I'm sitting in the train station, with my red suitcase that I got for ten dollars at Goodwill, and ol' Red and I are going to be spending a lot of time together this summer. I'm country-hopping, doing a round of regional meetings for work. Last year, I was more of a fly on the wall, observing. This year, this is all me baby. A day and a half of SJ for these lucky, lucky participants! I'll be performing my tap dance from the northeast all the way to Los Angeles and 3 other places in between. The only thing I'm disappointed about is that none of them are in proximity to Allegra and Angie in the pacific northwest. Bummer. Unless you want to fly the kids to LA, Ang? Field trip!!
I didn't think I'd be making this country-hop again this summer. I thought I'd be in a new job, maybe even a new town, by now.
But here I am, in sweaty sticky Washington in the height of summer and it's my most hated time of year here. Tourists are EVERYWHERE...I live in a very popular tourist destination neighborhood, and I work right by the Capitol, so they're on my commute everyday. I don't mind them, it's simply the crowds. It takes me about another ten minutes at each stop to stand in line behind a group of same-tshirt-wearing clumps of people figure out how to operate the ticket machines. But mostly I just hate it because it's as hot as holy hell, and I hate being hot. I also hate feet, and I hate seeing so many people's feet. I'm such a strange person.
Summertime is also the time of year when everything shitty that can possibly happen to me, does. So...stay tuned I suppose? Everything's okay so far. But you never know.
I met a traveling baseball player for the Cubs in the airport a couple weeks ago. We spent a very fun and memorable few days (read: nights) together, and now he's gone. I don't miss him. It was fun to have a fling, and I really needed the esteem boost of being "picked up" and flirted with and especially by such a cutie. I'm sure he's romancing someone else right now, as we speak, in San Diego or Cleveland, and that's okay. Dating is not a priority for me right now. I'm sitting tight, so to speak, and waiting to see what's next. Keeping my heart here with me for awhile. Keeping it whole just in case something happens this summer to break it.
I spent the 4th of July lounging at my sister's house with the little girls who are quickly becoming kids rather than toddlers. I didn't have to split my time with another family, I made no plans (deliberately) and I spent two fantastic days just lounging in the pool and catching kids as they jumped in the pool. I was again, and almost always am when I have such a good block of time with my family, amazed at how my family dynamics have changed in the last five or so years.
To put it in perspective, this same sister (stepsister, technically) and I are the same age. We were 7 when our parents got married (4 when we met) but had drifted apart after we hit puberty and I quit spending alot of time at my dad's. Through high school and college, she was basically a stranger with whom I shared a sink with every other weekend. We both went to Panama City with our respective friends during our sophomore years of college. We were so distant by that point that I didn't even know she was there. We were in a dark club, music beating through our bodies, and we rounded a corner and came face to face. Stopped and stared for a minute, said hi, and walked away from each other.
If you told me that in ten years, I'd be in the bed with my head on her belly listening for my newest nephew to kick me, I'd think you were crazy. She'd think you were crazy too, if she thought I'd be teaching her daughters to swim in the backyard of her farmhouse where she lives with her high-school sweetheart. She wanted to move to New York City and be a lawyer. She now lives on a farm in Kentucky and is about to have her third kid and is a third-grade teacher. I wanted to be at stay-at-home mother, maybe a librarian, and that was about the extent of my ambitions. I now live in Washington and have an extremely successful career with no children. Our lives/ourselves have completely reversed.
We flipped around, traded futures, and found each other again in the process. Her blond daughters--one of whom bears my middle name--are my practice babies. My teachers in the ways of eventual motherhood, and there are times when I'm riding the four-wheeler around her farm that.....maybe, perhaps, we are living our dreams out...but in each other. Together, with our younger sister, we have the careers, the kids, the urban life, the country life, the married life, the flings, the travel.
Together, I guess you could say we have it all.
