02 July 2007

day by day

This morning, I opened the fridge to get some milk. When I saw the inside, I instinctively grabbed the milk and slammed the door as fast as I could. Not because there was something gross inside, oh no, but because the light on the inside of the fridge was off and my internal voice said, "Power's out. Close the fridge door." Then I checked the light switch for the kitchen and the power was indeed out. My dad came in and said, "Yeah, it flickered a few times before it went off. Maybe an accident or something."

I have a journal somewhere from when I was little in Liberia. On one day, when I was 9 or 10, I wrote, "The current just went out. It dimmed before it went out so I think we are in for a long one." This cracks me up every time I read it, because what nine-year-old has opinions about the kind of power outage that is going to last a long time? Only one who has seen a lot of them.

Yesterday we went to Saugatuck, which is known 'round these parts as something of the gay center of Western Michigan. After we arrived and pulled the bikes out of the car and started exploring, I whispered to my mom, "I feel right at home."

"Why?" she asked.

"Look at all these gay men with stylishly spiked hair! It's just like New York."

We rode around Saugatuck for a few hours. My mom bought a single 25 cent wash cloth at a garage sale where the woman looked at our bikes for a long time and said, "Those bikes yours or did you rent them?"

"They are ours."

"Ooh." she said, "Schwinn. Nice."

We are serious bike riders, you see. We have helmets and rear-view mirrors.

I jumped on the bungee tramp. (Have you seen these things? They are amazing. You just bounce, really high.) And then my mom and I shared a waffle cone of ice cream with bits of toasted, chocolate covered coconut in them. Bliss.

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