Scattered, Smothered, Chunked and
My dear First Reader introduced me to the phenomenon that is Waffle House when I first came to Ohio more than seven years ago now. At the time, the little one nearest our house was his favorite hangout spot. He knew all the waitresses, and soon they knew me, too. They let me to know they approved of my quiet guy having a nice lady in his life, and were impressed with the sketchbooks I often doodled in while we sat there chatting with one another, them, and drinking endless cups of coffee. In time, and with the renovation of that particular Awful Waffle into a more 'modern' hard-edged store with all new staff, we stopped going. It just wasn't comfortable any longer, and it wasn't just us. The other regulars who treated it like the blue-collar coffee shop it was, sitting there telling lies and sipping black coffee, were driven off as well. It's sad, but...
Life is like that. It changes, sometimes even when you don't notice it doing so until after the fact. Especially when you are distracted. And, man, am I distracted at this season in life. I was thinking as I was standing in front of my computer (besides the occasional twinge of regret at having made it a standing desk only. Yes, I have a tall drafting chair. No, it doesn't work for me although the Little Man uses it all the time) that I am very scattered currently. Smothered in work, and feeling like I've been through a blender. So... yeah. Also, I may be hungry! But it made me think about the way we used to be, the way we are now, and the changes that are slowly creeping into our lives, again. It's only been a few short years since the chaos whirlwind struck us and left the family shaken, but closer than ever. This time, it's going to be packing boxes and teaching a Ginja Ninja how to brake at stoplights and painting the ceilings so they look nicer in her new place. Life moves on whether we want it to, or not. Sometimes we want change. But even when we do, the aftermath is unsettling.
It's human nature, I think, to resist change, even good changes. Humans are nearly infinitely adaptable. I've lived with environments that would kill you in a matter of minutes if you were not constantly on guard and prepared to withstand the cold. I'm not as happy with heat - there's only so far you can strip down! - but the invention of central air conditioning I have embraced whole-heartedly since we bought the Nut House and both of us experienced the delight of living with it for the first time in our lives. And at that, we discussed not using it. We'd never needed it before, after all. And here we are, two summers later, debating about when to turn it off because it is so nice to sleep cool.
We debated last night about going to the Awful Waffle, too. My favorite local used bookstore is going out of business (sad, but perhaps inevitable for reasons I do not have time to discuss currently) and is offering books at half their usual low price. Well, last evening was the only time I could squeeze out of my schedule this week to make it up there. So I called the First Reader and suggested he meet me there and we do dinner afterwards. Because we used to do the whole sit and drink coffee to embrace the air conditioning we didn't have at home. Now? That time is to sneak away from the kids, hold hands, and talk in peace. We didn't go out for coffee, though. We did dinner at a very nice restaurant we found by accident (our first choice was hard-edged sanitary cafeteria style shop, which is what you get when you simply google and follow the map to an unknown Korean place, I guess). We joked with the waitress about running away from teenagers. We left early, reluctantly, because the First Reader had promised the kids we wouldn't be out late on a rainy evening and we didn't want them to worry.
Life may be scattered and oddly chunky. But it's tasty in ways I could never have anticipated.