Another Year or Two

I am officially

2012-05-24T19:49:24-05:00

sixteen. And I officially passed my driver’s test. So can officially drive without supervision.

And my mother is officially awesome. For my birthday she lined things up with a realtor, and we looked at several houses. (Our landlord has been more of a jerk than usual lately. He won’t put in a yard or let us put in a yard, or improve anything about the house.) All the houses had nice things about them. But one was a clear winner. It wasn’t the biggest. In fact I think it’s the smallest. It is on the edge of the neighborhood where we used to live. It has a nice big back yard with several huge trees. Downstairs there is a master bedroom and another room that can be a bedroom but will probably make a better office. Upstairs is the great part. The entire second floor is one long room, with sloped ceilings at the edges. It has windows in all four walls. Out one window there is a little balcony that looks over the back yard. My mom says that floor can be mine.

She let me call in the offer. It has to be accepted, and then everyone has to inspect it, but hopefully we can move a little while after school is done.

Building Beds

2012-05-24T19:48:55-05:00

Since the girls’ rooms are so small, I decided to build them loft beds. This way they can use the space under the bed for a desk or bean bag chair or something like that. I built them both this weekend and this week I’m going to round off the corners and varnish them so they feel more like real furniture, rather than something I threw together at the last minute. I bought the mattresses too, but they are in the living room for now while I finish up in the bedrooms. Wendy saw them yesterday and said I was backsliding. We laughed about that. Then she asked if I had bedding yet. I don’t so now we have to shop for sheets and pillows etc.. For a while I was wishing the girls would arrive sooner but now I’m feeling like I’ll be lucky to get everything done in time as it is.

Wendy seems to like Moose, and she keeps telling me I should ride him a few times before Becca comes even if that’s all I do. I’m still not keen on it but we’ll see.

This summer is shaping up to be nice and busy from a work perspective. I got an official estimate to Taylor on the indoor arena and she’s talking to her bank about financing. I also got a call from a young lady who is going to open up a coffee shop downtown. She’s going to have me finish the interior of the space. That will be a nice job as well.

Feeling like Summer

2012-05-23T08:47:09-05:00

How the time has been flying! I don’t quite know where to start.

My lawyer called on Friday. I can’t remember how much I’ve written about this but she’s said all along there is evidence to support the idea that my old lawyer and my ex were colluding to allow him to keep withholding alimony. She has been counseling me to sue. I have been unsure how I feel about that because it seems so aggressive. Also, Kyle’s dad did send an alimony check this month. It came from some automated payments system, so I think I can assume I’m going to keep getting those for a while. It feels so strange to be in such a different place financially after so many years of scraping by, and greedy to keep going after more money.

But today my new lawyer said she approached my old lawyer and told him I might sue him, then proposed a modest settlement out of court. He agreed to it so now there’s another check coming. My lawyer said even if we couldn’t prove he was deliberately shielding my ex, we could prove he didn’t try to help me when he was pretending he was, so that is enough to warrant this payment. Frankly, I can’t wait to tell her thanks and good-bye.

In much less complicated news, I rode Moose twice this week! I think we’re making some progress. He’s relaxing more when I’m grooming him and tacking him. I know this sounds strange but I didn’t realize he’d be so different from Chip. He doesn’t do anything he’s no supposed to do, but everything from the way he looks around at things and walks when I’m leading him to the way he picks up his feet when I need to pick them is just not the same! I’m adjusting though and I think he’s starting to feel more comfortable around me already. Taylor didn’t have to correct me nearly as much in my most recent lesson as the previous two. She said after the ride that it is really good I’ll be able to ride Moose so much until Casey’s daughter gets here, so he won’t be rusty. I’m happy this seems to be working out for everyone!

Disaster

2012-05-23T08:46:55-05:00

Today I saw Chad because we’re in class together of course and he told me Taylor sold the horse he’s been riding so that is awful because it means as soon as school is out there goes my Chad time. The only good news is the horse isn’t getting taken to its new home until next Wednesday so we have one more lesson together. After that I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve gotten so used to talking to Chad so much. I realized with how Annette has her new best friend Chad is actually the person I talk to more than anyone. I talk to Liv a lot too still but that’s on aim so it’s different.

