Dreaming about...

One of the things I have been doing recently for exercise is walking around the neighborhoods. I enjoy walking, it’s good exercise, the weather is nice (and in this part of the country, you better get outside and enjoy while it is nice, because it won’t last long!), and I can be alone with my thoughts. Of course, I choose different neighborhoods to walk in to keep things interesting. I think maybe that’s a bit voyeuristic, but I swear I don’t peek into windows. I just love to look at the different types of houses, cars, and landscaping. Oh, and if there is a garage sale—Wowzers!

I am on the lookout for a stationary bike to have something to do in the winter, when I no longer want to go outside.

One of the downsides of neighborhood voyeurism is I start thinking about the different types of houses, cars, and landscaping I THINK I want.

This is a vestigial personality trait I am working on eradicating. I tended to compare myself to others before, and you know what? It doesn’t get you anywhere but down on yourself. The house down the street always looks nicer, someone always owns a better car than you on the block, and sure, you could drop $1000 on landscaping in the front, but then you actually have to weed it.

Plus, it can distract you from the important things you want to do in your life and your own top priorities. No reason to want a better car than the one you can actually afford, just because someone out there has one that is better than yours. Someone out there is always going to have one that is better than yours.

J and I bought a house because we thought it was the right thing to do. We got the credit cards because we thought it was the right thing to do. We spent too much money on the car because we thought it was the right thing to do. It may have been right at the time, but it wasn’t right for us in the long term, and we found that out the hard way. Hindsight 20/20 and all of that.

Now we are in a place where we can dig out and rebuild. This presents a unique opportunity that not everyone gets to share. We get to look at what we want in our future, and craft the plan for getting there.

I don’t really want a brand new car or a pricey home.

I want to send the boys to college and have them graduate WITHOUT the student loans. I want them to be able to take the job they love, and not the job they need to take to pay those suckers off—for the next thirty years.

Then I want to be nomadic. J wants to travel as well, but he also wants a touchstone, a house. Nothing fancy, just a place to come back to.

We want to buy some land in the woods outright, and build our little touchstone ourselves. I want to watch my husband cuss and sweat, and I want to measure and saw and hammer. The only landscaping will be the garden out back and the blueberry and blackberry bushes that line the fence on the side. Once we’re done with the house, we’ll build the screened in porch where I can drink my coffee and the barn out back which will be Jason’s studio. When we’re done building, we’ll roam-- writing and selling pottery and glass from J’s efforts along the way.

I want to travel the globe, but mainly I want to drive every gorgeous road on this continent. I want to camp in the great expanses of Hopiland and finish the last chapter of my greatest book at dusk. I want to drink coffee at sunrise with my husband on the beach. I want to chase my visions at the foot of Bear Butte.

And then, while a blanket of snow settles the silence over a cold winter night, I want to be able to tuck in my grandbabies (which we stole for a month from one son or another) in the house that my husband and I built.

There’s no room in this future, our important future, for a fancy car or a quarter of a million dollar home, and frankly, I know that neither of those things will make me happier.