“I beat my machine. It’s a part of me. It’s inside of me. I’m stuck in this dream. It’s changing me. I am becoming.” ~Nine Inch Nails
Sometimes I feel like a time clock, sitting here on the wall, inert save for when people come and slide their cards through my mechanism. I sit here when I would rather be out there, working, holding my own card instead of being at the whim of others. That’s what this process feels like right now, this building process. Because we have a well; it’s dug, and the ground around it has settled again. That was a couple of weeks ago, and nothing has happened since. That was one card slotted through the mechanism, and I’m waiting for the others.
In the meantime I am here, in this expansive house that will never feel like home, existing. It’s not that I’m bored either. I’m doing more than I probably have ever done before, with my new book out, and having begun another one, with ferrying the children back and forth to appointments and various other fun activities. But things are on pause where it really counts, in a holding pattern that makes this existence a dull one, not uninteresting but like a knife when it hasn’t been sharpened. I feel like I’m sleepwalking through my life the second I step foot in this house.
I welcome any change in the routine, any chance to be myself in this place that doesn’t welcome individuality. I’m glad it’s spring now, at least, because I can open the windows 
and get a cross-breeze to at least try and get rid of this muskiness, to destroy these particles that I’ve been breathing and re-breathing for months on end. I want to go home, but there is no home, not yet. I can’t wait to see the walls being erected, but that won’t be until at least August, which seems like an eternity away from where I sit now.
It’s like being trapped, being here, in a way I’ve never felt before. The longer it goes on the more prison-like it seems, even though I can come and go pretty much as I please. Perhaps it’s because I can’t have friends over. Maybe it’s due to the insane need for constant order and organization. Or it might just be the fact that there’s still no real end in sight. If there were a defined end, if I could say I’ll be in my home by summer’s end, or by the middle of fall… something. Anything. But there is still no timetable. Maybe I’ll feel more settled here when I know there’s a solid expiration date.
Or maybe none of it will matter until we are no longer boarders, until we are finally actually moving into the house of our dreams, into our own home. I won’t hold my breath.
Sam
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