The house doesn't smell like an empty show house anymore. Or a stranger's house. I don't know what it does smell like, which I guess means it smells like us.
I can drive around now without evaluating houses for potential livability. But when I do look at other houses it is with the smirky and true thought that ours is better.
One night in the driveway I looked up and had the completely irrational but reassuring thought: oh good, we live under Orion now.
---
Today I went to the coffeeshop to work, for the first time in forever, because today was the first time in forever that I haven't felt like I was falling apart. The litany of my fucked-up sick body is boring and sad.
It was perfect: I had a couch to myself. I sat in front of a big window with the water running down outside. When the lights went out, one coffee guy held a flashlight so the other coffee guy could wash dishes. To amuse us because our internet had gone away, they told a ghost story which went nowhere but started it happened on a day just like today... in a coffeeshop just like this one, oooOOOOOOoooo.
