Procrastinators are people too

I went up the rickety folding ladder to get my last boxes out of the attic this evening. Mostly a bunch of baking supplies and dishes that have been sitting there since I moved out of my apartment last December. Along with the dusty lefse rolling pin and cake rounds is my trunk. I painted fish on the hideously neon green thing years ago in middle school, and it's been a lot of places with me, survived many packings and unpackings. As I attempted to latch it up and bring it downstairs another hinge broke, now leaving one functional fastening device that I can only hope will make it up to school with me one last time. Hmm, something metaphorical there? Nah, just my imagination.

Sometimes, I feel as though things are just about to unravel. Not in any sort of psychological sense, it's not like I'm going to go all psycho or anything, but that my little happy bubble of homey-ness and hard fought for contentment is so close to popping, I'm just waiting for it. Not a particularly happy feeling, which is sad (duh, inherently; I enjoy redundancy), considering a new semester is right around the corner. I should be *excited* about *senior year* [said with prerequisite happy face on] and all that shit, but I can't seem to do it.

What's so strange is that the past two weeks have been amazing. All day yesterday, while running around looking for car paint, drawing on the van, finally getting some color on the hood and having it look good, I was on such a high. You laugh, scoff, and tell me it was the industrial strength paint fumes that I was inhaling in the 90 degree midday heat outside, but my idealistic little heart refuses to agree. The guy at the custom detailing place looked over my priming job, saw my cutoff shorts and gray nails, and asked "did you do all this yourself?" It felt so good, in my meager little fashion, to be able to say "Yes." It's just a phase, it will pass, but it was fun. Can't wait to get back in October and get started on the next section.

Even got to go for a nice relaxing run before my Dad presented before me the Iron Chef challenge of the evening: to make something appetizing with lamb chops, dandelion greens, and white asparagus. The plate presented to him a few hours later was worthy of any high-falootin' restaurant, complete with stylized sauce, sliced meat (perfectly rare, right off the grill), presented on the trendy 'bed of wilted greens.' A day of small successes, but big for me.

The sort of day that doesn't happen very often at school. Grrr. Maybe I should try to *make* it happen, but then it's just not the same. Or maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself, and don't want to leave the beach, say goodbye to my friends that I've hardly seen all summer, and deal with all the crap that I've been trying not to think about (quite successfully, I might add) for the past 10 months or so.

I didn't want to leave Shabbos dinner with my adopted family on 72nd street tonight, because I knew all that waited for me at home was empty boxes waiting to be packed, and disorganized bookcases. Why can't I just spend every afternoon at the pool, watching the shadows get longer as we play stupid aquatic games with her younger siblings, dry off in lounge chairs at sunset as the moon rises over the pines? I guess I'm just an awful person, would prefer to be non-productive, and live life a little slower for a little while longer. It's been good to me for a little while, and I could get used to that.

Last Hurrah

Thea Williamson, custom auto body-ist extraordinaire, strikes again. The van is flaming. I rock. I also have to run, because I have a date in Broad Bay for some last-minute, end-of-summer waterskiing before packing up everything to head north. So busy! So fun. So long =).

Home.

Today was one of the most beautiful days I've seen all season; how delightfully ironic that it happened in Virginia Beach, after a veritable world-tour of a summer. Low 80's and hardly a trace of humidity in the blue cloud-puffed sky this afternoon as I sunned myself on the sand at 36th street, following an early lunch at the locals' favorite diner on the strip. So gorgeous, in fact, that it persuaded me to stop by WRV, the local surf shop, which I've avoided for years because I'm intimidated by surfer-types (the people who used to mock me in high school; you know the type--tan, blonde, perfect girls, and ripped beachy looking guys with tousled hair) and don't feel nearly 'cool' enough to patronize such establishments. Throwing caution to the balmy offshore wind, I stopped by in search of another pair of the perfect Reef flipflops, as my old ones had worn out during my travels in Spain. Not only did I find the paragon of beach footwear, but I also was flirted with by 15 and 17 year old boys. Ah, to be back in the heyday of my youth and enjoy such attentions.

The sky was clear, the breeze was just enough to keep me from getting uncomfortably hot while baking in the sand, and the North-Westerly wind kicked up the surf enough to make the beach fun. The water felt wonderful, so much so that I felt compelled to inhale at least a pint of it when I missed a wave while bodysurfing. It's good to live at the beach, even if my time in the water was cut short due to the appearance of some threatening looking cnidarians. I think I might have even gotten stung, but it was worth it.

