“So go work on your house...

…and forget about it.” © Under the Tuscan Sun

That’s exactly what I aim to do – work on the house, and anything else that needs working on, and forget about it. “It” being my love life. I’ve dwelled on it long enough, don’t you think? And I’ve come to realize that there is no point in dwelling any longer, especially when there’s so much work that needs to be done and happiness that needs to be had. So this past weekend my step father came by to work on my yard. It was beginning to look like I’d begun a game of Jumanji back there and a lion would appear out of the foliage at any moment. And while he was back there I made him a sandwich, sliced up an orange, and then sat down to put together my hammock stand. It was truly exciting. I’m not kidding. I cannot wait until it’s sitting in my backyard and I climb into it and read a book or flip through a magazine. I have so many books on my shelf I’ve yet to read.

After I’d put the hammock stand together I wrote out a list of things I’d like to do to the house in the order I’d like to do them. Or, the order that made the most sense to me:


- Pour a concrete foundation behind the garage (bbq central)

- Paint front porch (it’s faded glory blues)

- Install new front door (curb appeal)

- Expand and remodel the kitchen (the heart of the home and the bane of my existence due to its size)

- Expand and remodel the bathroom (why not?)

- Paint the house (makes sense if I’m going to expand the back of it)

- Fence the house (the rugrats next door need no more access to my lawn)

These are mostly big ticket items, yes, but I plan to work as slowly and as comfortably as my money will allow. And in the meantime, I have other things, “inside” things, to work on. I’m budgeting fiercely and I’ve set a goal to save 10k by next summer. This is also Miles’ senior year of high school and he’s playing varsity football, which means he’ll need lots of cash for uniforms, homecoming, prom, pictures, yearbook, and whatever rigamoro the kids are being told they need these days. Then there’s my little side project, the little seedling as I’ve come to call it, that I am hoping to build into a Big Deal. I’m still mapping that out and it is also slowly coming to fruition. Labors of love, these are. But while I’m working on all of this and focusing on the things that I’d like to see grow for the better, I’m beginning to really like someone. The caveat is that he lives in another state. Womp womp. On the bright side, his living so far away forces me to accept that it is very unlikely that we will ever be in a position to be a couple, so whenever my mind begins to veer towards thoughts of possible dating and romance, I quickly snap out of it. These things just aren’t possible to do with hundreds of miles between us, so there’s no need in fantasizing. It’s quite unfortunate though because I do like him enough. But I have to accept what is real and logical. I am a grown woman, after all. So while I enjoy the times that he and I talk (the other day for an hour) or text, I don’t invest too much into it and I take it for what it is – a very lovely distraction. Although, the optimist in me refuses to let go of the idea that anything is truly possible, and that life is stranger than any fiction as well as any reality that I’ve cooked up and consumed, so while I lay outside in my new hammock, reading and daydreaming, I will certainly dream of him and the possibilities of him and I…however fleetingly and unrealistic they are, of course.