This entry is not from today. It’s from last weekend, and I liked it so I’m sharing it. The fact that I’m no longer with Sam doesn’t mean it’s not good writing. It’s just gardening that I liked, and not because I’m my own fan. I liked who I was when I wrote it, and it shows.
I am not sure that Sam is the right person for me yet. That should be clear, as we haven’t been dating that long. What I am sure about is that I am enjoying having an actual friend who is okay with letting me kiss them in public. Call her my girlfriend or don’t, we don’t care. The important thing is that when I take off into flights of fancy, she knows it. I can throw stuff out there like, “I notice you don’t have any pets. Do you want one ever or are you not a pet person?” And she knows I’m wondering if *I* can get a dog and just laughs. It’s funny not to beat around the bush.
I’ve had other flights of fancy, like cool ideas for a house or things to do with the kids, and she just rolls with it. She knows that images are pouring into me and I’m just talking about them. That as the pictures narrow, I’ll know what I actually want and not just a pie in the sky desire for every possibility that I see in front of me and making plans for all of them.
The best part is that I don’t feel the need to move, now or ever. That’s because I love my house, and I love hers. They’re both in great locations. It’s just that Sam can’t move in with me. We both have housemates, and hers are permanent. But it feels good that I don’t have to freak out about learning yet another new area of the country. I got lucky in that respect. Most of the time, when you meet people online, you are setting yourself up for failure if you meet someone really great. Logistics get in the way extraordinarily quickly.
Sam does something that is licensed by the state, so if we were to stay a couple long term, we can’t leave Maryland until she retires. I’m sure there’s all kind of equivalency exams, etc. but why? Maryland is amazing. So, while it’s a possibility that Sam and I might want to find a house of our own, it is not a possibility that the house will be anywhere outside of the area where I already feel comfortable, there’s great public transit, and pockets of small town life that still feel very urban because they’re not too far from DC and Baltimore.
That’s what feels right about this relationship, and right about letting my mind wander outside of time and space. The environment is right. I have found someone fantastic that gets my personality type and isn’t threatened by it. We have extraordinarily similar senses of humor, although I tend to be a lot raunchier with my line cook upbringing. Surprising, since Sam was a soldier for so many years, but that’s just not her vibe. Her vibe is extraordinarily sweet and then jokes that come out of nowhere occasionally that are so astute I have to fight to keep from choking. The laugh is not just the laugh….. it’s the surprise as well. It’s funnier coming from her because you don’t expect it.
In other news, I’m glad to be alive.
My house caught fire a few days ago. It was no big deal, but it could have been a disaster. An electrician drilled through a live wire. The wire was hanging and spitting sparks all over the place…. near a gas main. We almost blew ourselves up and several city blocks. That is not what happened, though. The electricians got us all out and got the electric company and the fire department out to our house in minutes. The fire burned some in the basement, some in the living room, but the house is structurally sound and we are all back in.
I’ve been through a house fire before…. that one ended badly. The entire house burned to the ground. I didn’t have flashbacks so much as the smell bent me over. Time flashed back and forth. I was eleven and 45 all at once. It was an interesting situation, because so much was up in the air. But luckily, I didn’t know about the gas main until later. My one comment on it is “it could have blown. I wouldn’t have cared. I wouldn’t have even seen it coming to care. Not being a nihilist or anything, just the percentage of what you can control in that situation is absolutely nothing.”
Stories That Are All True 