Drove home with the windows down, new flipflops on my feet, enjoying one of those moments when I'm glad that my parents still live in Virginia Beach. All of the crepe myrtles are in bloom, filling the streets with tons of fluffy branches decked out in light pinks and purples, magenta, lilac, red, white, and plum. All the color distracts your attention from the idiocy of the divided highway/feeder road system that the city planners thought was a novel idea, and all seems right with the infrastructure. It's not a bad place to come back to. At U.S. customs in Cincinnati, the guy looked at my passport and said "Virginia Beach, eh? That's tough." I smiled back and laughed "yeah," as I walked down the hall; it may not be Malibu, but it's got its own charm.

Today was so unexpectedly good that I'm still in a little bit of shock, and I'm not sure what I've done to deserve it. My mother and I almost had another fight this morning, when she tried to carry on a conversation while I ate cereal and read the New York Times. If there's one thing that I just can't stand, it's someone asking incessant questions while I'm clearly in the middle of reading something, so I do my best to ignore and dodge the problem with curt replies. A tearful "are you mad, Thea?" was not an auspicious start to my last Sunday of summer, but thanks to ombudsman extraordinare (Dad), by the time I met them for lunch, we were all able to laugh a little about it, and it blew over. Whew. So like I said, this gift of a day was certainly not in reward for me being a perfect daughter, nor for my dogged work ethic, my accomplishments over the summer, my unthinking kindness towards puppies and small children, nor my charming personality. I really don't know why, and I'm not going to worry about it; I'll just accept it gracefully, say thank you, and remain quizzically puzzled by the weirdness of life.

I could get all philosophical and meditate on why it's so odd that today should come at the end of August, and back in the mundane world of my house and family, when I've been living in relatively exotic locales for the past 8 months and experiencing new places all the time. You know, something about coming full circle, the cyclical nature of life, traveling across the the ocean to find that your own home town can be one of the most beautiful places on the Atlantic, crap like that. But that would be silly, and might border on pretension...and I'm never silly and/or pretentious.

So I'll just sit here with a small happy twist to my mouth, contented after a successful evening in the kitchen (grilled black sea bass stuffed with lemon-basil pesto, cherry tomato and parsley tart, and tomato pesto clams), have a shower to wash of the the sea salt on my hands from cooking, plus the salt left in my hair, and head off to bed. Still not thinking about going back to school, classes, schedules, and all the things that will comprise my reality in seven-days' time, but today merits a little break, a grateful nod to whatever forces might be out there and want me to have a good time. I can take the hint guys--I may be slow, but I catch on eventually.

Cohabitation

Continuing in the theme of the week: high school remembrance, it is time for me to get out of the house. My mother and I have never really been able to live in the same enclosed space for very long, due to longstanding discrepancies in our ideals, world views, taste in music/movies/clothing/style, and manner of communicating (as in me not doing so without being sarcastic)

I have just been informed that AOL instant messenger is a weapon for credit card thieves and computer hackers, who will not only invade our obsolete home computer to steal top secret Microsoft Word files such as "Cathy's Recipes" (the only files she keeps on 'the machine' as it is known in our house), but furthermore, will certainly take the time to single me out (a dead-broke college student with a measly credit card limit), access passwords and credit card numbers to rob me blind. Thank you for the sage technological advice, Mom, I'll keep that in mind the next time the damn thing crashes and you don't know how to plug in the modem. AAAAAAAAAH.

Please do not ask questions during movies, please do not wake me up early with vaccuums on the weekends, please just leave me alone until I've had my coffee and can formulate coherent sentences. Must. Get. Out. Of. House.

Twilight Zone

I'm too young to be nostalgic; I know this, I'm not stupid. But these past few days have been messing with my head a little. So many familiar scenes: matinee movies at surf and sand; meeting the parents for dinner out after work; getting up in p.j.'s to drive Dad out to the base and listening to Fresh Air on the ride home; meeting at the dairy queen on colley avenue for a night out in ghent, our evening's plans stymied because (as always) I'm underage; early nights driving home alone.

Tonight, at 2:00 am, leaving Kempsville and Mandi's house in the rusty Caravan, listening to classic country with the window rolled down, singing shamelessly as I let my hair down in true 80's movie fashion to blow in the wind on a warm, almost sticky Virginia Beach summer night that is classic to Hampton Roads. I had to check myself several times on the once familiar roads, the exits on and off of highway 264, and make sure the long unused synapses in my brain that used to steer me home without thinking were functioning properly. In a moment of hideously trite coincidence, I flipped the radio over to my other favorite station only to find the song "Save Tonight" now coming out of the blown-out speakers of the van. 'Fight the break of dawn...for tomorrow I'll be gone. I wish that I, that I could stay' it said to me, as I cruised home, the memory of one last big hug for Mandi before she left for Blacksburg in the morning still fresh in my mind. Excuse me, could I be in a bad episode of Felicity from sophomore year of high school, please? Give me a break people. Somebody up there must have a sick sense of humor to bestow such situational irony on me. I get the joke.

