Lunch Breaks and Dance Parties and Soap Boxes

As I'm sitting here, I can hear the crickets (or frogs or whatever those noisy beings in the night are) doing their chippy cheep scareep and it feels like something has been awakened.  Maybe it's the sun finally warming my bones or maybe it's the promise of the slim slide to freedom in my days or maybe it's the ushering in of green grass, maybe it's any number of those factors making the days sweeter and the evenings like confetti wrapped gifts.  Or maybe it's just this very season of life I'm in.  

What I do know for sure, without a thread of doubt, is today was a good day.  One of those good ones which will be pulled from later to remind me of what it feels like to be happy.  Because I believe we need those reservoirs of good ones to sustain us through the inevitable ebb and flow of the tough which mixes in.

There was a curriculum training for work today; Karen and I were to attend both the morning and the afternoon sessions, which gave us this strange thing in the middle of our day called a lunch break.  I knew the idea of going out to eat wasn't nearly as thrilling as the possibility of sitting in the sun eating wholesome eats.  So I called Karen last night and told her, "I'm chopping us salad fixins' as we speak.  We are eating here tomorrow, on my patio."  She jumped right at it, "Do you have balsamic?"  

Yes.  I have that.  

Today mid-day, we kicked of our shoes, settled in the sun, and enjoyed our salads followed by dessert, strawberries with balsamic and walnuts.  If only I would have had some real whipping cream to dollop on top.  

Today mid-day, we let the breeze blow ever so slightly on our faces and we enjoyed a break.  A real honest to goodness break.  

After my work day was done, I met Danae and her two girls at Emma's dance lesson.  What started as a quick snap after class quickly turned into a dance party between sisters.  

With breathtaking moments of love and beauty stitched in with every twirl and hop.

  

I have said before and I still will say, the most precious of pictures are not the ones with perfectly planned outfits and hair all done up.  No.  The most precious of pictures are ones which catch a moment.  A hug between sisters with noses crinkled.  

Emma and Autumn were gracious enough to let me join in their dance party.  Love a duck, I believe in dance parties with giggling littles.  Be still my heart.   

Okay, we're done now.  Let's go eat.  Wait, one more jump.  

Okay, really we're done now.  Let's go eat.  Wait, one more dosey doe.  

 

Heart happy. 

Danae, thank you for letting me dance with your girls on the sidewalk on a Wednesday early evening in May.  Thank you for sharing them with me.  

We did finally go eat.  After hearing on the phone earlier where the vote for where to go to dinner was, I ran home quick and popped some kernels for Danae and I to enjoy while the girls ate the real deal in the green and white checked baskets.  I believe in carrying my own bag of popcorn into a restaurant.    

After a soul fueling and filling visit with Danae, I came home to finish up work for tomorrow.  Although, it's hard for it to feel like work when you are sitting outside and it's something you feel a strong passion for. 

Really, it's a stand on my soap box style of passion.  Authentic and modeled writing with kids.  I did my thesis on the topic a few years ago and am now looking into the nonfiction side of it...with fist pumping and donkey kicking of course.

A very good day indeed. 

And now here I sit, with the crickets (or frogs or whatever those noisy beings in the night are) doing their chippy cheep scareep and it feels like something has been awakened.  Maybe it's the promise of the slim slide to freedom in my days or maybe it's the ushering in of green grass...

Or maybe it's this very season of life I'm in. 

Do you like Pina Colada?  In the setting sun...

Soon and Now

Holy smokes it's May!  

Soon will be days of slow mornings with sun on my face.  

Soon will be days of dirty dirty feet and hands from being in the garden dirt.  

Soon will be days of spur of the moment meet ups with friends and their babies to visit and pick rocks out of scraped knees.  

Soon will be sessions of visiting on the patio with a glass of wine in my hand and a beer in his.  

Soon will be days of family meals with the windows open.  

Soon.  