The only thing I miss about Annette is she was so good at coming up with plans about things like in this case I wonder if she could think of a way for me to keep seeing Chad at least sometimes over the summer. It’s hard because as far as I know he doesn’t really do anything except work at Taylor’s. I guess one good thing is even though I’m still in love with him I think he thinks of me as a friend now so maybe I could just call him sometimes and see if he wanted to go do something that wasn’t a date. It’s weird to think about doing that but it would be better than not seeing him. It’s May 2 now and Friday and the end of the day. The last day of school is May 23 which means I have exactly three weeks that’s so depressing.

To the Wire

2012-05-16T12:13:57-05:00

I am well ready to be done teaching high school. If it weren’t for the fact that Turnpost is a tiny town and I can’t offend anyone as I’m soon going to be relying on every last member of the populace to support me by coming into my store and buying coffee, I would quit my sub job and let someone else deal with the crazies of high school kids in their last few weeks of school. I swear I might accomplish as much or more talking to an empty room. You can practically see my words ricochet off one thick skull after another as they utterly fail to penetrate the miasma of hormones and summertime daydreams muffling each kid’s brain. At this point I am just trying to survive.

I made an offer on my building and it was accepted, so now we are in seemingly interminable phase during which a lot of people look at the building and the finances of everyone involved and nod their heads and rub their chins and agree that everything appears to be in good shape. Travis has been counseling me to be patient. He says these things always take a long time. I am a little worried though, since my evictors are going to be arriving in two months and my new building is nowhere near livable.

But I did find someone to finish up the space for me. Chad is still coming to the kettlebell class and he recommended a builder named Casey who has done some work for a few people he knows. I called Casey and he sounds exactly like the salt-of-the-earth, straight-forward type individual I imagine would be good at building things. I even managed to talk my Realtor into letting me take him in to assess the amount of work that needs to be done. He said he will have to finish some of the downstairs before I can move in, because I should not breath in certain types of dust. He said he could probably get those parts done downstairs and the upstairs space habitable in four to six weeks. It could still be a couple weeks before I get keys to the place and the authority to start making changes. Yikes that’s going to be cutting it close.

On Sunday Gauge and I

2012-05-16T12:13:42-05:00

went over to Liv’s. She lives in the new sub-division on the west side. It is a long walk for me. Luckily I turn 16 in about a week and will then be able to drive.

The occasion was a new puppy. Liv’s mom found a breeder she liked online and had the puppy shipped. I never thought of that as a possible way to get a dog . But what do I know.

Gauge believes the puppy is demon spawn. He would not let it near him. He kept trying to hide behind my legs. Some noble protector he’s turned out to be.

Moose

2012-05-15T06:38:41-05:00

Believe it or not, I am a horse owner. I’m having the hardest time not telling Becca. I’ve decided to keep it a secret because I think she’d have trouble concentrating on finishing up school if I told her. She’s already calling almost every day to tell me how much she is looking forward to the summer. She still hasn’t made any good friends out there and I think she wants a change of scene as much as anything, but it’s gratifying to know she’s so excited.

The horse is called Moose and I know very little about how he’s been trained except he should be good for a little girl who doesn’t know how to ride. I’ve been out to see him a few times and Taylor said I have a lesson a week on my account whether Becca is here or not and I can ride him if I want. I said no thanks. I guess I just feel like I know enough about training dogs to understanding riding a horse would be opening a door to a whole new realm. I don’t know that I have the time to go there.

Wendy was over again for most of the day today and I think we just about finished things up with the house. She bought three big blank canvases for the giant wall in the dining room and painted them this rusty red color, then hung them in a triangle pattern. I’m surprised how good it looks, even though they are basically just solid blocks of color. Wendy certainly has a more creative mind than I would have thought.

So now it’s down to working on the yard. The weather is much warmer and the leaves and grasses are growing in earnest now. Also I have to find somewhere to get Becca a helmet. The girls fly in one month from yesterday.

Two New Things

2012-05-15T06:38:25-05:00

It’s been an interesting week! On Tuesday I went to the rec center for a class in something called kettlebells. I’m not sure what I was expecting. I knew it had to do with weights, but when I got there I was completely surprised. It turns out a kettlebell is a little round ball with a handle on it that is much heavier than it looks.

The instructor was this really nice, quiet guy named Travis. There were three other women in the class, two a little older than me and one quite a bit younger. The young one is called Madison and she might be an assistant instructor; she helped the teacher demonstrate things a few times.

