a quiet winter night

"Damn it, Squirrel! No! Get back in your hole, we're past this!"

It's 10:00 P.M. and I'm well on my way to crawling into bed. The wind-down set goes something like this [what I wish were] most nights: first I take one of those fifteen-minute-long, do-nothing-but-stand-there showers with the water scalding hot so much that it bathes the entire bathroom in a sauna-like steam. "You can see steam coming out from underneath the door," Ams mused once upon a time. The water steams the moment it comes out of the shower-head, and it's that kind of hot that makes every cut and gash and slice on your body burn like someone's flushing 'em out with battery acid, the kind of pain that feels good, the kind of pain that tells you you're rough and weathered, you're a MAN. Okay, maybe it doesn't go that far (but maybe it does...), but end-result is that I'm refreshed and relaxed once I slip into my PJs (first choice: silky Spongebob Squarepants pants; second choice: plaid cotton matching shirt and pants). Washed and clothed, I light one of those scented candles that floods the room, and I crawl into bed and journal for a while, and then I'll read some J.R.R. Tolkien while "rockin' out" to Led Zeppelin. Thus this moment--me stuck in limbo between shower-&-PJs and crawling into bed--comes wedged between the Past and the Future, and like all great nostalgic saps these things are constantly on my mind, and even more-so with the Breaking News developments that are changing the landscape all around me.

"Yes, I know you're there. No, you're not being sneaky.
You had your week, remember?
Not everything has to be about you."

As you may have seen yesterday had you read my "weekly re:cap" (which is soon coming to an end, I'm afraid), Rob and Mandy are on the doorstep of a move from Cincinnati, Ohio to Portland, Oregon. All this came suddenly and like a whirlwind, taking us straight through nap-time. Rob's got a new roasting job that's a step up from where he's at now, and he's grabbing this opportunity and making it happen. Really, we're all excited for him. We're also quite sad for him and Mandy to be leaving us. None of it's truly set in for me, this I know for certain. And as I mused yesterday, it probably won't set in for me until I stop seeing him at work and stop seeing Mandy when I come home from work every day. It's gonna get lonelier around here, despite the fact that most of my other best friends will still be here. I'm betting my acknowledgement of all this will take place in two steps: (1) Excitement for them and this opportunity, and then (2) Incredible sadness over their absence. Right now I'm mostly incredibly pumped for (and envious of) them and this new adventure and change in their lives. But once they're gone, the selfish side of me will feel their absence stronger than their presence (hmmm, heard something like that before...), and that's when the real sadness will begin. But change is a part of life, no matter which way you look at it, and I'm coming not only to accept it but to be thankful for it, despite how taxing it can be at times: without change, there's only stagnation, and that gets boring and we get boring because of it. 

I'm sure I'll have much more to say on their leaving as it draws near and then fades into the past, but suffice it to say for the moment that while it hasn't fully set in, I'm exhilarated by what they're doing and feeling the first dew-drops of sadness tickling the back of my koala throat.