But for now, I'll take book club on the last Friday evening of every month.  It happens like clock work and I wouldn't miss a Friday unless I had a fish hook in my ankle because that happened once.  Book club, oh book club, you fuel my soul.  To talk about words with women who are all so different is a gift; we are like throwing salt, pepper, paprika, garlic, cajun, and cayenne all into a fiery mix and letting it simmer and meld together creating something which works.  Yes, it works.  Because we are free and open to think anything and more importantly, say anything.  

Truly a beautiful thing.  Might I also add going to book club with the sun just starting it's descent on the old car parked on the street instead of the already gone dark sky of usual was like that of a spring dance. 

 

Truly a beautiful thing.  Even if the next morning, you rise with a mild pounding in the back of your head and your run is like that of a drunk chicken on a treadmill.  Not that I would know or anything. 

We read Rules of Civility by Amor Towles in April.  

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the charmingly crafted tale.  

"I have no doubt that they were the right choices for me.  And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss."  

"It happens to all of us.  It's just a question of how many stops it takes.  Two for some.  Three for others.  Sixty-eighth Street.  Fifty-ninth.  Fifty-first.  Grand Central.  What a relief it was, those few minutes with our guard let down and our gaze inexact, finding the one true solace that human isolation allows."  

"It was a matter of making it through the night, which is often harder that in sounds, and always a very individual business."  

"In the master bedroom, the drapes were open and the city glittered like a diamond necklace that knows exactly whom it's within the reach of."  

"I freed my hands and put a palm on the smooth skin of his cheek, taking comfort in the well-counseled patience for that which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and most important, endures them."  

"Slurring is the cursive of speech, I observed."  

"Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee.  Only decades later would I realize that he had been giving me a piece of advice." 

 

"Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane - in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath - she has probably put herself in unnecessary danger.  What my father was trying to tell me, as he neared the conclusion of his own course, was that this risk should not be treated lightly: One must be prepared to fight for one's simple pleasures and to defend against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements." 

And this one I read while sitting in an airport in San Antonio.  I could not help nod my Midwestern blonde head along with every word.  

"One of the greatest advantages that the Midwestern girls had was that you couldn't tell them apart.  You can always tell a rich New York girl from a poor one.  And you can tell a rich Boston girl from a poor one.  After all, that's what accents and manners are there for.  But to the native New Yorker, the Midwestern girls all looked and sounded the same." 

I take that as a compliment.  Yes I do.  

Also, can we simply take a moment for early morning airport reading?  We can.  Thank you. 

Low Key Travel

I can cross San Antonio of the list of places I've never visited because there I went.  And what's there is a River Walk and the Alamo and food and margaritas which are bigger than my head, which turns out is precisely how I like my margaritas.

But really, I should clarify and explain that I just might have become a little old lady somewhere in these twenty-nine years of mine because what was really fun to me was to have one or two cocktails after taking in a full day of learning and then make the way back to the hotel to either sleep or visit with strangers in the lobby.  Because visiting with strangers in the lobby of a hotel is something I believe in, especially when I have my friend Karen along because that girl can make friends with a brick. 

A rather low key trip it was.  Well I guess there was the time we set out with the goal of being the worst dancers in the world at the dueling piano bar Howl at the Moon; I think the interpretive style ballet dance to the song from The Little Mermaid sealed the deal.  Neither one of us are ballerinas nor even graceful so it was something.  At one point, I looked out into the crowd with my hand raised above my head and saw iPhones recording so I'm sure it's on the YouTube. 

Oh, then there was the other time Karen and I ended up in a cab in the wrong side of town with a cab driver named Hythem from Lebanon who wouldn't actually let us out of the cab for fear the Midwest blinking red light we had on our foreheads would be a signal for trouble.  He was a good egg that Hythem, delivered us safely back to our hotel.  For more visiting with strangers of course.

 

Wait.  Also there was the time Karen ended up with food poisoning on our last night there; we ate at the top of the tower and is was stunningly beautiful.  On our walk back to the hotel, we caught the tail end of the River Walk Fiesta Parade and high fived for a rather excellent evening to cap off the trip.

Although, I'm not sure if you asked Karen now if she'd agree after she had to travel the next day on airplanes while battling FP.  As in food poisoning.    

So yeah.  A low key trip to San Antonio, Karen and Amy style.