The view from the VU...

You know, often times, life gets away from me. One day, I'm single and living in a little apartment that floods all the time with my own rosebush growing in my window, and then I'mn freshly married and moving into a 3 bedroom duplex I can't afford and starting back to school full time and then I'm in the little yellow and blue house on a busy road and it's been 2 years and now I own the coffeeshop I have loved for years and I'm finishing the end of my first (dubious) year at Western.

I am currently sitting in the Viking Union building at a table on the very far side of the main dining room, staring out at the bay in front of me. This place has an amazing view. Even when I am pissed off at all of the administrative cracks I have seemed to slip through as a non-tradtional student, nothing sours this view for me. I can see the museum from here, red and antiquated. I can see the back of the mexican restaurant we always go to for John's birthday, and the building that houses the wonderful men who deliver milk to my shop, and the marina where I sometimes get to meet LCRP when he is in town with a tow or a class. I can see the curve of the drive that leads back to my house, the contour of the end of the spit as the road leads way out to sparsely populated countryside I drive with John in the summer with the sunroof open and the windows down, singing and dreaming of the house we eventually want to build.

Life passes, yanno? It moves and flows and suddenly, I'm almost 32 and working on my teaching degree and owning a business and married to man who works hard with me to keep both of us sane and happy. I moved here at 23, an unstable broken hearted wreck who jsut wanted to be in the little quirky place her best friend called home, a refuge while I reassembled my brain. I never dreamed I would stay here. I never thought this place would become my home or that I would find the best friends of my life here or the man I would eventually fall in love with. I didn't think that I would want to be part of a community here, that I would find belonging in a way I've never found in any other place I've ever been. I look at the view of the water from the hill above this town I've made my "hometown" and I think how amazing it is that things keep moving, even if I can't see them changing orr even want them to change.

John and I made a plan to clean out the craft room, re-organize it, and start prepping it for less crafty endeavors and more able to be a living space... for someone very very small. We both realized that if things go the way we are hoping, yesterday will actually have been the last mother's day that he won't have to thank me, too. He's looking at what we need to clean out and get rid of to start making room for a baby, and I am a little shocked at the ease with which he is adjusting, initially. We still have plenty of time and many more talks on the horizon, but the general "someday" talk is beginning to take shape and be less an idea and more of a plan. It's terrifying, and exciting.

I have a meeting with the Financial Aid department here at Western in about an hour, to determine whether or not I will be able to receive aid for fall quarter if I drop my Chemistry class. I am currently taking 17 credits and running a business and my household, and I just can't do it and succeed the way I need to. I need good grades to get into the next phase of my major and definitely to get into Woodring, the teaching college here at Western. Taking pre-calc and Chemistry and Biology and a communications class while I'm working 15 hours a week behind the counter, doing the books and payroll and supply runs to Cash n Carry, and dealing with John (even when his disease is managed, like now) is giving me crippling anxiety attacks. I have had numerous times in the last few weeks where I've buckled under the strain, and have turned into a sobbing snotty mess on John or Courtney or Chase's shoulder.

I have such a great life. I live in such a wonderful place. I have my health and this amazingly gorgeous city and partner who adores me and friends who would fight lions for me, and I'm so very overwhelmed that instead of appreciating this immense amount of good fortune, I'm cursing my choices and complaining about how abominable my life is. I need to let something go, and I think it's gonna have to be full time school. I can move down to 3/4 time for next year, and take classes over the summer. It's gonna be a pain in the ass, and it's going to take me longer to finish than I had hoped, but getting there later than I wanted to is better than not getting there at all.

And with that, I need to prep for my meeting.