Heat lightning flashing overhead, I decide that I'm better off with 80's country that reminds me of a time far away enough to be blurry. I'm in no hurry to get home; this is pretty tame for a night out on the town: dinner at 219 with my family, a late showing of Seabiscuit at the mall, and then a quick goodbye over late-night television. Exactly like every other Friday night of my formative years in Va Beach, that's what's odd.

Only tonight, when I drove home, instead of waxing melodramatically over that boy that was never going to realize I wanted to be more than his friend, I calmly enjoyed the soundtrack to my life. I wasn't crying over the realization that I'd have to go back to school on Monday and deal with the people that either I'd yelled at or had mocked me the week before, none of that crap this time, just a bit of a sigh remembering how long it's been since the Three Witches have been in the same city for more than a day or two. I come home, listening to Ani Difranco as in days of yore, but instead of a mix tape made by an acquaintance in well-meaning pity (old school acoustic Ani) after seeing my frustrated bitterness, now I've got a CD acquired by chance from a new friend. On my run this afternoon as I passed by the club soccer tryouts at the field in my neighborhood and remembered doing the same thing years ago: watching the U-17 and U-18 boys' teams for a glimpse of my crush. Tonight I jogged by a little slower than I used to in high school when I was in shape. As the sun set, I found myself casually checking out the coach instead.

I would call all these moments regressive flashbacks, but they're not. They're strange doppelgangers of moments that happened a while ago, but softer than I remember them, less aggressive and hurtful. As I go through the same routines, the ones that used to comfort me still do (I'll always consider the cookbook section of Barnes and Noble one of my favorite evening haunts...I'm all about those couches), and the ones that used to make me want to run far far away from here don't irritate me so much. There's a sort of peace that I've made with this city, an understanding that we've agreed upon. It doesn't fuck with me too much, and I agree to not to try and make it something that it's not. We've grown up a little, seen some new people, and done our own thing for a while.

The cat climbs into my lap to try and push my fingers away from the keys as she settles down, but instead of urgently displacing her because I can't type fast enough to compete with jumbled angry thoughts, I endulge the formerly fat furball and scratch her head for a while as I pluck away with one finger on the keyboard. She knows that she doesn't have to comfort me tonight, and will wait around in the hallway until I'm ready to crawl into bed. Speaking of which, I shouldn't keep her waiting too long--don't want her to get pissed.

Senior Year?

So I'm a bit slow sometimes. The fact that I'm about to begin my last year of college has been sinking in incrementally, and I think I've finally got it. The safety of having entire years of my life more or less planned out for me has been rather comforting lately, and now that formerly abstract hypothetical questions approach all too tangible deadlines, I have to start making decisions again.

I shall combat the oncoming crisis of indecision by occupying myself with quintessentially summerlike activities, battling valiantly against the calendar to draw out these last two weeks of irresponsible behavior.

Making a good start of it, yesterday one of my oldest friends swung by the house to pick me up and go to the movies. As the huge blue and white suburban glomped its way into my driveway on its lifted suspension, it reminded me of so many spring and summer afternoons of my highschool years. Adding to the regressive feel was our cinematic selection, 'Grind.' Please, anyone who might even consider watching that at any point in your lives, don't. We knew it was going to be bad, but this really reached new depths of awfulness. Luckily we had the entire theater to ourselves and felt free to yell at the screen during the worst moments. The day was most definitely redeemed by meeting the fam' for a sushi dinner at sunset at one of my favorite little restaurants.

Today, hopefully will be slightly more productive, although I'd like to think that catching up on the events of the past month with a fantastic friend doesn't count as a wasted day, especially when I'm still getting over a bad case of jet lag.

Schoolnight

Back @ the beach, exhausted from 28 straight hours of traveling.

Marooned somewhere in Ohio, slightly this side of melancholy, Ani Difranco saves the day yet again:

You are also a stiff drink, and I am on call.
You are a party, and I am a schoolnight;
I'm lookin' for my door key, but you are my porch light

You'll never know dear, just how much I love you;
You'll prob'ly think this was just my big excuse,
But I stand committed to a love that came before you
And the fact that I adore you is just one of my truths...

What kind of scale compares the weight of two beauties,
The gravity of duties, the groundspeed of joy?
Tell me what kind of gauge can quantify elation,
What kind of equation could I possibly employ?

...and I don't expect to have much sympathy for my grieving
But I guess that this is the price that we pay
For the privelege of living for even a day
In a world with so many things worth believing in.

but I still don't know which side of the lyrics I'm on this time. Maybe I'll figure it out eventually.