  He nodded and opened his mouth to speak.  She cut him off.  "Not the south window, the east window."  "Oh."  He shifted his weight to his other foot.  "What would you keep in it?"  She sighed.  He was always so practical.  Didn't he ever buy something just because he liked the way it looked?  Probably not.  "I'd keep serving pieces and linens in it."  She felt the tension at his slow consideration of whether to buy the cabinet or not crawl up her body.  Her fingers curled until her nails dug into her palms.  "I guess we can buy it.  Seems like a lot of money for a painted wooden box to keep placemats in."  That did it.  She was definitely kicking him out.  Just as soon as the checks cleared.

You know, I wonder if that's the sort of thing that divorces are made of.  I've never felt like getting one so I don't know what's the last straw but I imagine that many times it's something silly like that.  I know, I know, it's a symptom of a larger problem.  Durwood always was a traveling salesman, well, until about 8 years ago, so he went away so we each could live the way we liked, being alone on our own for days, then we could be together happily knowing that soon he'd drive away again.  That's what makes this whole togetherness thing hard to deal with at times.  We got used to something else, years worth of something else, and we both liked it.  But we're figuring out how to be together more.  Really we are.
--Barbara