Nobody Gets Off In This Town*

The last two days I've rattled about, feeling like Polly Housewife, cooking, mopping, vacuuming, dusting (OMFG who am I?), reorganizing the linen closet for the fifteenth time, listening to an endless loop of Garth Brooks, recognizing for the billionth time the brilliance of the album Sevens.  (Just for the record, fuck off, all you haters.  Sevens is far better than any other studio album in the Brooks oeuvre.)  In the tiny container of our apartment, I can control the music selection, the number of chocolate chip cookies in the cookie tin, the number of times I check Facebook every day (three), and where I put the red sheets in the linen closet.  Outside of #206, I control little, little of my own destiny or joy.  So I make another batch of cookies, do another load of laundry, and run the vacuum compulsively.

My husband has been on the academic job market for quite some time.  And in late July he got an offer and he took it.  We moved in early August and now here we are. I am unemployed. He is so employed that even when he's home, he's working.  I am still commuting back and forth to Minneapolis, finishing up some commitments there, but most days I sit in our apartment, filling out job application after job application for jobs I don't really want, but not knowing what else to do.  

I nearly screamed at the computer every time someone posted a congratulatory comment on Facebook. That's great for Dr. BB!  Hooray!  That's exciting!

Yeah.  Exciting.  Fuck that.  The anger I feel over this move is so intense that sometimes I can hardly look at my husband without erupting.

But.  And this is a big but.  This was a deal we made when I dropped out of grad school.  We would take a job wherever he got one.  And it's not his fault.  It could be a lot worse. 

He loves it here. There is good biking.  There is a lot of outdoorsy type beauty. 

I hate it here. There's nothing to do, no place to shop, no place to go.

The discussion boiled down to the following:
Him: If we stay in the Twin Cities, I will be going backwards in my career.
Me: If we move there, I will be going backwards in my life.

Of course we moved. We are here. I am dealing.  Tomorrow I will slap the smile back on my face and go about the farce of a life I have.  Small town America, here I fucking come.

*Who else but the one and only Garth Brooks?