It was good to stand on a ladder for a week, holding a paintbrush. I went to lunch with friends, and had a break from my new life that feels a little scary and dismal. I’m working on the sticker pack now, I like it when people give me money to make things I like to make. I like getting money to teach agility, but that is slow going. It was a valuable commodity at home, and here in the north, here in the central, it’s not so valuable. There’s a different vibe here along with it, with bright spots and dark spots. I have to remember to stay in the light.
A lot of things may have been mistakes. Shutting two businesses for the promise of new ones, seemed so possible at the time, when I had belief in myself and belief that these were things people wanted. Here, they want snow tires and expensive food and snow. I hadn’t realized that I wanted agility and sun and a cheap beer and empanada down the street from my house. Those things are long gone and before there is any kind of thrive, I have to figure out survive.
Survive the new agility vibe. Survive the high cost of living. Survive the drastically lower income. Survive the snow. If I can survive, maybe I can thrive. If I can’t survive, I can’t survive? The rest of my family, so far can’t. The $17 burgers, the how much is this heat going to cost us in this house, the sky high cost of internet, the we need snow tires, a snow blower, all the snow shit you need to survive.
Except for the dogs. They are thriving. They get musher’s secret wax on their feet and three mile loops with not a soul in site, and a new type of agility training in a square arena with walls and turf where the little plastic pellets are surely being injested on their toys. They lay around on carpeting in the new house. I do their nails, feed them way more food to keep weight on. They are as happy as I knew they’d be. I just thought I would be too, that I wouldn’t stay up at night dreaming of my old forest and old friends and old agility field. All the dreams of home, from this new place up in the north. I can dream of my trip back south, a new form of surviving, but where I can run the dogs and compete and see my friends and pretend, from a dirty Motel6, that I still live where I didn’t realize it was golden.