Car Trips
Life has been crazy recently. Like, ridiculous levels of crazy. So crazy, with so much going on constantly that I don’t even feel like I can talk to anyone about it because by the time I finished they’d be sleeping. I also haven’t had the chance to process a lot of it. But, the past two days we drove from home in Texas with my grandparents and grandpa’s sister, my great aunt, to Virginia. While driving for long periods of time, and even riding in the back, I spent a lot of time thinking. It was rather nice, I wish I could do that more often. While researching for a paper in 9th grade I remember seeing a stat about how we think about 50,000 thoughts a day, but 80% of them are the same day in and day out. During this trip, that has definitely not been the case. I’ve finally had a chance to process all that is going on, and I wanted to get them out somewhere, so I thought “Why not here?” So now I plan to practice blogging over the summer so I am more experienced when school starts this fall, and can hopefully have a fairly regular blog.
To begin, crazy life is caused by Maycember. I heard that term a week ago and found it very fitting. Apparently I’m late hearing the term because even google docs didn’t just try to auto correct it. Anywho, with finishing school, graduation, and all those things everyone has to do “before school ends” I’ve been swamped. It’s been good, but a lot. I’ve been trying to be there for people, but usually I’ll go be social then come home and crash. But, with my grandparents and great aunt staying over, when I get home I am expected to spend time with them. I love them, and would love to, but I just need a break, ya know? And before leaving for VA the house was even fuller with my older sister and her roommate home for a few days. It was so crowded that when I got home at 1 am from a dead car fiasco the other night night, after spending the day having a wonderful time playing golf in the pouring rain and all I wanted to do was take off my soggy socks and shower, every working shower was next to the room of someone sleeping. So, yours truly had to pull all the paper towels and toilet paper out of their storage spot in the spare bathroom, and shower with hand soap.
And you see, it’s crazy things like that that I want to be able to talk to someone about. But the problem is, often there doesn’t seem to be anyone who I can tell all the crazy things to. I heard a quote once to the effect of “we get married not for love, but because we need someone to experience life with.” I better marry a good listener.
As we left behind the plains of the south, and reached the rolling hills of the northeast I looked out the window and thought the expanse looked rather like a wrinkled blanket. A quilt edged with forests, stitched with bushes, patterned with farms and cattle. I thought it rather fitting. The ground beneath these homely towns is a beautifully wrinkled blanket, whereas the ground back home is starched dully flat beneath the feet of CEOs. I think that’s what I enjoy about it up here, everything is naturally so beautiful. It’s also ok to leave clothes out to dry, to eat on the porch, to spend hours on walks, to eat wild berries, to let the weeds grow in your yard because in a month they will flower beautifully and then pick them all for a bouquette on your table. Things aren’t as uptight as back home, and while people like things to be nice, they enjoy natural beauty, rather than just plowing everything down and plastering over it their idea of “curb appeal”.
Well, this is getting long already so I’ll cut off here for now. More to come…