I was surprised the weights class was all women and I also didn’t expect it to be that small, but both Travis and Madison were enthusiastic. Travis is clearly way stronger than I could ever be in my life, but I chatted with Madison for a little while after class and she told me she’s only been lifting weights for a short time. That is encouraging. She said she could tell a difference in her core strength only a few weeks into the class. She also has very nice, toned arms. I wouldn’t mind it if mine looked like hers at all!

Today I rode Moose for the first time in a lesson setting. I was a little sore from the weights class, so that wasn’t helping, and actually I have to say I had a lot more trouble with him than I expected. He wasn’t bad about anything, he just seemed like he wasn’t very willing. Taylor had to pay a lot more attention than usual and explain a few new techniques on getting a horse to do what you want. I wanted to give up in the middle, but by the end we were walking and trotting around. I was surprised Taylor wasn’t mad at me for being so sloppy, but after the lesson she actually went out of her way to tell me I’d handled everything well, and to explain that horses are always unsettled by a move. They lose all their friends, their home, and the people they know, yet we expect them to jump right in and continue to perform just as well as they did before. She said horses form deep emotional bonds with other horses and people, so poor Moose is going to be a little down and distracted for a few weeks. I hadn’t ever thought about it that way before. I made sure to tell him what a good job he’d done while I was grooming him. Hopefully next week he’ll be a little more settled in.

Friends and Horses

2012-05-14T07:03:27-05:00

What is weird about not being best friends with Annette anymore is that it is not weird at all. Lunch was the main thing I was worried about but actually it is so much nicer now. I never realized how much of talking to Annette is actually just listening to her talk and agreeing with her, but now that Renee is Annette’s new best friend I can hear how I must have sounded before.

Jackie and Courtney are really pretty nice although sometimes Jackie sits with James and when that happens me and Courtney just talk quietly a little bit while we eat. Courtney is actually kind of shy and I know hardly anything about her even though I’ve been sitting with her at lunch every day for a year which is weird. Today Annette had something she wanted to do in the library before the end of lunch break and she told Renee to go with her so they left and Jackie was with James and so there we were just Courtney and I. It was so nice we just had a normal conversation.

Chad drove me to Taylor’s again because the horse he has been riding hasn’t sold so we are still having our lesson together and he showed me a new horse there named Moose that belongs to the guy that fixed our porch! Also, Kyle’s mom is riding that horse now instead of Chip so that’s funny.

After the lesson Taylor told me Chip is going to be free on Tuesdays now and if I want to I can ride twice a week: on Tuesdays I’d ride with Kyle’s mom on Casey’s horse so it would be cheaper like when I ride with Chad. I said I’d have to ask my mom but maybe. The number one thing I’m really worried about for the summer is I don’t know how I will be able to see Chad. Once Taylor sells the horse he’s riding I won’t have lessons with him anymore and no school too will mean no Chad. If I rode at Taylor’s twice a week I might see him sometimes but really it’s no guarantee because lessons are always in the afternoon and Chad always does stalls in the morning I have always known that but I always hope to see him anyway. So I don’t know I’m not sure if my mom would let me anyway.

And what’s funny about Chad is even though I know now for sure that he doesn’t like me except as a friend I’m still as in love with him as ever. But it is different now I just like being with him without hoping he will start to like me back. I guess it’s better I don’t know but anyway it is not as confusing.

Green Means Go

2012-05-14T07:03:10-05:00

My initial plan was to fly to California after school got out and beg my parents for financial support immediately after telling them I intend to flaunt all their hopes and dreams for my future. But I wasn’t sure I could wait that long. For one thing, I have fallen in love with the funky building where I intend to live and work. I have been worried sick someone else is going to swoop in and buy it. For another, I am just not a patient person.

Besides, Travis pointed out it would be harder for me to stand up to my parents and seem like an independent adult while letting my mom serve me breakfast every morning and sleeping in a twin bed with a box of My Little Ponies underneath it. Travis also said flying home to ask for this might blow the request out of proportion. He reminded me I’m not asking my parents for money or permission. I am only asking them to agree to bail me out if I fail miserably.

