Just go to bed

I'm a night owl these days, which has come to a surprise to me. Vacation does a lot of things to people, and it's weird.

For instance, I'm so laid back. Honestly, my schedule might appear busy but on a day off around the house I plan lunch around The Young and the Restless. I wish some of the storylines were better right now. Jack is much too old for Sharon, and I don't even know who the murdered Carman is.

I've also been sleeping in past 9 or 10, which is a change from the Boro when I love to get up and start at the day around 8 or 9. Now I forget about the alarm and let my brain do the dinging.

Now I've been staying up doing mindless things like balancing my checkbook, re-designing my blog, watching the Late Show with David Letterman and Seinfeld, and of course, sitting here blogging and surfing the net.

I'm hungry. Hmm.

Anyway, I really should just go to bed. It's funny how I can feel great right now and feel like a mule kicked me right in the face when the sun rises several hours later. I know this about myself like the back of my hand. I may be laughing and smiling when I head to bed, but soak it up, my friend, you better not speak to me for at least an hour after I've awoken in the morning.

Again, the laziness of vacation is tormenting me, and that 10:00AM shift at the store is haunting me because I know I'll be setting the alarm tonight (which fortunately has a nice ring to it).

The bed beckons and I shall obey.

Humble yourself, mudslider

Humility does either one of two things: it sneaks up on your and whispers in your ear or it makes itself known with a bullhorn at the least convenient moment.

Especially when you wipe out in your front yard.

But I received both kinds. My foolish spill was unseen but I was feeling humility as I became the penitent woman of God.

The story starts with my father departing from our driveway with my grandmother in the car, taking her home after a visit for the holiday. As they turned onto the tar and chipped road, my mother and I noticed they had left without some items for my Grandmother and I quickly used the front porch light like an S.O.S. blinker on a ship to catch their attention.

The crafty military thinking was a success and they pulled back into the driveway as I threw on my mother's size 9 tennis shoes and scampered out in the rain that that poured all day long rather than the seasonal fluffy substance known as "snow" (real snow is found in Edinboro, when you get it by the buckets, rather by a sprinkle here and there from the sky, but that's another story).

Where was I? Oh yes, scampering...well, scampering turned into a good jog out to the car. After placing the items in the backseat, I turned back towards the house scampering at even a quicker rate. Some might call it running. I like to call it scampering, it has a youthful feeling to it.

I've never been big on math, not quite a buff or pro, but I think we can predict the answer to this formula.

rain all day long + size 9 shoes on a size 6 foot + "scampering" + mud factor

So I'm taken by surprise when the shoe twists backwards and twists my ankle in that uncomfortable fashion, the one where you saw "oh shoot, it really hurts, it's not broken, but it really hurts, dang, I hate when this happens" and I made I terrific slide in the mud via kneecap.

My second thought, after the first being "ouch squared", was "oh Lord, may no one happen to witness that". Thankfully, no one did as I hobbled to the house and torn between laughing and crying, but muddy knee caps don't lie. Besides, laughing won, and oh, it still continues.

My foot is still tender today. And I keep laughing every time I feel it.

Humility - it keeps your feet on the ground, and sometimes brings you to your knees.

As a kid

It's funny to reflect upon the day, it really is. You never really realize how much you deeply think about the events of a day until you sit back, stare at a blank spot on the wall, and start thinking about things that wouldn't even dream of pondering about in the midst of the daily rush of activities.

Today is Christmas, and it was a wonderful Christmas. The usual occurred around the ranch: a sparse breakfast to save room for the large, celebratory meal planned sometime in the afternoon, the opening of gifts, bringing out my grandmother to the house and hearing about who's with who, who moved where, and who's down with this illness, sitting around the livingroom listening to Christmas music and chatting about what comes to mind, the post meal pie around six or seven, and maybe a late night movie around the old television for those who can still keep their eyelids open after the turkey.

So after the rush of these things, I sit a ponderin' at the computer thinking about the days ahead, and I realized that sometimes I'd love to be a kid again. Now some precursors: I'm not wishing to go back to those middle school years or have my driving license revoked. But rather reflecting as a child, Christmas was a seemingly long vacation filled with a week of consuming attention by the new toys and gadgets and eating leftovers until the very last of whatever was least popular.

In my own personal opinion, I think we suck the childlike life out of ourselves and replaced it with "stuff". In fact, it's probably some proven statistic in a lab somewheres. People have written books, I've read bits of them, and it makes a whole lot of sense. It seems that our holiday is work and then an immediate rush back to more work.

Ah, but I'm not here to point out America's probably like some hippie or critical, analytical grouch, I'm here to write about how I love being a kid sometimes by sleeping in, eating out of the ice cream carton, and getting excited about simple things like snow. In fact, these things that we sometimes overlook may seem childish, but I think it's simply human.