Things About The Day

Coffeeless mornings are the worst. It's nearly impossible to function when one doesn't wake up to find oneself standing in front of a puttering coffee pot that somehow was filled with water and grounds and turned on while still in a sleeping state. Coffee is miraculous. It makes conversations less boring, drives more delicious, and any event worth attending, like, say, morning. This morning there was no cream, and being the spoiled developed-world child that I am, coffee without cream is something like having sawdust for dinner to me. I could have gone to the store for cream, but without coffee to remind me that I could do that, I feel as though all I can do is stare helplessly into the kitchen from the couch and wonder how to get on with the day. Clearly there was no way I was going to make my 9:30 hot yoga class without coffee. I toyed with the idea of buying a coffee on the way there but that seemed like a terrible idea, for many reasons, mostly the one involving a big iced coffee just before hot yoga. So obviously yoga was out. Now I know there are many things I should, or at least could, be doing, but I find myself hopeless and despondent and unable to focus. I wonder if this modern epidemic of depression is merely population wide coffee deprivation.

I have a lot of things to get done today, if I can ever find my way out of this coffeeless abyss. A chain of events that began in a hot tub in Hood River has escalated to the point of surety that we are moving back to Washington in June. Hot tubs are amazing for epiphanies. As are people like Christy, who say the most profound things accidentally. All at once, almost simultaneously (once I told him), Josh and I realized that we were Doing It Wrong. All of it. That as much as we love Bend, all of the reasons we love it are things that we can not access. We are working our buns into the ground to have a lifestyle that we still can't afford. The recreational opportunities cost too much for 6 people - the amazing beer makes me really fat, and the job field in a tourist town isn't letting us break past survival. Maybe if Josh had gotten a fire job. Maybe if I didn't need surgery and he hadn't joined the air guard. Maybe if we had less kids, or they were more into video games than expensive things like skiing and cellos and skinny jeans. Maybe if we liked to never see each other or eat dinner together or put any money into savings - then Maybe Bend would be a better home for us. But as it stands, those are NOT the things we want, the lifestyle we desire. I have always wished for a more rural setting, but Bend seemed like a happy compromise between big city and small town. Lots of opportunity, a little less traffic. And it is, if you can afford the opportunities. Floating the river is free, so is the river trail, and the snow parks for snowshoeing and sledding and stuff, unless you don't get a winter pass and forget to pay the parking ticket that said pass would have avoided and end up with fees and stuff. But beer isn't free, neither is happy hour (although it's close), or any school activity that I have found so far. We miss each other. We miss life. We miss watching the kids play their sports, or having time to chaperon/embarrass offspring at dances. I don't worry much about the bills since I have a sugar daddy now, but Josh has been awfully crabby for the last couple of years for some reason. I think that keeping up with the Bendites is killing him. I think having a wife that shops to fill the lack of social connection and psychological stimulation is also killing him. I think having kids that jealously watch their friends go skiing on their season passes to Bachelor, and take vacations to Fiji, and spend more money on their wardrobes with their parent's platinum cards, is suffocating him. Never mind that our kids have almost exclusively designer closets, thanks to a totally RAD mom who bargain shops like a son-of-a-biscuit, and every hair product known to man, and good bikes and cellos and computers and every bit of whatever it is that is necessary to be a teenager in 2013. Never mind all of that. Never mind the food on the table and the chauffer waiting outside the dance at 11:30 for a kid who got a ride with someone else and forgot to text. Never mind a big, weird family with lots of adventures and stories and giant crazy trips to Disneyworld and Hawaii and Olympia and dogs and roadtrips and all kinds of fun that we have had. My kids are spoiled, unquestionably, but by Bend standards, they are among the deprived. Because we don't buy their "Cougar Pal" presents for them. Because we don't stock energy bars and sports drinks for their highly active lifestyles. Because they get second hand gear for their sports (unless Grandma and Grandpa happen to be visiting). We are all spoiled. I am ready to go back to a simpler lifestyle, where the once-a-year new pair of shoes is the envy of the whole 8th grade. Where I can can peaches and jump in the river and have coffee with my sister instead of talking to myself in the aisles of Goodwill on any given morning. I am looking forward to the necessity of planning dinner every night instead of remembering that Costco is 5 minutes away and they have $1.50 hot dogs. I am excited for that once a week latte in "town" when I go for groceries and Irish Dance.

All of that being said, I really need to get going today. Sorting, packing, folding, selling. Getting ready for a moving sale, eliminating EVERY POSSIBLE PIECE from the overwhelming mountain of stuff that will be transported across two states. But first, I must find coffee.

reminder of better days...