So I called them at a time I hoped they would be home and in a good mood. Mom answered. We chit-chatted and she told me several unnecessarily detailed stories involving Sylvia and the state of her digestive system. Then I took a deep breath and told her My Plan. She listened to my entire speech without interrupting, asked me a few questions, and said she’d have to talk to my father but would call me back. I emailed them my business plan and spent the next hour in a cold sweat, pacing the living room like a caged animal. When Mom called back she didn’t sound happy, but she didn’t sound reproachful either. She said they would either co-sign the loan with me, or loan me the money themselves, interest free. But it was my choice. If they loaned me the money, they’d draw up a contract with a repayment plan to make sure it didn’t feel like a gift.

I wasn’t expecting that offer, although in retrospect I should have seen it coming. I thanked my mom and said the loan would be great, if they were sure. She said they were sure, that they’re proud of me, and that they’d like to come visit after I open.

Today I met

2012-05-13T08:41:58-05:00

a horse called Moose. I fed him a carrot. Liv fed him a carrot as well.

I'm a Share-Boarder!

2012-05-13T07:11:01-05:00

Casey bought a horse today, and I’m going to be borrowing that horse from him for two days a week for the foreseeable future! Horse shopping was harder than I thought. I’m glad we had Taylor to recommend a few because otherwise we’d have been lost.

We test rode three horses. All three were fine, really, but the second one was sluggish and the third one spooked when I was riding. I know that can happen to any horse, but I almost fell off and after that Casey wanted the first one. I liked that one the best anyway, so it was fine with me.

The horse is a 12 year old gelding. According to his papers he is a Paint, but he doesn’t have much white. Taylor explained this is because Paint is a breed, whereas pinto is a color. I’m not sure I fully understand, but the horse is brown with a black mane and tail. He has one white splotch on the belly, four tall white socks, and a whole white face. Taylor calls this a bald face which seems like an unfortunate term. One of his eyes is about 1/4 blue, which is neat.

Assuming the horse passes his vet check, he will be delivered to Taylor’s this weekend! For the moment he is called Moose, but Casey is going to let Becca give it a new name if she wants.

The Preparations Continue

2012-05-12T14:01:02-05:00

It’s less than a month before the girls get here. The back rooms are looking good. I pulled up the carpet and sanded and refinished the floors. I went ahead and repainted the walls too. I had to stick with white but the rooms look nice and fresh now. Wendy found bamboo blinds that look good but weren’t too expensive. We had to order them off the internet, which I don’t like doing. It’s hard to get a sense of quality from photos. The hardware is cheap, but otherwise they are fine. Each room got a new light fixture, switch-plates, and a rug, plus some new shelves in the closets.

Wendy also found a website where you can order famous artwork on posters. There are hundreds of posters to choose from, and you can also pick a frame and mat. They frame it up and ship it to you. I told the girls they could each order a poster for their room. Julie wanted water lilies by Monet, and Becca chose an Ansel Adams photograph in black and white. Hopefully those will get here fast enough that I can have them hung before the girls arrive.

And if all that prep wasn’t enough, I’ve been horse shopping. I haven’t mentioned anything about the horse to Becca yet because I want to make sure it will work first. So far we’ve looked at two horses. Taylor is doing the initial screening and thankfully Wendy has been coming with me to see Taylor’s picks. Since I can’t ride, she’s been doing that part. I honestly hardly know what I’m looking for. Wendy liked the first one. I watched her ride and it seemed like everything went just fine. The second one wasn’t as good. Wendy seemed to have trouble getting it to go forward. After that I was ready to buy the first one but Taylor said there was one more she thought we should look at first, so we’ll be doing that tomorrow.

Starting to be Summer

2012-05-11T06:14:56-05:00

Last week was so weird Annette didn’t invite me over a single time. And this weekend she never called or invited me over or anything. I know it is for the best and I am happy I have Liv because otherwise it would be back like it was when I didn’t have any friends for a while. Of course I didn’t invite Annette over either and maybe if I had she would have come I don’t know.

On Saturday I went to the park with Liv and Kyle and we had all three dogs and played games with them and it was fun but then it started raining. I was completely wet by the time I got home.

Today Chad and I had our lesson at Taylor’s and the horse Chad has been riding has really calmed down a lot. Chad’s been having basically no trouble with it the last few rides and Taylor told us today she’s going to put it on the market which means it could sell any day or not. Taylor wants Chad to keep riding it once a week until it does sell but now I don’t know how many more Chad lessons I’ll have it seems like everything is changing.

