Now Into Next
The pollen outside today was actually visible. It was raining pollen onto the car, and I could see many little granules of it running in delicate rivulets down the glass. Surprisingly, both Mykala and I seem to either be getting used to the constant congestion of allergy season or our bodies are adjusting. Mykala might have mono, and by extension so might I. Both of us have histories of remarkably poor ear nose and throat health. My future children (not yet on the way, though Mykala and I frequently talk about you in the abstract), if you are reading this, I am very sorry for your ears — you can blame both myself and your mother.
Anyhow, Mykala and I went to Menards and bought a hammock today. I was saying “we can’t afford it” before. Mykala was saying “if we can’t afford this, what can we afford?” Also: cost per use on a hammock gets really low — it’s a lot of relaxation for not a lot of money. After reassessing the financial situation, and wanting to bring joy into my wife’s life, I relented — we bought a 500 pound-capacity stand with a colorful cloth hammock. We put the whole thing together on the patio, atop the garage in the duplex here.
The whole contraption took up half the patio!
“I, uh, well don’t think it’s going to work,” said Mykala. “How will we do anything else out there?” She was, of course, right. So, I began packing the whole thing back up again, to be returned. It looked like someone had done the same before, because when I unpacked the thing, the scratches and ragged tape seemed to indicate that someone else had gone through the same exercise. Oh well!
Someday, we’ll live in a house with a yard, and we’ll put up a hammock on the green grass. We’ll drink ice tea. The dog we don’t currently have will chase the kids we haven’t yet had and the little kiddie pool we haven’t yet bought will slowly warm up under the sun of a summer we haven’t yet started.
As we once again take the wheel of lives whose courses have long been dictated by decisions 8 years in the past (dental school being one of those), we begin to realize the weight of the future. The endless possibilities leave a person breathless. So, as we jump from now into next, we hold one another tightly.