We woke up in a wig-wam, drove across Kentucky and Indiana, and returned our books on CD to a Cracker Barrel in Hammond.
Chicago mocked us with rain.
It pissed all over our Southern adventure.
Our adventure of silence and solitude.
Cabin living in the Smoky Mountains.
We read, drank, watched movies, watched the sunrise, cooked, sang, danced, hot tubbed.
It's been our dream lately.
To leave Chicago.
Ideally, I'd like to live somewhere quiet and hilly, where I can write and make music.
Hooray for me.
Lauren would like something along these same lines.
Hooray for us.
So how do we do that?
The ethiopian restaurant was BYOB.
We brought an assortment of leftover beer from our wedding.
I drank mine in a hurry, and then zoned out.
I went to that place again.
Somewhere between Overwhelmed and Defeated.
Between How and Can't.
Between Drinking Aimlessly and Getting Fat.
Here are some facts:
I am talented.
I play drums.
I play piano.
I can write, I have a voice.
I can write music.
I am funny.
I can make an audience laugh.
I have taught comedy.
Here are some more facts:
My talents don't generate income.
Just pocket change and debt.
So I've always had to have a job.
These days, I'm freelancing as a production assistant on commercials.
I get coffee, take out the garbage, run errands.
It's an opportunity to break into a larger department in the industry.
Camera, art, grip and electric, vanities, production.
I've kinda sorta considered getting into the locations department.
Taking pictures, getting permits, making people turn off lawnmowers during shoots.
But I don't have any real desire to do that.
And right now I don't have money for a camera.
Oh yeah.
Money.
Let's say we did move.
Into the woods or whatever.
What would I do for a living?
Become a panhandler bear?
More fun facts:
I did not graduate from college.
I took one semester of community college and majored in philosophy for no reason.
Then I dropped out and moved to the desert.
A few years ago, I considered going back to school to get a teaching degree.
The reason: Summers off.
Not exactly Stand And Deliver.
My mom keeps pestering me about becoming an air conditioning repairman.
"Those guys make good money."
A few weeks ago, I thought we had the solution.
We would run a B&B.
The idea came to us in Door County, Wisconsin.
A troll themed lodge was for sale.
The owners suggested we buy it.
We looked around the property.
We took notes.
We talked about it like adults.
It would be ideal.
Lauren would cook.
I would do housekeeping and front desk.
We'd work for eight months, and travel and write during the off season.
I was really into it.
We got the paperwork.
They wanted $600,000.
It didn't sound like a lot.
Until we wondered how we would come up with it.
Right now I have no savings.
The wedding was expensive.
Even after financial help and gifts, we have less than %2 of the %10 down payment to get a loan.
If every year I saved the amount of money I spent on the wedding, it would take close to ten years to come up with the down payment.
When I'm 46.
My second beer perspired with neglect.
I must have been wearing a real garbage sniffing look.
Lauren waved the fog from my face.
"Where did you go?"
I spoke in a labored, self-aware putty of descending circles.
Oh boy.
My wife married a blob.
Lauren's good.
She knows how to focus.
And while I'm tearing myself apart in a medieval wheel of failure, she knows how to breathe.
With a few words, it was decided.
We'll just save money.
For whatever's next.
My whatever's next didn't look too promising.
It was November and production work would be slowing down.
Which means I would find myself in the unemployment line.
My sighing was interrupted by the arrival of our food.
Shuro and duba wat and shrimp tibs and...
It was delicious as always.
But man was the honeymoon ever over.
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