Caterwauling

I use the phrase “-adjacent” a lot — happiness-adjacent, wealth-adjacent, sanity-adjacent, etc. I picked it up when I realized that people claim to live in D.C. when they live in, say, Silver Spring, Rockville or, oh, Frederick, Md. So they’re not *really* from D.C. — they’re merely D.C.-adjacent.

So I’m doing some laundry at my friend’s “river house” in Colonial Beach, Va., so you could say I’m normalcy-adjacent this weekend. My god, it’s better than a five-star hotel here. I’m sitting on the indoor balcony that overlooks the second-floor living room, all of which overlooks the Potomac River. There are so Starbucks or Wall-Marts for 150 miles. No air pollution, noise pollution, nothin’. I saw a family of raccoons sitting at the side of the single-lane road to the house, and as it’s about 2 1/2 miles from the main drag to the house, there had to be about 12 deer along my way. I even saw baby deer. I’ve never seen them before.

I took a few photos while I’ve been here, but one thing is certain — the most-photographic moments happened when a camera was nowhere within reach.

I can officially use “hot-tubbed” as a verb now, as I did it last night and again this morning simply because I could. It’s perched right on the edge of a cliff, if that isn’t slightly scary, but OH MY GOD watching the sailboats go by while you’re getting a back massage from water jets, well all I can say is “sweeeeeettt.”

What amazes me is how my friend basically tossed me the keys to this riverside paradise and said have fun. I live in a rinky-dink closet with old-ass appliances because that’s all that $1,500 can buy you in D.C. (ahem, NOT adjacent). Everything here is state-of-the-art, from the plasma TVs to the jacuzzi to the washer/dryer to the four bathrooms (mine had the handlheld shower nozzle. Mmm, joy). Every room is decorated beautifully — everything’s a nautical theme, but different color schemes. And the bath products — different lines of them in each bathroom, many of which are from Hawaii. Good lord, do I HAVE to go back to my shitty life today?

All I have to say is to choose your traveling companions wisely. And even if you choose based on who deserves it most as opposed to whom would be the most fun, that’s fine but you’re going to be ever-so-slightly stressed out, even despite the grand hug that paradise gives you.

I see why wealthy people are so damn happy. The view is just inspirational — all I can see is water for miles. It’s amazing to want to take care of your surroundings — I’d sooner turn in the keys to my apartment and move without my crap than really clean it. Don’t get me wrong, I do clean it. When the mood strikes. But when you hate from the bottom of your soul your living conditions/situation, well, it’s easier to just go shopping than trying to put lipstick on a pig.

But weekends like these, I treasure. I’m very lucky to have good people in my job and my life who care about me, who are happy to let me tag along to see parts of the world that I would never otherwise know about. I put these experiences in the bank inside my head of “I want that; I’m going to work toward having that.” Because I deserve it — or, at least, I deserve more regualr exposure to awesome things. I’m just superbly grateful that others will entrust such awesomeness to me.

I guess you simply won’t know what you’re missing out on if, in fact, you’re missing out on it. And I look forward to “movin’ on up” from adjacent to a full-time resident, one of these days. Now I see why I work so hard … this is what I want it to result in.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 9:26 AM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.