VINE CHAT

I know I say this as often as I repeat the whole food/love connection, but words are more powerful when set to music.

Soundtracks, gym classes, tv shows, ball games.  You hear music.  Why? Is it subsconscious, or superconscious? Maybe it just gets you going. Maybe it makes a message more dramatic.

I was doing my best a few days ago in a Body Works + Abs class, keeping up, among about thirty-five other women under flickering tube lights in a gym studio, unforgiving mirrors on every wall, punching bags hanging motionless, stationary bikes parked, and a very vibrant woman leading the class. 

I love it when someone inspires the best in me, rather than instilling a competitive feeling from the worst in me. It's like hearing my next favorite song on the radio. The Body Works + Abs instructor inspired me that way, and she is my new mentor, although she has no idea.

First of all, she is is sleek but muscular - like a blue shark gliding. She is tough - think Vasquez from the movie Aliens, but with pageant potential. She's funny - she knows who comes to her class and what cracks to make. And she's cute - she could kick almost anyone's bee-hind but instead, she's the person who smiles at you and makes your day when every one else seems to sneer behind their steering wheel.

Must be her energy that makes you do exactly what she says even when you "feel the burn" to the point of spontaneous combustion. Perhaps the fact that she has trained Marines has something to do with her drill sargeant type countdown, when her soprano-three voice becomes a very feminine tenor. Or the mental images she evokes when she says clever things like "Get those coconut caps working!" (think shoulders).

The other day, something about her and her class just got to me.

Her exercise mixes usually combine hip-hop and Motown but thrown in there was The Beatles. I went through a Beatles phase in high school I think, I believe to this day there was some amazing writing done by those four, made better with the addition of music. I saw Beatlemania as a gradeschooler but it stayed topical and I didn't understand most of it, I was asleep, slouched on my Dad, snoring before intermission.

"Ob-la-di Ob-la-da Life Goes On" has always been similar to "I Am the Walrus" to me, I didn't really get it the way I failed to absorb Beatlemania. Besides, you can listen to Blackbird over and over and never need to absorb another metaphorical message in a Beatles song, as far as I'm concerned. And right now, I don't really care what the rest of "Ob-la-di Ob-la-da Life Goes On" says, except for those seven words "la la la la life goes on", because my bad-ass exercise instructor sang them out loud as I was about to collapse and enabled me to keep going.

...enabled me to keep going... 

Since that day, on the verge of stress, pre-menstrual, or fatgue-induced collapse, I sing it. I hum or mutter "la la la la life goes on" when I need to progress past something (often), when I need to be reminded of my place in the Universe, or when I'm sweating from working my coconut caps rather than sweating the small stuff.

"Life Goes On." I must have heard this a hundred thousand times before Body Works + Abs that day. Why did it matter so much to me that day, why did I finally understand the wisdom in those three words now, way past high school, way past the days of having an impressionable young mind? Because it was set to music? Because the instructor really seems to have her ---- together and I want my ---- together too?

Well, I think every once in a while I need a new song, a new message, a fresh messenger - a different mojo that I am ready to take in. Every once in a while I hear something that can only make sense to me now, though yesterday it would have seemed trite. Like randomly grabbing a heavier barbell to see if I can hack it, reaching deep within me for what is ready to be awakened (or boot-camped out of me) - souls and intellect move up different levels too. I don't know how else to explain why I get moved by a song, which becomes a mantra, or a random person, who becomes a messenger.

After such phenomena, I'm not who I used to be anymore. If I've taken in it without questioning it (writing about it is not the same as questioning it, really) , I'm better, stronger, I'm tougher, and smarter.

Really. These good things happen. 

Some days the music I hear evokes pain ("Pain is just weakness leaving the body" ~ says the bad-ass exercise instructor). Not all messengers want to bring out the best in me. But I'm ready with a visual, an audio-clip, and a tangible, Karmic message of the way I want to be, and even though I didn't know I had it in me, it's already there. Refining the rustics of me until I am ready for the next level...

...and the next song.