School is almost out which I’m happy and sad for at the same time. I’m happy because school is a lot of work and the summer is always fun but I’m sad because I like my classes and I have a lot of people now who are kind of my friends because I sit next to them but they aren’t people I have a chance to talk to except in school I’ll miss them.

Puff Pastry Dreams

2012-05-10T07:03:44-05:00

I have spent the last several days deeply immersed in planning the Greatest Plan of my short existence. Travis has been helping. I am going to need all the help I can get.

And actually he’s a huge help. I’m more of an ideas type person. Travis is librarian. Which means he loves nothing more than to organize and classify and tidy. His lists are a thing of beauty. I’m all dreams and rainbows and ponies. He’s all nuts and bolts and logistics.

I’m thinking of opening a coffee shop, right here in downtown Turnpost. There is this absolutely funky building in between two other funky buildings on main street that used to be a general store. It is one of those awesome spaces with a shop downstairs and living quarters upstairs. It’s also in a major state of disrepair. For instance, part of the bedroom floor is missing. But the realtor who showed it to me assured me all the important bits are in great condition. Apparently someone bought it two years ago and had all the electric and plumbing redone and then got a divorce and moved away forever. The space has been standing vacant.

It’s actually pretty tiny, but it is all made of brick and it has huge windows and high ceilings and a charming, narrow staircase to get from one floor to the other. It wouldn’t take a huge investment to make it liveable and workable.

The major downside, though, is it would take enough of an investment that I could not finance it myself. And as I personally have no assets or income or anything to convince a bank I wouldn’t take their money and escape to Bermuda, I’d have to convince my parents to undewrite a loan. Which would mean convincing them I should stay in Turnpost and become a professional barista. There are few things in life that are genuinely impossible, but this might actually be one.

My mother just asked me

2012-05-10T07:03:30-05:00

if I wanted to take horseback riding lessons this summer.

I even think she was being serious.

Will Wonders Never Cease?

2012-05-08T07:30:54-05:00

Last night I go the strangest call from Casey. He said he’s thinking about buying a horse for his younger daughter. I said I hadn’t realized she rode. He said she doesn’t! But she wants to. Then he told me about this whole conversation he had with Taylor about leasing and share-boarding, and asked my opinion.

I was at least able to explain about Chip, and how he’s not Taylor’s but she uses him to give lessons. I also said I could stop taking lessons for the summer and Becca could have my slot on Chip, but Casey said he wouldn’t consider letting me do that. I have been talking a lot lately about much I love riding. I even told him last week that I was going to ask Taylor about having two lessons a week instead of one. Convincing him I wouldn’t mind taking the summer off certainly wasn’t going to work.

The news Chip has a full schedule means my plans are foiled as well, so before long I had jumped to what seemed quite a logical conclusion at the moment but now seems insane. I said maybe I could do a share-board with him. He could buy Becca a horse, board it at Taylor’s, and I would take lessons on it twice a week. Becca could then ride five times a week and everyone would get what they wanted.

Except Casey would have to buy a horse, of course! And that leaves the question of what to do with it after the summer. Maybe he could work out a similar deal with Taylor as the one that she’s got going on Chip.

What a surprising phone call! Now I’m both excited and nervous. I feel like I shouldn’t be considering throwing money away on something as silly as a share-board, considering I don’t actually have a real job. But on the other hand we got that payment from my ex and in theory a check will now be coming in every month. I’ve also got the income from the the paper and turnpostmom.com. If that continues to grow at a steady rate that will amount to a livable wage by the end of the summer. Maybe it wouldn’t be completely irresponsible?

Something to Consider

2012-05-07T15:03:28-05:00

I’m just in from a trip to Taylor’s. I went out to have a chat with her about her indoor arena. She showed me where she wants it and how she planned for it when she built her barn, but the guy who did her house and barn moved to the west coast, so he can’t finish up like they planned.

I’m going to be more of a general contractor on this one than the guy doing the real work, though there are somethings I’ll do myself. She wants a wooden slanted barrier put down along the edge, to keep the horses from getting too close to the wall. Kyle and I will be able to put that in ourselves.

I asked her about giving Becca lessons this summer. I thought Taylor would be happy, but she didn’t looked pleased. She asked how serious Becca is and what kind of riding experience she’s had. Then she said she doesn’t have lesson horses, and the one she uses for people who don’t have their own horse already has a full schedule, but she has an extra stall if I wanted to buy a horse for Becca, and one lesson a week is included in the price of board. I asked what it costs to buy a horse and board a horse and the numbers were higher than I expected. I told her it probably wouldn’t work for us.

