Family dinner last night with his side of the family. Suburban people with suburban problems. You lost your phone, so you bought another one for $450? What the heck is wrong with these people. I bought my phone used for $20 and it texts and takes photos and makes calls. It wakes me up in the morning, and I think it even plays music, but I don't care enough to find out. D's dad paranoid about D's sister's *$^%ing dog scratching the multi-million dollar coffee table, which you aren't allowed to put your feet on. New couches in the paaahhrlour even though the old ones were classier and real wood and not some polyester fire retardant garbage. The mother complaining about having to make the bed up for us for one night. The other sister parading around her latest boyfriend. Roasted meat from some grocery store from who knows where, and gravy that won't thicken because the brand new gas stove is a piece of junk but they won't admit it because it cost more than I make in a month.

OK - exhale - I feel better now.

Work is bothering me lately. A lot. It's partly about the content, partly about the atmosphere of the office. There was a job posting at the city that closed yesterday, and I can't stop thinking that I should have applied for it. The company I work for is small. I am meant to figure out a huge amount on my own, and while I am good at it, it's highly exhaustive. I'm tired. I'm always tired. Weeknights are write offs. Bedroom 'fun' happens once a month at best. It's not all me, obviously. D's had a rough semester too. And the air in the city coats my lungs is something awful, and I think that it has to be affecting the rest of my body too. D thumps my shoulders and it loosens sheets of this thick mucus from my bronchial tubes that I cough up for the next few days.

D is going to be working out of town all summer. He's going to be living in a trailer on a lake 3 hours west of town. I will be working and paying the mortgage and eating dinner alone and mowing the lawn and laying in bed all by myself in a city where I have nothing. I don't know where I want to be - but I know where I do not want to be. I do not want to be here or there. I don't want to be in my suffocating office, and I don't want to be living in camp up at the cold-dry-dusty-mean-intimidating mine.

I'm just laying this all out so that I can relax once we finally hit the road this afternoon. I'm struggling and more depressed than I've let myself believe. I'm OK, you know, and I'm in a good place for change. I have options*. I can find good things in all places, and I can find beauty despite the dying trees and diesel scented roadways, but when the heavy things push me down so far, as what's happening right now, all I can do is kick and kick and hold my breath and hope that I can find a way to rise before I have to inhale.