It Seems Like We're Walking In Circles...

You know that feeling that you get when you are walking down a street or making pancakes and you just swear that you’ve done it before?  In that exact place, at that exact time, in that exact way?

Déjà vu, right?

Well, this past Saturday night, I experienced the most intensely strong déjà vu of my life.  I found myself in a warm, dark room, surrounded by moose décor, lifting C’s folded t-shirts out of one of many black garbage bags on the floor. Out the window I could see that I was on the second story of a building, and my ears could faintly make out the sound of quiet voices and clinking dinnerware.   The savory aroma of pot roast hung in the air.

But no,

It couldn’t be.

My mind must be playing tricks on me.  I looked at my watch.  It was ten minutes after the alleged rapture, so maybe this wasn’t déjà vu at all?  Maybe this was some strange take on an afterlife?  We’d done this before – we’d been here, we’d left here – how could we be back??

On occasion, the truth hits like a twenty-ton steamroller, and at that moment I was about to get flattened.  This was no déjà vu, no afterlife, no joke, no kidding.

We were back. 

Yes, C and I have returned to our favorite former stomping grounds.  We have again taken up residence above our local restaurant.  Gone are the mornings of sun streaming through the skylights and frying a couple of eggs on the gas stove.  Say hello to the daily spritz of bacon body spray and making coffee in the bathroom.  Good-bye to hosting dinner.  Hello take-out pizza.  We are returning to the realm of multi-function everything.  Need to shave your legs and do the dishes?  No problem – pull a Kramer and take it all to the shower – just don't trip on a spoon.  Want to eat breakfast and pick out today’s clothes?  Great, just turn around from the table and grab a hangar.  The only thing we can’t do here is watch TV from the bathroom, which I guess is ok considering all of the things we can do. 

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Even as I throw it around as a dramatic foil for most other living arrangements, we’ve got it pretty good.  We can walk to almost anything in town (which now includes the only-open-in-the-summer ice cream stand – a hazardous personal vice), don’t need to worry about paying for oil heat (someone throw another log on the deep fryer!), and... (big finish)…  it’s not -10 degrees out, which it was the last time we lived here. 

Everything is better above freezing.   Even déjà vu.