It just rains all the time. Here and there a nice day pops up, but never more than two fairly decent days at a time before the clouds and rain return. And today, July 23rd (I better hurry or it's gonna be tomorrow) was cold. I saw people wearing fleece jackets.
And yet, I am somehow tan. Which is kind of weird, since I haven't sat on a beach ALL summer long, though I will admit I have been known to be found on the dock, but I am almost always under an umbrella if the orb in the sky actually gets brave. The only thing I can attribute this to is gardening, jeeping and hiking, all of which take place outdoors and are proof that even if it doesn't appear to be sunny out, there's still something there screwing around with the pigment of your skin.
Wow. While it is a cliche to mention that talking about the weather is like the worst most boring thing you can say, I am really not coming up with anything else here! I am some how tan? Who the hell cares. Oh ... do you think my creativity is somehow linked to actual sunshine. Like the plants in my garden, my creativity is unable to flourish, and grow, because it is seriously lacking vitamin D?
Is it because it is nearly midnight? I don't know. I don't really care. I just realized that I hadn't blogged in a few days and I am not the least bit tired because I didn't do anything but drive around all day in search of a stupid movie that Charlie needed for school, and sometimes when I don't have an idea in my head if I just start typing something will come.
Guess not.
Oh well.
Oh. It's raining out. I can hear it.
Sorry.
I need to pack for vacation -- and I have no idea whether or not there is internet at the cottage we will be staying at for the next two weeks. So this could be it. I foresee a few days of harried packing and running around trying to remember all the things I must have ... because why would I do it in stages? I am not a very organized person -- though sometimes I can be very organized. I am just inconsistent, but I am consistently unorganized when it comes to packing.
Get it?
It is interesting to me the things that I take from trip to trip, depending on what type of food "plan" I am following. I can remember not too long ago packing up trays of wheat grass that rested on the top of everything else. When I was in line to get on the ferry, one of the guys who worked there looked at me like I was a nut job. Who brings grass with them? It did look funny -- there were six trays of it. Well, come on. It makes sense. It takes a long time to grow wheat grass and it was all staged properly. I wasn't going to leave them behind! Also in tow on that trip was the juicer.
But the juicer won't be making this trip. I discovered while I was in Arizona that I can live on smoothies if necessary. I can make green smoothies and get the same bang as I can get from juice and it is one less thing to haul around. The salad bowl (it is huge) always comes. When the whole family is together, there is no substitute for a big-ass salad bowl. When I say huge, think kitchen sink huge. It is wooden, was scandalously expensive, and is one of my prized possessions.
I love my bowl and I loved my grass. HAHAHAHA.
Yeah, I know. Ideas are still not "growing," I get it. And the clock just turned, so this is going to say tomorrow, even though to me it is still very much today. And raining.
I am anxious to get to Martha's Vineyard -- it is one of my favorite places on earth. Though Sedona could be up for a tie. They both invoke in me the same thing -- an overall big sigh sense of calm and peace. Even if I am in the middle of a huge traffic jam heading into Edgartown, I could care less. I don't know if that is because to me, when you are on the island nothing like that really matters, or because ultimately, nothing like that really matters.
Ya know?
And after an extremely stressful spring and early summer, now that we know where Charlie is going to school, now that I know I will be working (more on that later) it will be nice to take the way I am feeling (which is mellow and not stressed at all) and place myself on a beach (and damn it all it WILL BE SUNNY) and just absorb all that the island is to me.
The movie that Charlie needed to watch for school was A Beautiful Mind. I saw it when it first came out, which if you judge how young Russell Crowe was, was a lifetime ago, and really enjoyed it. But I also enjoyed it this time. Even though I knew the story, it was interesting to try to figure out when he started to go bonkers. Really, right from the beginning. I wondered if Charlie would like it, and he did. I loved how the wife was so amazing; how she supported him in his plea not to have to return to the hospital for more shock therapy treatments and to be put on drugs. She knew it took away his very essence, and she was willing to put herself at risk for that.
What is so heart warming about the story is that despite the fact that his brain was wacky, he figured out how to live with it. He managed to find a niche at Princeton University, where people looked up to him because of the part of his mind that was so ... beautiful. So much more than theirs, all put together!
Which is much the way I feel about ADD/ADHD drugs -- where children are put on something mind-altering so that they can "do better" in the classroom. But I've always wondered why the solution is to change hundreds, thousands, probably millions of children's brain chemistry, instead of changing the one approach a classroom takes. Doesn't make any sense. Perhaps it is the concept of taming the brain to adhere to someone else's idea of what is right. Because who the hell has the right to say that the ability to sit and listen to mind-numbing information for 8 hours of a day is important?
In my mind (and I do believe mine is quite beautiful) individuality is everything. Being who you are and finding ways to express that is what it's all about. Whether it be with a keen sense of humour, or a flashy way of dressing or a laugh that sounds like a hyena. Hey, whatever it is that sets you apart from someone else, that is what is so special.
I remember when I was in middle school, Levi's were all the rage. EVERYONE had Levi's -- it was cooler than cool to wear Levi's. But my mother shopped for our clothes at the second hand store, and she could buy perfectly good other-brand jeans for next to nothing. When I said that the ONLY pants I could wear were Levi's, she took one look at the price tag and said absolutely not. She said I could get five pairs of decent pants for the price of one pair of Levi's.
She ruined my life. And therefore I ruined hers until she took me to buy my pair of Levi's. One pair she said, and I wholeheartedly agreed. I just NEEDED those damn pants so that I could fit in. Be cool. You know. We all know.
But I was impetuous and didn't think things through, and I was instantly drawn to a pinkish (salmon?) colored pair. Now, everyone else was wearing jean Levi's -- I didn't even know that COLORS existed! And without another thought, I bought them.
Except, I found out that my friends didn't have a huge stash of Levi's of their own. They had one pair. Of jeans. And they wore them three or four days out of the week because they just pretended they had a whole bunch.
Do you think anyone was going to believe that I had purchased a week's worth of pink pants?
What a dilemma. Once again, my life was ruined. So now what?
So my two friends and I were getting ready to go to a dance. Big doings. And they were IRONING their jeans. Ironing them! (which is how I discovered that they only had one pair, because Jill burnt the knee of hers and I saw that mark every time she wore them, which was all the time!) And I asked them, how many pairs of Levi's do you have? To which of course, the answer was one. OH! Had I only bought jeans.
Are you getting the angst here? I am no longer feeling calm and mellow. I am stressed. That was a very difficult period. I was in middle school, I was of course feeling like a complete loser because I didn't have Levi's -- then I GOT some, but not a color I could pull off on a daily basis. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH. But then, this guy, this cute, hunky, gorgeous (and older!) guy, told me I should wear those pants all the time because they gave me a heart-shaped butt. He told me this in study hall.
So I did. First I wore them twice a week, then three ... and, well, they were getting washed so often that they were getting a little frayed looking. And then one day, the knee ripped. I tried to sew it, but that is not one of my special gifts. They looked like crap. Heart-shaped butt or no, my pants were toast.
So I started wearing other clothes, and I started to get comments like, oh, those are cute. I love that skirt. And so on. And my confidence grew and I started to experiment with clothing a little more, and eventually developed my own style. I later realized that Levi's did nothing for me, and found other brands that actually looked mucho better.
What does this have to do with anything? I have no idea. It is well after midnight and I am rambling nonsensically. I am a puddle of useless prattle!
What a cool sentence.
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