Do you ever have one of those days when you don't engage, you kind of just hover on the outrskirts of your normally productive life? Do you ever have one of those days when you know the other guy (or girl, or Mom, or competitor, even if these are synonymous) is doing it better, faster, and sooner than you - but you just don't care?

I had one of those days today.

Actually, I have those days more often than I care to admit. I love naps. Secret's out.

My domestic details are boring, and I have better things to write about. But today when I set my newly two-year-old daughter down for a nap, I slept right alongside her. I drifted off into sleep thinking about all of the things I wasn't getting done, the tasks and chores I was opting out of by sleeping in the daytime, so my sleep was not so 'restorative' (this is maybe why I don't sleep so well at night either, necessitating these naps - do you ever wake up at 2:00 a.m. and mentally carry over unfinished tasks from yesterday to the current day?). Yet I snuggled with my baby girl, listened to her rhythmic breathing, was tickled by her soft wavy curls, and that, my friends, represents the types of things we'll remember later when we realize guilt was a monumental waste of time.

I woke up, checked my e-mail as my daughter watched High School Musical 2 ("You Are The Music In Me" over, and over, and over, and over, damn the DVR), and I received a message  from an old friend about another friend, Orlando, 37 years old, who just had a brain aneurysm, on life support, and not expected to live. He's 37. I worked and hung out with Orlando when I was a teenager, haven't talked to him in so many years, but I thought of him often (back when crank calling was funny, he would call people randomly and assume the identity of someone named Ma Belle looking for her cows - I assure you, it was hilarious, especially when you're 16 and can't drink yet and your parents have gone to bed). But after we graduated, Orlando slipped away on the different roads people take on their way to adulthood, didn't leave me his forwarding information, and we unintentionally became less important to each other. But he must have meant something to me because I just thought of him last week, or, should I say, I giggled to myself while driving as I remembered Ma Belle. ("Why are you laughing to yourself, Mom? Are you okay? I think Momma's lost it.") Orlando had just re-surfaced into our mutual friend's life. Orlando sent him an e-mail two days before he went in between this world and the other, where he is now. Just re-surfaced out of nowhere, very strange. Or not. I don't pretend to understand the mysterious forces that get us contacting people years after we've disappeared from each other. I wish Orlando had called me too.

I would have told him about the three kids I had, maybe my writing, and how I married a really cute guy. I possibly would have complained about boring domestic details and given him a littany of what goes on in suburbia, poor little me (wink). I definitely would have asked him to do Ma Belle for me.

I can't do that now.

What can I do instead? What would Orlando tell me to do?

Orlando would tell me to enjoy those naps with my baby girl. Orlando would tell me "Don't ground your kids into the next century for toilet-papering, we did it too!" He'd make me, and remind me to, laugh.

And I think he would tell me to not be in a race with the other people who will only meet the same fate as I will - sooner rather than later for him, tragically. He's 37. He'll stay 37. He'll be a teenager in my mind forever, and what is so wrong with that...we enjoyed being teenagers (read: infantile.) No regrets, it makes me smile.

I haven't talked to Orlando in years but he didn't reach a phone or e-mail to reach me.

Hey Orlando, I found the cows, and they are very wise. 

Now I know these wings can carry me wherever I need to go

But I’m flying above and watching things about which I’d rather not know

The frog here, the scorpion there

The light that breaks through the trees

The moss that grows on the branches not even moved by the breeze

I won’t get lost

I’ve got this firefly to cling to

I’ve got the water and the moonlight and different shades of blue

I understand the differences between them

I have more wisdom in me than reason

Even though I am still young.

I know these wings will carry me when I question what I’ve been told

I know the pine needles sting

I know the different birds by their sing

And that even tall trees can have shallow souls

I’ll figure it out

I’ve got this idea that what’s good will stay good

I don’t judge the leaves by their mothering wood

And never by their season.

I know these wings will carry me when my faith in nature is low

Sometimes it’s dark here but I see the mountains behind

When the sunrise hits the hills I can always find

Ten or twelve new things below

Doves or bees or flying fish

But I’ve got wings, I don’t need this wish

What spell can I cast for you?

