Large machines rumble and beep outside my apartment. Just across the fence, a bunch of sweaty guys are building something and pushing dirt around with bulldozers. But, in the stillness of this moment in time, I can open the glass door to my screened-in porch and smell deeply of the mild air, this air that passes for winter here in this godsforsaken tropical waste, and feel good, because the air feels lovely on a deeper level than just what the five senses can understand.
Our new apartment is in a lovely little cul-de-sac of a place here in Westchase, the newest part of Tampa. This part of town is probably no more than ten or fifteen years old; when Lindsay and I were kids, this place was all primordial swamp. Now, construction rumbles and trendy new buildings spring up for young professionals. Down the street, struggling moms that make twenty five to thirty thousand a year have dressed in the best they could afford, molding their plaster faces into masks of snooty disdain. They're trying to sell apartments and condos to people in the forty to sixty thousand range, and they're all doing their best to feel like they're worth six figures. I'm glad we don't live there. No, I'm happy where I am. It's probably the nicest place I've ever lived...I know for a fact that the me of five years ago would be gnawing enviously at her liver to see me in this apartment. I'm sitting in a little alcove built especially for a computer workstation, typing on my tiny laptop. We occasionally use this as witchy ritual space, and it's perfect. Huge boxes are stacked high in the corners, teetering precariously against one another in an attempt to spill coffeemakers and strange kitchen devices all over the floor. Our bunnies are stacked contentedly against another wall, occasionally let out to run and binky around the mostly empty living room. Unpacking is slow and gradual, but we're happy.
And I am happy, despite my anguish at having no days below seventy degrees; actually, most are eighty or so. But the heat won't get terrible again until February, so for now, in this happy little place in time, things are okay.
And ahead of me looms the home stretch of my novel, my last bit of work before the dread task of revision. Very soon, I'll have to get off my ass and work. It is time.
But we have to put the chaos of moving behind us, and more urgent (and less pleasant) tasks lie just ahead. Very soon, though, life will resume.
Very soon.
