I used to ache for days like this. Days that I could use to just sit and read whatever I wanted to read for hours and hours.

I took for granted always living with someone...always having someone there. Zue or Kricky. We didn't even have to be doing something or saying anything, but the knowledge that another person was existing in that room or that apartment with me. I've never, ever had time to myself before and now that I have it in heaping amounts, I might just go crazy.

I always wanted to live in a city by myself in a tiny apartment for a few years after college. I will go ahead and admit that I still daydream about it--no responsibilities other than myself, no husband to take care of and clean up after and cook for. Spaghettios for dinner or Indian take-out that I could eat on for days. The tiny apartment would be filled with books I'd read and planned to read and notebooks of stories and poetry that I'd written and photographs that I'd taken in Italy and New York and San Fransisco and India and Greece and Texas, clippings from articles I'd written or stacks of things waiting for me to mark up with my red pencil. A cat and a cut from my dad's jade plant the only ones to greet me when I returned with bags of dirty clothes and a camera full of photos to sort through. I think I could be happy doing that even now.

But I am in a farm house in Pounding Mill, Virginia. With a fantastic husband. I have that affectionate, better-than-I-ever-imagined cat to greet me with a stretch and a meow. I have a baby kicking and punching around in my belly. I have a large shelf full of books in almost perfect order. My house is clean. My bills are paid. The view outside is beautiful and green. I have a good job, not my dream job, but a job I can enjoy and learn in.

I'd always dreamed of both of these things, expecting actually the first--never thinking I'd be the type of person that someone would fall in love with and want a family with and live in a farm house with.

With both of these dreams though, in the periphery, I'd had friends to go out with at a thought. I could call them up and we could go anywhere. I guess I never counted on the ONLY thing left for me to do is spending a whole day reading on a comfortable couch. I figured that would be something I set aside...something I'd turn my phone and computer off to do. A time to separate myself. But days and days I spend reading about people living the first life I'd dreamed of...the one in Boston or Philadelphia or Pittsburgh with the cat and the thriving jade plant and the mess of books and papers and photos.

I'm not regretting getting married and living in Appalachia. I like it. I think I'd just rather be less of a recluse. The cat has spent most of today curled up on a dingy chair in what will be my baby's room, ignoring everything until midnight because she is used to me being here and not excited to see me.

I get a text message from my mom and my friend Kayla (living in Abingdon, able to do the things I want to do) and a former co-worker. An email from my husband because I'm trying to plan at least a week in advance a get-together for a friend's birthday. And I feel old. A quick greeting from these three people and detailed exchanges about shifts and days-off. I feel old and spent up and like I have missed out on something or am missing something.

And I still go back to the couch with my book and wait until my husband gets home to tell me about a day in the world of Dish Network.