I would lift the curse if empowered to

I would have fairy tales my whole life through

Despite the decay in these tangled trees

I know these wings will carry me.

© Samantha Gianulis 2007

"Watch out, there's poop right there."

"We're gonna play in the rain, baby- this is WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT! Haven't you ever heard that song by Jack Johnson? No?"

"I guess since the other team walked off the field we're not playing today."

"I stole my neighbor's cereal."

"And then the scorpion says, 'Because it's my nature.' "

"I heard they called the police?"

"I'm covered in dog hair."

"Get up, keep moving!"

"ELMO!" 

"I don't dare open it."

"What do you have against Jack Johnson?" 

"Is that his car? Is it?"

"Are they playing? Can they play in this rain? They'll catch pneumonia!"

"She isn't wearing a hat? Oh my God."

"It tastes different now." 

"No, NO! You're the striker!"

"It'll pass in five minutes." 

"You make bath time so much fun."

"It just wrecked me.  WRECKED. ME." 

"Is that poop?"

"I need that, it's my lucky..."

"Of course flip-flops" 

"Omegas."

"Nothing.  What about you?"

"I lost it. But I washed it.  Now it's clean. Do you need it?"

"All by herself?"

"No, not here."

"Finally, I got a fairy tale."

"Atonement."

"When is it nap time?"

"I couldn't.  I didn't have a choice." 

"Where is that CD? Do you have it?"

"...Saturday morning and it's time to go, One day these could be the days but who could have known...we used to laugh a lot, but only because we thought that everything good always would, everything good always would remain..."

Mmm-hmmm.

In a Barefoot Contessa cookbook I have on hand and recently cracked open, Ina Garten's inscription says "My home is where Jeffrey is." Jeffrey is her husband you probably already know. He's the person for whom she is almost always cooking...because he's coming home from working out of town, because he loves this, because of their trip there, or just because.

If there is one thing I believe (besides the fact that we have a Zen Master on the San Diego Padres and no one really understands what they are witnessing at Petco Park), it is that food is the best way to express emotion. Ina gets it. Ina understands that food isn't for showing off, rather, it's a personal matter that can be for 2 or 200, and if love goes in, love will be the most memorable flavor. She's clever in presentation, short cuts and tips, but it's the heart I feel coming through her recipes and celebrations that makes me want to be like her.  

On a recent episode, Ina prepared steak sandwiches for her and Jeffrey and showed snapshots of a camping trip they took together years ago. My oldest pictures of me with my husband are sixteen years old, our first trip to Cancun, Mexico. The night he proposed to me we ate Spaghetti Carbonara and drank sparkling wine on the ocean. Have I ever imagined myself in my own little cooking show, whipping up Carbonara as I sip Chardonnay and look at pictures of us in our early twenties? Nah.

Well, maybe.

Because I wanna be like Ina.

I am not sure how old Ina is, I don't eaxctly know how long her and Jeffrey have been married. But whatever age they are and however many years they have accumulated as a couple, it is so endearing to watch them eat French Onion Soup together on a blustery day at the beach. They are so in love. Very often I like smacking the back of my husband's head just because he is there - but if I don't get to grow old with him it's quite possible I would become a modern day Miss Haversham, sitting around in an apron rather than a wedding dress, watching repeats of Barefoot Contessa instead of a fire.

I am not sure exactly what finance or economoic position Ina held, but I know she reinvented herself when she was around my age and followed her passion - food. I love writing and I love food, the two have intersected in my life and I am following my literary dreams for no other reason than it's because it's what I love and I think it's, just...in me. Ina's smile is genuine, whether on a book, taping a show, and even in her voice - because she did what she wanted, loved what she did - and from what I see those ingredients combined with diligence allowed her passion to become her work to become her happily ever after. 

Ina, I wanna be like you.

It's not just her shrimp and orzo salad in take-out containers that inspires me. It's how she dictates the recipe for a good life inadvertently that speaks to me. Simple things, like cooking for the people you love what they love the most. By saying I'm going to do this because it feels right.

