All Before Spring

Every day the past couple of days, when I’ve taken the step out the door to the forest around me I have felt a different kind of air. It’s not much cooler, but definitely fall air. When I breathe it in my nostrils, it’s no longer moist and humid, but it’s just crisp. Kind of sharp, like a freshly sharpened wooden, old school no. 2 pencil, the yellow kind. It smells like freshly cut logs, neatly stacked behind the house hibernating there until a cold day in winter, which seems to be creeping up right around the corner. If I’ve never made it clear in any other posts you should know I’m not a winter fan. Unfortunately, this year I’m only missing the first part of winter, but fortunately, at least I’m missing half. Then I’ll be back in time to watch the nastiness of winter sprout up into a lovely spring. If you didn’t know, I love spring.

Today, though, Karalee and I went “into town,” you see town is a short journey by car away, so we have to go in to get there. We went in, made some errands to the bank, Goodwill, St. Vincent’s, Thrift 4 U, to Lake City Junior Academy (our old Academy) where we saw my friend, the new 1^st grade teacher, Kandice, some old teachers, then headed to farmer’s market on Main Street. I don’t know why I love Farmer’s Market so much, but I do. I can’t help myself. It’s only 2 blocks, but I wouldn’t miss it for anything – except probably my summer job at MiVoden. It was a pretty well lived out day. I rear-ended a car at a stop sign, but he never stopped, so I never stopped, and no damage was done. I found 2, what looks to be, great books at the Goodwill for $.50 each. 10-Minute Devotions For Youth Groups and Becoming A Woman Of Influence, ate a pesto roll from the Farmer’s Market, bought a few more bangles to add to my collection, and we sang a lot. Since the iPod adapter for my car has quit working I listen to the radio now, and I almost know all of the new, hip summer jams. I hate listening to music I don’t know but my sister keeps reminding me that if I listen to this one song, I’ll know it next time. It’s a work in progress. Today I garbled out some song lyrics and my sister laughed at me telling me I reminded her of a little girl who makes up the words to songs and doesn’t care who’s listening. I wish I were that comfortable with every, but my sister is one of the few who gets the opportunity to hear such wonderful tones. The other day we went back out to camp one early morning for a final session of Zumba taught by our own staff member, Heather. She’s always reminding us to sing if we know the words, which we all do, but nobody sings that early in the morning. And just as I’m beginning to get frustrated because I can’t shake my hips like she does, she also reminds us that there’s no right or wrong way to do Zumba, “Just loosen up and move,” she often shouts out. So I close my eyes, sing the words quietly to myself in the back and imagine that my body knows how to get loose and shake those hips. In that moment my sister looked over at me and laughed. She laughed so hard, I thought she might cry. “I wonder what I look like when I do Zumba,” was all she said. And she kept laughing. Today she told me that it was cute that I don’t care what other people think when I sing or dance. But really, I do care. I care a lot. I would NEVER sing like that in public. And I wouldn’t even attempt to dance in front of people. I wish I didn’t care so much. I care a lot about going to Argentina, coming back, finding a job. I’m stressed. It keeps me awake for hours at night. I just wish I didn’t care. We all try not to, but maybe it talks somewhere in my new book about Becoming A Woman Of Less Anxiety. Hopefully, I'll find out before spring.