Steven Easton

Ready To Be Done

Thursday, May 16

Well, y'all, we're two weeks away from from freedom. Praise the Lord. I'm so ready to be done.

Today I was super tired, so I actually ended up leaving the school during my open hour to go to our local coffee shop because I needed coffee or caffeine or something, and my brain just needed a break to not think about school. There's so much I still need to do, but so little time, even though it seems like there are 1,637 days left. It's just a weird feeling. I honestly don't even know why I want to get done so badly because it's not like this school has treated me poorly or anything. Sure, there's always going to people who are hard to love, but it hasn't been a bad two years.

On my way to the local coffee shop, "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus came up on a playlist, which talks about how the end isn't what's important, but the journey of getting there. That wasn't a lesson I learned until I deployed overseas. When I overseas, I didn't really feel unsafe, but I didn't know if I was going to get to come back home, so I had to learn to embrace how much it sucked. We played a lot of cards, and the guys and I did what we could to solve the world's problems through talk to pass the time.

It angers me when I hear parents say how excited they are to have their kids out of school. Learn how to enjoy the moment like your kids do. 

I think the real reason why I'm ready to get out of here is because it's just that time of year and we can smell summer because it's so close and also, when school's out, Ava will have already met her father; I just want that to be over because I want to know if I'm going to have clean up the damage or not. There's also a small part of me that doesn't trust him, even though this is on Stacey because she lied about everything. I hate that she did that because the only person she was really hurting is Ava. 

Oh, and next month, I'm getting married. That's probably the main reason I'm just not feeling any work right now.

Speaking of Morgan, she came over for dinner tonight because she wants to discuss things she wants to change about our house now that she's moving in, which really means having a prettier bedspread and putting curtains in the bedroom, which I have no desire to argue with her about. I couldn't care less.

While the roast was in the oven, Morgan wanted to go into my office/living room/room that leads into the garage because she wanted to see if there'd be enough space to put her desk. Understandably, she wants a space where she can do work, which I respect, but I realized that I'll have another person in my presence after 9:00 every night, which is when Ava goes to bed. If I didn't ever make Ava go to bed, I would never get anything done. Am I going to get anything done when I get married? Probably not. Oh, well.

"Ya know," Morgan told me, "for a guy, you keep this really clean, but I can still tell there's no woman living here."

Raising my eyebrows, I folded my arms. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"The colors are very...neutral with the exception of the two rooms Ava got to choose the colors for." 

Laughing out loud, I put an arm around her, kissing her hair. "If I let Ava pick the colors to the whole house, everything would be pink."

"You should've given her the option to choose the colors to see what would happen."

"Ha. Ha. No. I took her in so she didn't have to make hard life decisions on her own, and the color of paint is a hard life decision."

"You didn't do too bad on the paint in this house."

"So, I did bad, but not too bad?"

"That basically sums it up."

"Okay." Giving her a small smile, I sighed. "I tried."

"All the work you've done on this house brought up the value so much though. It looks good."

"You didn't see it before, right?"

"No, but I heard about it."

"Yeah, Ava was afraid to stay here at first." I paused. "It was better than the apartment I grew up in, so I wasn't complaining."

"Even when you first moved in?"

"Well, it just looked bad because everything was aged and stained--not like stained, but there were stains on the floors and walls from God knows what. I mean, if you spill on carpet, then it leaks through to the wood, so... It looked worse than it was."

"How long did it take you to restore the house?"

"Like, all of the first summer we were here. It was like a nine to five job, but it was good because it gave me something to do."

"Do you like it here?"

"Yes." I can answer that without hesitation now.