I am comfortable in my own kitchen, writing down my own life word by word, but maybe one day I wil be like Ina.

You're all invited.  

"And I feel, so much depends on the weather." ~ Stone Temple Pilots 

Return of the clouds...sounds like a dramatic title, huh? Foreshadowing doom, impending and inevitable conflict. WRONG. Just a sign of the change in the seasons, that's all. Sunday is the autumn equinox. The Fall Solstice. I will be doing ritualistic, celebrational things all day (scheduled around my son's ball game, of course). Because I have emotional contingencies regarding the change of seasons. It's the noticeable progression in the environment that somewhere in my life I have come to need. Maybe just feeling that I am in appropriate time and space, I don't know. What I do know is that the seasons and their weather patterns give me the reassurance that things will always change, but never change.   

For the past two weeks, I have had the the post-summer/not yet autumn blues. We have been hovering in between seasons in a hot, uncomfortable way and it's messing with me. I need autumn to just begin already.

I took my kids to the beach for one last play date the first week of school, and even though Labor Day had been two days earlier, the beach felt different - fewer people, the ones that were there didn't smile very much; the water was not glassy or turquoise, but murky and foamy; there was excessive, stinky seaweed piled on the sand with little flying insects abuzz; the water seemed more than ten degrees cooler than the week prior when the waves wanted to party; the current was more like a fury and less like a wind carrying us along.

Then, we had another southern California heat wave. Everyday when I picked up my kids from school, by the time I had put the baby in the stroller, walked to the classrooms and thought of something different to say to each mom that I knew, I was a sweaty, exhausted mess. The resulting crankiness it causes me is a tell-tale sign of the in-between summer and autumn stage.

The most unfortunate sign of late summer/autumn blending together for many other southwestern America residents is wildfires - you can almost guarantee that sooner or later in the orangeish in-between season sky, you'll notice large billows of smoke, and pick up the scent of burnt timber in the air. This year, our eastern small-towns in the mountains and their apple orchards are victims to the blaze. Notoriously dry, parts of southern California go up in flames sometimes. It just happens, but there is always the promise of  regeneration. When wildfires happen, the cheery "Not a cloud in the sky!" San Diegans I know so well begin to say "Hope we get some rain soon."

I hope for that every day of the year. That's just me.

And today was finally different. This morning when we left the house to walk to school, the clouds greeted us.  This was comforting to me like down pillows on a king size bed at the end of a long day. The air was less like a crowded Chuck E. Cheese stuffiness and more like the gust coming out of the freezer on a humid day. My son, seemingly excited like me at the chnage in weather, grabbed his new maroon hoodie with a soccer ball sewn on and zipped it up to the top.

We walked to school this morning for the first time not panting like dogs and blocking the morning sun from our eyes, but able to see without squinting.

It's here, autumn is here, I told myself. Years ago, I would have felt an urge to bake an apple pie. These days, I simply hope to get my kids to school on time. But with just the presence of the clouds this morning, my spirits were lifted...the grey clouds banished my blues. I feel like the calendar matches the weather and to my fickle mindset, that is a blessing.

I don't know when my moods became contingent upon the weather and recurring seasons. Even when it's a sweltering summer day that keeps me floating in the pool or hiding in the safety of my a/c, I know to expect summer weather in summer time so therefore I can cope very well. But it's the unpredictable stuff, the undefinable, in-between seasons that find me reaching for explanation, desperate for a day that will give me less surprise and more guarantee. I don't want to control the weather. I just want the things I can't control to be...scheduled. That's just me.

I don't mind a sudden summer rainstorm, I find them romantic and the steam rising off the hot concrete afterwards smells musty and tropical. I can take an unseasonably hot day in late November without going into a depression and envying the Northeast their fresh snow. But come late September, if the weather isn't going to cooperate with the photograph of trees with yellow and orange leaves on my calendar, at least promise me that cooler days are in my near future. I can fill in the rest if I have to.

I need to know that progression is nearing. I need to know I can count on it for a while. That's just me.

My husband just told me something I never knew - there is estrogen all around him and our son with which they are at war. I have been asked to stop buying fennel and discard all lavender products in my home.

