Yesterday, during the interminable first day back at work since the forgetting-I-don�t-own-my-life holidays, I realized I need an escape route. Definite. A plan. Mapped precisely out.

You see, everybody here seems here accidentally. Like they took these jobs back when they were young as a short-term thing and then and then and then: thirty years. Nothing but coming to work and going home and getting more and more bitter as the years move along. Yesterday I got the put-upon feeling that infects nearly everyone here (except Clara who, though she has worked here as long as anyone, is immune to the put-uponitude.) and I had to shake myself just to get past all the snappish and irritable thoughts clogging me brain. I don�t want to care enough to get like that. This is me after 2.5 years. Eek. I�m practically the newest employee here fer chrissakes.

I am aching for a way out. I long for something new and different in front of me, for some adventure, for a new future which does not hold the stingy vacation days syndrome.

I�m going to keep writing and I�m going to start madly collecting cheap books in the hope of having a stock somewhere between 10 and 20 thousand in a year or so. I�m going to get Jeff to build awesome bookshelves. I�m going to go to flea markets and trade books�I give you one, you give me two. I�m going to persistently send out stories and poems. I�m going to fake ambition. And then! I'll either be a writer who supports herself writing or, if that don't work, someday, my pretties, someday I will, at the very least, be sole proprietor of my very own new and used bookstore.

Don�t say it. Just don�t. I know, I know, this is just the flavor of the month. Next month I�ll probably want to try freelance editing or some such nonsense. What the fuck ever. Don't be like that, a nonsport, a rainer on the parades, a doubter of possibility. Wouldn't you rather be excited?

I�d love to have a cozy bookstore in the barn at the top of the pasture. Except we live in the middle of christian nowheresville so probably that�s one of the stupidest ideas ever. But wouldn�t it be fun. I bet you lovely people would drive thirty minutes to come to my awesome barn bookstore and if you did I would give you hot coffee or hot tea or hot chocolate or iced tea or a smoothie or something if it was summer.

I�m trying not to long too much, but rather to think practically. And seriously. Like math serious. I been doing math today & having fun ignoring my work. I love fantasy math about my fantasy bookselling life.

Sigh.

Oh and how I wish Bath lived nearby again so we could really do it together like we once planned. How I wish Bath lived nearby so we could really hang out in a friendly-like manner whenever we so desired like once upon a time.

I�m so damned bored of this job. Plus Jeff has this exciting business startup time going on and it looks so fun and exciting�like play, that kind of planning and execution. I want to be doing that.

Well so there�s that. And then there�s the end to the delicious warm-spell we�ve been enjoying. I miss you warmness.

But yes, and otherwise, super-fantistico, this life.