Looking Forward
Bring it!
In the last few things I’ve written on here, I have been focusing on things that happened, places I’ve gone. This time I have more forward-looking things on my mind.
The first one has been a bit of a thorn for several weeks, and I hope it’ll be an improvement — we can see a sort of light at the end of the Hobbit House tunnel. Assuming the stars continue to remain aligned a bit longer, we have a new apartment to go to within a few weeks. Notice, I say ‘apartment,’ not just the next place to stay. We’ll get to put our things down. We’ll get to completely unpack and put everything away, assuming we can find space for it. I am just really sick and tired of temporary. In one way or another, we’ve been living temporary for more than three months. It’s old.
It’s been an incredible several months, and each place we’ve stayed has been with generous, kind folks who really want our stay to go well. But impermanence wears on you. Soon, assuming all things go as planned, we will have a more permanent place. It’ll mean getting to know a whole new neighborhood, finding more comfy places to enjoy, learning where they keep the gluten-free bread in the local Mercadona, but it’ll also mean no more tripping over my own stuff. We’ll have a regular sized refrigerator in a kitchen that is actually separate from the rest of the living room. We’ll even, theoretically, have wifi that works in all the rooms and an electric box where we can flip a circuit-breaker back on if something is wonky with the power.
Mitzi is another thing I am looking forward to. Mitzi is our pibble-lab mix dog, and she’s been back in Chicago without us. She’ll finally arrive — with our friend Amanda — just a bit after we get out of the Hobbit House. I’d understand if our dog was pissed at us after abandoning her for so long, but probably she won’t be. She’s a dog, and a really good dog, so she’ll probably just be happy. Especially if we don’t put her on another plane again, and I really don’t think that’ll be a problem. No more planes for you, doggo. Just a big new smelly beach to romp around. That is a lovely thought, so I am very much looking forward to it.
Hopefully, regular Spanish classes are also in our future. The idea of being even marginally less helpless is wonderful. In some cases, I just need the words knocked out of that dark unused place in the back of my head. But I also need some more vocabulary. There’s only so much you can say — it turns out to be more than you might think — with about six verbs and a moderate understanding of the present and past tense. So I am looking forward to getting started on the very slow road to not-helpless.
What else? Well, if I can pull it off with my very limited verbs, a freaking haircut; perhaps a marginal improvement in my understanding of Valencia’s bike lanes; more weird, interesting, wonderful places to see. Here’s to it!