Oh, okay. That's only about two-thirds of all my (expensive) beauty products, aromatherapy, and cleaning aids.

Apparently, lavender can cause males to grow breasts. And fennel contains a very high level of estrogen. It wasn't bad enough that there are three females (four if you count the dog) in our home, outnumbering the two males. Now the males are the victim of female hormones and botanicals that assault their masculinity.

My first reaction was to hide my L'Occitane Lavender products, slice the fennel up into smaller pieces and hide under the celery so my husband didn't know the difference, and keep fennel fronds in the "Dill" spice jar. But after careful consideration, I have decided I am going to give my husband a list of things which I feel are an affront to my feminity, a counter-attack, if you will.

1) ESPN on four different televisions at all times. Can I have the Food Network on just one of them without one of the males in the house saying "I can't believe you just changed the game!"?

2) Supplements. My husband makes 3 shakes and takes several supplements daily. My home (specifically, my kitchen - gasp) is littered with plastic tubs adorned with pictures of oiled, flexed, far too muscular male (and female) bodies. Yuk. Not to mention the shake "cup" that I have to wash 3 times daily. That powdered stuff cakes and stinks after a while.

3) Certain men's magazines. Articles on Omega-3s and investing money packaged cleverly around sexual content I suspect is tantamount to high school male locker room talk. Of course, I could be wrong.

Okay, I know this is a small list. But I am trying to be peaceful. And let's be realistic. I used lavender baby powder (even lotion) on our son for the first four years of his life, and no boobs have sprouted on him. My husband's pecs haven't gone soft, it takes breastfeeding to do that (trust me). My Greek mother-in-law used fennel in her cooking since her children were old enough to eat solids, and my husband (her son) has four children. He's fine.

I have declared no war on masculinity in this home, either directly or indirectly. Lavender smells good. Fennel is tasty, especially when caramelized.

Next time hubby asks why I'm burning the lavender candle instead of the sandalwood, I've got a great distraction.

"I changed the game when the Chargers were tied with fifteen seconds remaining in the fourth quarter and I think it was 3rd down on the ten yard line but anyway I wanted to see the ending of Steel Magnolias for the 80th time and when the movie was over I saw your supplements advertised. Can I try them? They said they were good for flab and I need to firm up. They come in a pretty new container, too."

That oughtta do it. 

I am not a natural-born athlete. I can put up some respectable weight at the gym, I can water-ski well, and I have recently adapted to cycling classes which has me feeling pretty light on my feet, if not sporty. However, grace eluded me somewhere in fetal development. Coordination and athleticism are things I can write about, but not perform with ease. So I married a man who has all three, and hoped our children would inherit that grace, coordination and athleticism.

I knew I wasn't going to win an atheltic scholarship after years of being picked last for sports. Don't feel sorry for me, this was in the days if Chinese Jacks and I always had something to do at recess. It was clear I wasn't the Phys Ed teacher's favorite after I scored a goal in soccer, for the other team. That happened in fifth grade.  I remember it like it was yesterday...me driving the soccer ball downfield, hearing the yells of my team-mates behind me, none of the players on the other team able to get the ball away from me.  Why would they? I was about to give them the lead. My team-mates did more than yell at me after that, I was socially ostracized in grade 5. Incidentally, I think that's about when I started keeping a journal.  

Now my daughter Zoe, five-years-old, a Greek version of me, has started playing soccer. But she is noticeably more graceful than me - she runs fast, she hits hard, she swims like a fish. When people comment on how she is so similar to me, I am quick to humbly reference my husband's athletic ability that she inherited, not wanting Zoe to think she is a hopeless clutz like her Momma. That kind of changed last Saturday during her first soccer game. So did a few of my perecptions.

