It rained all day yesterday and in the morning I didn't want to get out of bed so Hal had to rip the sheets off and then I had to scramble to get dressed, kids out the door, running toward school through the mist, all of us wet and tired. First heavy rain since we moved into our new place with all the windows and I just want to spoon whatever creature's closest when it gets like this. Kids, dogs, the squirrel who lives in the side yard.
I've been feeling very nature-needy lately. It's been a while since we've been outside the city. We best be making for the hills one of these days. I have this whole apple-picking fantasy weekend planned out in my head except there's this thing called "engagements" and "other things we're supposed to do" and even though I really, REALLY, want to say, "fuck all that shit! Let's ride!" the car's always out of gas or the phone rings or we're out of bread and I REALLY need to get bread or there's a football game Hal wants to watch or I made a plan to go swap-meeting with my sister and "I'll be there in five. Just let me put on my boots."
I love watching girls sing together. I love watching boys sing, too, but there's something about girls, women, singing together that makes me want re-join Girl Scouts, even though I dropped out after Brownies, suddenly uncomfortable in large female-centric crowds. Still am. But watching these two sing side by side in the forest makes me want to curl up, fetal style, and go to sleep in the leaves with my head on their shoes and a thousand girl-strangers. Make new friends but keep the oh-old.... (This is your cue to join in, by the way. It's a round, you see.) ... One is silver and the other's gold.
I wish there was a wood in our backyard so I could earn more nature badges on my sash. I wish I was a little more confident with the other moms at school orientations. I was supposed to grow out of this by now and every year it gets worse. I wish sleeping in was a mandatory law for all of us who prefer the darkness of closed eyes to the dawn's blue light. Blue is not my color. Makes me look dead, especially when the weather outside has taken me by storm. I wish there was a button that could be pressed to erase the emails that have piled up over the years unanswered, the phone numbers belonging to people wrongly accused of being friends, checking account passwords for automatic withdrawal so paychecks could be enjoyed frivolously instead of stuffed like change into life's meter slots, emptied on the hour by the parking enforcement officers and their CAUTION: FREQUENT STOPS signs.
OH: Do you have change for a dollar? I'm too old for a quarter life crisis.
Life used to be a collection of days to wander in and out of. In my mind nothing has changed so I pull my pillow over my head and dream about birds without worms and trees that don't have to fall in forests to make sounds.
I've been awake for hours but barely.
GGC
