June is Outdoor Month

and my favorite blog apartment therapy used my photo to tout that very fact.

The Big Life

We somehow think that time is this definable, countable, universally acknowledged, immutable entity. We mark our lives by it, laying down signs at various intervals on the linear highway that is our life. We have devised ingenious systems for its measurement, the magnitudes neatly stacked and pegged between colons to signify the hour, the minute and the second, synchronously knocking on each other. Move up one, Mr. Hour. You’re up! Then something happens to throw that whole linear perspective in a curve. You meet your old college roommates and in passing they tell you that Denise is now in college and you just about spill your coffee at the thought. You say: Hold up! Let’s think about that for a minute. Denise is now in college. Denise is the little baby girl you used to watch endlessly for hours spinning like a top, boundless energy and cheeky smiles all over. Yes, that Denise. That Denise is now in college. You feel your mile markers being compressed into a zip drive. Where did your life go? What is the parallel to Denise going to college. You calm yourself down and let that one, like all others, pass. Then you hear another news. Bob Barker retires from The Price is Right. You don’t know why but this seemingly inevitable fact has the magical effect of pulling the entire decade of the 80's right under you. You remember those days when you and your siblings find a spot on the big bed in your parent’s bedroom and you chime in on what you think is the current price of gum or bleach in some foreign country you’ve never been but somehow feels familiar with. You imagine yourself coming on down to be the next contestant to bid on the ultimate showcase which for you had always been that snazzy trailer. Oh that trailer! That beats that makeshift half teepee you fashion out of bed sheets and fasten between jalousie panels where you and Eneen practiced being homemakers. What a life! Imagine. You could live anywhere if you had a trailer. Anywhere! You don’t know exactly because the farthest you ever went was the border of your town and city and that was nowhere really but just having the sheer ability to do so was just enough to make you giddy. And that this thing has a working toilet and refrigerator was just the neatest thing you could ever imagine. Imagine.

Instead I dug a hole in the ground and there dropped the anchor. I live in a house with no wheels and I love it but sometimes I still dream of the open road the unknown and exciting life it conjures in my head. I want the Big Life. I want the pimped out Airstream that DWR says is within my reach. Look! That shape. That shimmer is just enough for me to leap against the echo of those words: Come on down, you are the next contestant on the Price is Right.

Jecee is coming to visit and I get to show off the ever changing display of flowers in my window sill.