In between changing the baby and talking to my own Mom about tomato knives (very important topic), I lost sight of which goalie was which. I was lucky to glance up at the right time and see my Zoe come alive in the game, dribble the soccer ball down field, anxiously smiling, her hair like black velvet ribbons bouncing off her shoulders, her cheekbones like two Macintosh apples...I got caught up in the moment. Every stride she took, every kick of the ball by her pink and grey cleats, I saw pride shoot from her like wings. As she edged towards the goal, her young, fragile self-opinion as a little girl in a wicked world became more iron-clad, the world was hers. I was jumping up and down at field's edge, cheering on my daughter...almost like it was vindication for my inner 5th grader. I couldn't hear anything else but my daughter's mojo keeping a game-like beat.

But she was striding towards the wrong goalie. About to score a goal for the other team.

I had no idea (I have no inner compass, apparently it's inherited). I just kept cheering her on, caught in the vaccuum of my projection.

And luckily, Zoe missed her team's goal.

That is why everyone was so silent.  No one on our side of the field, none of our team parents were cheering, because we were about to go behind in the game due to one of our own players - namely, my daughter, Zoe.

At half-time, Zoe's coach said, "Zoe, I really like the way you dribbled the ball downfield." I've done good, I mated with an athlete and my little girl will never suffer the ridicule of sucking at sports like I did. "Next time, though," her coach carefully continued, "Go in the direction of our opposing team's goalie."

OH.

I didn't even have to think about this one, my inner 5th grader was silent. I would cheer over and over again for Zoe doing the same thing, wrong way and all, because it's really so damn funny, and she is my girl. She is not me. She is not me. She is not me. I'm calling this one a victory because...

a)  Zoe felt good about herself.

b)  Zoe shrugged off her directional error like it was nothing.

c)  I truly, honestly, cross my heart didn't care what anyone else us thought.

Zoe's team, the Shooting Stars, ended up losing that game 1-0 - a player on the opposing team, The Pink Panthers, sneaked that size 3 ball right into our goal. "As long as you all learned something and had fun, you're all winners!" Zoe's coach said post-game, to a huddle of little girls in pony-tails. 

Zoe learned something. I learned a lot.  Does that mean I'm a winner, too?

HEY 5TH GRADE CLASSMATES FROM 1979 - I SUCK AT SPORTS BUT I'M A STILL A WINNER!

And incidentally, I'm Zoe's Mom. 

I should have known. Being cavalier and taking spontaneous risks hasn't ever really paid off for me. But I was determined. I was going to be bold. I was at the beach, under the long weekend sun, I wanted to dive under the wave and feel the water churn above me on it's way into shore.

Of course I did this as I wore my Fendi prescription sunglasses.

The baby, who usually is resting on my hip in waist deep water, was on the beach with my hubby. My girlfriend Krissy was watching my other kids and her kids build sand castles on the beach. I had escaped to the water, seeking indepenedence, feeling the energy of the ocean water - very 'Point Break' like, and I saw the perfect wave coming at me - tall, beginning to break, getting loud, and I felt the pull of the water. All of a sudden I was 20 years old, gracefully young, adventurous, and free.  Most importantly, I was free. No kids around to check on. Just me and the Pacific and all that implies. I'll get you first, I felt about the wave. And I dove right underneath it...ahhhh. Freedom.

Wait a minute, where are my glasses? I had my glasses on? I HAD MY GLASSES ON! S***!

I looked at my husband on shore, like he could do anything about this crisis.  But he read the look on my face and held his hands up ... "What? Whatsamatter?"

Frantically, I begin brushing away layers of breakwater like this will help me find the brown glasses that are unfortunately the color of seaweed. "St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please look around..." I twist in 360 degrees over and over like I'm trying to make myself dizzy, looking in the water. "HONEY!" S***. S***. S***. S***.

I run back on shore and ask my husband to help me commence a search. "Well, you still have your hair clip," he says, rubbing my back, trying to make me feel better. The hair clip that cost me 99 cents stays on my head, unlike my expensive glasses, a rare indulgence, that were adapted to the shape of my head, abandoning me so easily.

I look in the water for a good twenty minutes, feeling piles of seaweed with my foot to see if the glasses are hiding there. My efforts are fruitless. The Fendis are gone. It's not that they were Fendis, name brands don't really thrill me - good fits thrill me.  Comfort thrills me. My sunglasses not only enabled me to see, protected my eyes from the sun and kept me from squinting, they multi-tasked as a hair fashion accessory, keeping my hair out of my face when I characteristically placed them on top of my head. They were my favorite headband.