But then I got home and was working on the floors in back. I was thinking about the girls and what they are going to do this summer. Julie called a few days ago to talk to me about joining a swim team she found on the internet. It’s right here in Turnpost but apparently kids commute in from a ways around to be on it because it wins all these big meets and the coach has an excellent reputation. I told her she could go ahead and sign up, partly because that was the first time Julie herself has contacted me since the divorce and I was so pleased I wasn’t going to say no, but partly out of relief as well. I was afraid Julie would spend the summer sulking. This will give her something to be excited about.

But as much as I’m not as worried about Becca, it would be nice if she had something like the swim team of her own. I called Taylor and left a message and a while later she called back. I asked her where you find a horse for a kid and she said she would look around for me. She said as an alternative I could possibly find a horse to lease, and that would mean basically renting it for the summer. Or she said I could buy a horse, then try to find someone to lease or share-board my horse from me to help defray the cost. I wrote down a bunch of notes and numbers and I’m going to have to think long and hard about this. I’m going to ask Wendy’s opinion as well. She certainly knows more about horses than I do.

Time Online

2012-05-04T06:52:38-05:00

I think I might be addicted to aol instant messenger. I have been on it so much lately. Mostly I talk to Liv and Kyle. It is actually interesting because Kyle doesn’t really talk very much in general but online he seems a lot more like a normal person. He’s still Kyle of course but I guess you can’t really chat without saying anything lol.

Also Liv introduced me to another friend of hers whose name is Sara and she is really nice too even though I haven’t met her for real. They both go to that private high school in Ridge Rapids. I always thought those kids were snobby but maybe not. Sara is nice but Liv is absolutely cool. She is so funny I never know what she is going to say but she is the exact opposite of Annette in about a million ways. With Liv she always says exactly what she means whereas with Annette you never know why she is saying something except usually it is not for the reason you think.

I have been talking to Liv about Annette a lot too, and told her about some of the weird things Annette does. Liv says behaviors like the ones Annette uses are emotionally explosive and abusers use them to keep the people they are abusing under control. At first I said this was ridiculous. How could Annette be abusing me? But Liv asked what would happen if I said to Annette, “I actually didn’t have very much fun at the party and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

I know exactly what would happen. Annette would stop talking to me and she’d make all her friends stop talking to me, too, and I’d be friendless forever. Liv’s point with that was if you are really friends with someone, they would never turn on you like that just for expressing an opinion.

So then I got pretty sad about the whole Annette thing but Liv said life is full of people like Annette and it is not so hard to deal with them when you know who they are and what they are doing. She says she has a friend who is like this and she just makes sure to keep a certain amount of distance there but that doesn’t mean she can’t talk to her. She predicted that if I keep up with being just a little aloof with Annette, Annette will go find a new best friend pronto and I’ll be off the hook.

And this is what I mean about Liv. It’s like she can predict the future. When I got to lunch today there was a girl there who I had seen in a couple classes but never talked to. Annette was gushing all over her and introducing her to us and saying how she couldn’t believe we hadn’t all been friends earlier. I sat on the other side of the table, with Jackie and Courtney, and lunch was totally fine.

Career Conundrum

2012-05-03T06:19:49-05:00

I have spent the evening sitting at home alone sipping wine and thinking about how I’m about to lose my job and get kicked out of my house. In other words, feeling sorry for myself. It would seem my life is being influenced by a few fundamentally different but interconnected facts that combine into my problematic situation. To sum up:

Since college, all I have done is teach secondary education but I actually have very little interest in secondary education.
My degree (much to my parent’s chagrin) is in French History. While I poo-pooed their objections to my choice as an undergrad, I must admit I am now unsure what I can do with my degree in French History other than study more French History.
The only thing my parents like less than the idea of me studying more French History is the idea of me resuming work as a barista. I slung coffee all through college and, honestly, kinda loved it.
Even if I wanted to study more French History, I could not do so here in Turnpost. But I do not want to leave Turnpost due to being madly in love with a sexy librarian.

Additional somewhat interesting realities:

Turnpost does not actually have a dedicated coffee house of any kind.
A lot of people in Turnpost do appear to like coffee.