Sunday Post With Green Tea

I am wearing fleece pajamas and seriously contemplating trading in my car for a new one later on today. If the economy crashes, I am fucked, but not doubly so if I take the deal Subaru has been offering me on a trade in. This kind of economic freedom is very new to me, having entered Living Wage Income at such a late stage in the game. Many of my friends have been making six figures for years. I'm just happy to be done grad school.
I have been living a double life of sorts for about 8 weeks now. Half the week I live in apartment in a barn on the flank of Mount Hood. I have a life up there, with a work space and a cadre of friends and a reputation to uphold and accounts to pay and afternoons spent exploring places I have never been. It is a wonderland there, with hidden streams and waterfalls, horses to play with, and thick frost on my windshield in the morning. Many times I find myself traveling down a path with Cooper and feeling a strange but sweet combination of wonder, joy, and absolute knowing that I have come home. My karmic refugee status as a Minnesotan is at long last wearing off. I shake the rain out of my hair, towel the dog, and track in some mud.