This fall has been unusually beautiful, or I am unusually appreciative of it. The trees in Universe City are pink-red and yellow-orange and golden-yellow and, still, warm green, all together on a street, and I could crash my new car watching them above me, sometimes. It hasn't rained much, yet, so the leaves aren't battered off the trees and beaten into the ground, not yet. I walk around sometimes just staring at them, saying, "It's so beautiful! It's so beautiful!" to anyone who will listen.
I drove up to Gone West City last night, as the sun set, and there were low clouds hovering over the hills on either side of the road, and I wanted to bottle up the view and keep it so I could put my eye to the opening and savor it on dark, rainy evenings all winter.
But then it got dark, and I wanted to grumble like an old person about cars these days, their headlights are so bright, why can't they make them like they used to, and why can't these drivers just pass when they want to pass, why do they sit there just behind you for miles so their headlights shine right in your eyes through the side mirror until you have to drive with your hand against the window to block the reflection of those blasted new-fangled headlights.
The kids at the youth group ran screaming through the dark church, with B. racing behind them in his ninja costume, arms waving, trying to tag them. I watched the girls try to dip their heads in the bobbing bucket without messing up their hair, fretting when it took too long to get an apple, because ah! everyone is looking at me! and I was indescribably grateful to be 31 instead of 12. I do not miss the days of that paralyzing self-consciousness. It's so much nicer to like yourself.
I practiced my FIGHT moves on N. and B. in the church gym, demonstrating how to disarm someone with a gun to your back. "But I can get away," N. kept saying, and I said, "Yes, that is because I am not actually kicking you in the balls, nor am I elbowing you in the neck, because that would be mean."
I drove up to Gone West City last night, as the sun set, and there were low clouds hovering over the hills on either side of the road, and I wanted to bottle up the view and keep it so I could put my eye to the opening and savor it on dark, rainy evenings all winter.
But then it got dark, and I wanted to grumble like an old person about cars these days, their headlights are so bright, why can't they make them like they used to, and why can't these drivers just pass when they want to pass, why do they sit there just behind you for miles so their headlights shine right in your eyes through the side mirror until you have to drive with your hand against the window to block the reflection of those blasted new-fangled headlights.
The kids at the youth group ran screaming through the dark church, with B. racing behind them in his ninja costume, arms waving, trying to tag them. I watched the girls try to dip their heads in the bobbing bucket without messing up their hair, fretting when it took too long to get an apple, because ah! everyone is looking at me! and I was indescribably grateful to be 31 instead of 12. I do not miss the days of that paralyzing self-consciousness. It's so much nicer to like yourself.
I practiced my FIGHT moves on N. and B. in the church gym, demonstrating how to disarm someone with a gun to your back. "But I can get away," N. kept saying, and I said, "Yes, that is because I am not actually kicking you in the balls, nor am I elbowing you in the neck, because that would be mean."
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