Back up on shore, sitting under the pink, yellow and green umbrella, I call my optometrist. "That will be $498 dollars - shall I place the order now?" Gees, $498? I dread telling that to my husband who so good naturedly handled my error in nautical judgement. "But what about my insurance?" I ask. "We must not have your current insurance coverage in our system." Great. I left my insurance card in my wallet at home, have no idea who our carrier is, and their office closes at 4 for the holiday weekend. I'm screwed, I may as well just accept it. Life goes on, just a little bit brighter than it was twenty minutes ago.

I went to the optomestrist's office as soon as I dropped the kids off for their first day of school. I have been wearing these awful old glasses - I look like a newscaster from the 70s, and the lenses are orange. ORANGE. I get a headache just thinking about my occiptal nerve adjusting. "Feel free to look around at our frames." After keeping the baby from tearing apart the Spongebob frames for kids, I find the Fendis. They're still my favorite ones in the store. Good, I can order these, maybe expedite them, have my eyes back to normal within "seven to ten business days." Then they say, "We show your last eye exam in 2005. You need a new eye exam before we can fill a prescription, it's the law." The law? But the girl I talked to Friday was going to fill my prescription over the phone!

So now it's Thursday, almost one week later, and I have an appointment with the only place in my city that accepts our insurance. Who knows how long it will take them to fill my prescription, to get my glasses, until I can see in the sun without a visor on my head or the unfashionable pain of orange lenses. This is what I get for trying to re-capture my youth. An irritiating, protocol-laden nightmare reminding me just how much older and dependent I truly am.

Dive in head first used to be my philosophy, and it was fun when I traveled light, when I had better vision, even though I lacked hindsight. I'll get to you first is a way of thinking that has only ever landed me in a loss - even though the wave certainly didn't take it personally, it sure humbled me and my Fendi level of comfort. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been inconvenienced but also, I find the whole thing amusing. It qualifies as small stuff, and I didn't (really) sweat it. That is good, for me.

I wonder if I'll learn my lesson about taking on waves...I can't imagine that I will. I am easily beguiled by powerful waves and seemingly still waters.  I know myself. Still learning too - and I plan to be cautiously spontaneous, smartly impulsive. Don't want to lose anything I can't replace.

Vision and judgement. One worse, one better. It's all in the way you see it.

Why do they show the best movies ever made on the weekends we're supposed to be outside enjoying the sunshine, being happy people? It's like the networks want us to stay inside exploring our psyches, vicariously experiencing drama through characters with whom we identify.

Can't we do both?

My eight-year-old son is watching Major League. My five-year-old daughter is watching Gone with the Wind.  I am in between the two movies.

And Jaws, in my top five favorite movies, is on at 1pm. But it's the last weekend of the summer and I feel some weird pressure to go out and make the most of every sunny minute. This is a real predicament for me. 

Feeling like I need to structure the last weekend of the non-structured summer is nothing but the influence of books, magazines, television shows and new sites that have subconsciously convinced me that nothing less than total surrender of my personal agenda to my children's development is selfish. Well, I say, the hell with that. I say, let me listen to the dialogue of Rhett Butler or Crash Davis and say outloud while washing dishes "This was no boat accident!", and then we can go swim (in a pool, not the ocean) in the late afternoon. When the temperature outside has cooled a bit, when I've identified with someone as messed up as me, when I feel better about not being the perfect mother because ironically enough - they exist in articles, but not in the movies. And the movies are supposed to be fictitious. Right. 

It's funny to me, the difference between fiction and non-fiction is like the difference between sunhine and shade. You can do both on the same day, sometimes, get a good dose of both at the same time.

We'll get it all done, we'll fit in our RDA of drama and use the right strucrure protection factor for our own little cast of familial actors and actresses. It's our story, we get to write it.

A good story, fiction or non-fiction, needs both indoor and outdoor scenes.