Fall

Fall is here.

I couldn't sleep. My eyes burned and I went to bed early but couldn't sleep. The air from the window fan was hot, my pillow was a sack of potatoes, the air was too cool and I could not -could not -sleep.

I tried counting, then the breathing thing, then the counting again. I switched positions over and over. I chased after sleep like a kid after a runaway kite’s fluttering tail. I was so close so many times!

I moved my pillows back around again.

By this point I had the bed all to myself.

Exhausted and breathless I listened to the window fan. The air hummed soft, then louder, then soft. A storm finishing it’s day long build to at last break. I couldn’t stand it. It echoed my need to rest. I shut the windows and turned on the air conditioning.

I listened and listened and then I had a terrible dream.
I had taken all the other roads since The Road Trip. I had taken them and things were a mess. I had listened to my head and not to my dreams. I had kept that job, I had finished college, I had given that friend more time, I dated that person longer…

-A Mess! -A terrible upside down Mess. Everything was all wrong and unhappy. I raced around in the dream telling everyone that this was all a mistake and they looked at me like I was crazy (Which I guess, isn’t that unusual anyway). I hurried to Utah to get to the rocks and dust and dry air. But things were a mess here too!
Lightening snapped through the blinds, thunder growled and I sat up in bed. 2:58am…. Whew. If it had been three I would have been toast.

I listened to the next biting snarl outside. The night was cool now and we opened the windows. The rain began. I wasn’t alone.

The pillows were still full of potatoes but the bedroom was cool and the blankets warm. I slept lightly but at least it was sleep.

This morning I wore closed shoes and carried my hot pink and yellow umbrella to work.

Fall is here.

Dolphin

My sweetheart and I are headed for Hawaii this Saturday for our honeymoon. There we intend to embark on dives and tourist traps and enjoy the beauty of the island we are staying at.

Three days ago he suggested a dive that I had actually first pointed out. Apparently it is a dive that is not only spectacular but also a bit more remote then many. The attraction in this is that this will be a non-crowded and likely less touched area then many others.

The positive and negative sides of this dive is that it will be deeper then I have ever been and it will include ‘large aquatic life”. I have two deep fears Reader, when it comes to my mortality, drowning and/ or being eaten.

I know the being eaten fear should end with my life but I don’t like the idea of being eaten even after I have vacated my physical personal space. Screw the circle of life thing. I would really rather be cremated.

For the past few nights I have fitfully slept; imagining my lifeless body softly and finally sinking into a depthless dark blue pit.

I watch myself in utter dismay. My dream self rants to the echoing silence of muffled water, “But there is so much I have to see and do!”

Once at the bottom the shrimps come and eat me.

Very aggravating.

Then my day dream started while asleep last night. Once more I am drifting and in the deep and again I find myself lost and alone. Shadows ominously circle in the distance. Again I considered panicking; sucking up my air and sealing my fate of running out of breath – I felt a nudge on my fin.

My heart rate kicks up and in a futile attempt to leave me behind, jumps to the surface, which is many impossible feet above; as the rest of me turned around. I found myself face to face with the reassuring perpetual grin that so many sailors have found reassuring before me.

“Oh” I glarbal which of course makes me choke on water. I spit it out, my heart returns to my chest and I am allowed, for only an instant, to reach out and touch the grace of a creature we know so little about.

Now this may be a dream but for the record –Dolphins are HUGE when next to you. I mean really Huge. In aquariums and on TV they seem a little smaller than their human side kick but in my dream this friend was at least a foot taller than me.

My friend smiled, as only Dolphins can only smile, and drifted by me. He waited as I floated up thirty feet. He then drifted with me to the safe fifteen foot stop and waited as we counted down the mandatory safety stop. He followed me to the surface, slapping a wave in my face, the equivalent of a high five.

My friend waited several feet away as the boat approached.

As the boat neared and slowed to pick me up, I turned to smile my thanks but found my Dolphin was gone.

There, instead, was my sweetheart. He smiled back.

Book

Sometimes I have these grandiose day dreams of how I have struck it unbelievably rich. They make me smile and I idly kick around the best imaginary scheme possible and then blow it up into super power size. This pass time passes time with amazing speed.

My favorite one this week is that someone somewhere somehow finds my book and publishes it. Of course they are a good decent person and they set it up so that when the true author is found, me, all proceeds will be passed to me 100%. Of course the first thing that I do is give this do good-er a well deserved and generous cut. The book will have a modest following but enough of one that we could fix up the back yard and add a studio/ art type of room for me and expand the current disastrous mess of an office into something decent with shelves galore for my guy.

The only major problem with this shiny story is that I never did finish my book. The least of my problems is the ‘someone somewhere somehow’ part. I could fix that one. I have tried out different sets of people and I have decided on a successful publisher who happens to be a woman with graying blond hair. She will be on the opposite sides of politics that I am on and will prefer cats to dogs and we will get along famously. The where part is a little more difficult but not impossible because I can lump that one in with the ‘how’. I have thrown manuscripts into the thrift store bin a couple of times. Maybe she is also a flea market fan.

I heard your question Reader; “Why would you throw a manuscript into a thrift store bin?”

The obvious answer, and I am surprised you asked, is that if I had thrown them away in the trash then I would have had to have a funeral. The second option, to pack them, is that I couldn’t because they were hopeless cases. Idle excellent characters that are bored out of their brains are restless bed partners and they were keeping me up at night. They had to move out.

I was completely stumped. Even the story line was bored! I thought that if someone out there could finish the story then the story would find that someone. If not, the irritated employee could throw them out and spare me the despair of knowing I can’t write and shouldn’t bother trying anymore.

I have been trying to start a new one the last couple of years. I am distracted, more the usual, and this one is based off of memories and journals.

So far it is also bored.

No changes

The day was gorgeous, my family was wonderful, my Dad made a few cry, my sweetheart and I nailed the dance, and the general feeling of the entire event was happy, fun, pretty and I have roses all over the house to prove that it happened.

Such happiness!

Would we change from us though? I was really worried about this. I was more worried about this then I was about anything else; more then running nearly an hour behind schedule, more then the fact that it rained up until fifteen minutes before the outdoor ceremony started, that the Minster ran late or if I liked my hair. That one is still a pending decision.

Would we change?

Reader I am happy to report that we did not, at least not that I can tell. For all of his impossible procrastination, lack of house keeping skills and the shoes he leaves all over the house- I love us just the way we are. Want to know why?

He will bark at me when I wind myself up into an anxious house cleaning machine and I will ignore him. I will attempt to nag him to death and he just blissfully tunes me out. He will hold my hands when I am freaking out and watch me and stay with me until I calm down. I will listen to his stories and he will listen to mine –even though now we are on repeat sometimes.

But mostly because I can make him laugh like no one else can and he can make me laugh when nothing else will.

Ah.... newlyweds are nauseating aren't they?