Snips today, because today.
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One of my favorite things to do in the summer (when the water temperature's natural failing is more forgivable) is to take long showers. I know it's indulgent. For being a girl with very long legs to wash, I am pretty fast normally, which is one good thing about me. But in the summer, I lie on my back and stretch my legs up against the wall. Sometimes I stop the tub and let the water fill in around me: up over my stomach, loosing my hair, lapping at my throat. It's actually very hard to breathe like this. The water beads on my lips and I inhale a lot of it. I usually get tired of this before the tub fills, but not tonight.
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I got some good wounds this weekend. Mostly burns. Burnt shoulders, burnt fingertips. I was gathering wood for a fire at the lake when I reached into a patch of stinging nettles, which I should've recognized. I haven't gotten into any since the first or second time I was at Travis's farm years ago. I had forgotten what it was like entirely. I looked down and suddenly had whip-lines of little welts wrapping around my arms and biceps. For a moment, I had no idea what was happening to me and I felt light-headed and heart-racy.
Naturally, they faded almost instantly after--I don't think I more than brushed against it. I looked, saw the plant, figured it out. But the thing was, I couldn't believe I had forgotten so fully the experience of encountering it. I felt dauntingly empty-headed, which is also how I feel right now.
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I found these little adorable tiny flying saucer-shaped onions on sale at Kroger. They are cute and sweet, but way more trouble to cut up than is worth. Tonight I made them into watercress soup with lemon and ginger.
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A bad thing to find out during the workweek: the nice new mascara you bought is not waterproof, no, not even a little bit.
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I was thinking about my dumb showerbath description and it occurred to me how odd it is, the things I talk about in this blog and the things I don't. Lately, I've kept an uncensored log in my head and it's proven an interesting cache. What do I feel comfortable typing out? What do I self censor? Unsafe driving? Disappointment? Success? Crushed expectations? Anger? I feel less comfortable admitting anger than I do almost anything, even embarrassing sexual stories from my youth.
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Actually, that's not a really fair statement, because I don't have that many really good embarrassing sexual stories from my youth, being fairly sheltered and generally inexperienced.
I remember this one time when I was eleven or twelve, there was this boy from the neighborhood who I used to play with pretty regularly. He was a bit older. Then, all of the sudden, puberty! Tommy Maddox.. He responded to our changing bodies by generally getting really mean toward me. He'd shove me, or try to put me down in front of the other kids, or go out of his way to construct these elaborate, cruel pranks with me as the intended target. I was pretty nonchalant back then about it all--there were plenty of other kids to play with who weren't also bug-eyed psychos. I didn't really get it, and I didn't much care. Maybe you see where this is going.
Then, one day, we were enjoying a rare playing together in some pine trees, when suddenly, the punk cornered me. We wrestled briefly (I was pretty scrappy in those days) and in the fray, he tongue-kissed me. It was pretty terrible; I mean, he was twelve. Still, it cleared up a lot of mysteries about his recent behavior toward me. I eventually threw him off and exited the pines, ruffled, but steadfast, plotting revenge.
But the thing was, he'd chosen his moment poorly. His little sister had lain in wait nearby to witness the spectacle. She began circulating the tale widely.
His reaction was pretty unchill. He called me down for a secret pow-wow in his basement the next day. He explained to me that he had "spun" the scandal of the pinetree makeouts by telling everyone that he and I had not actually kissed, but rather engaged in a mouth-to-mouth pine needle transferring experiment, and this was the version of events I should repeat to people if I was interrogated by other children of the neighborhood.
Even at 12, I was able to see how stupid this was. I told him no. Then he asked if I wanted to try more tongue-kissing, but this time, lying down on the sofa like they did in the movies instead of via brawl. I declined this also.
I'm not trying to hate on my boy Tommy. I'm more being self-deprecating about my quality of good youthful makeout stories about which to be embarrassed. I admired his pluck then and now. It's hard to be a 12 year old kid and try to figure out kissing, and I'm sure he grew up into a nice young man who is very suave at it. (I lie! He is still a bug-eyed psycho.)
I don't know. I don't really know where I was going with that. I'm not in a great mood.
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