Mornings

On Monday morning my drive into work was eerie and claustrophobic.  Heavy fog guided me all 63 miles to my office door.  It wasn't until after 9am that the fog began to lift and the sun mustered its way through the thick clouds.  I ventured outside to breathe in the heavy, wet air.  

It was still quiet with most of my co-workers inside at their desks, typing away and sipping the sludgy office coffee.  I walked across the parking lot to look out to a nearby cypress dome and across the old watermelon field.  For a moment it was just me and the world, huddled and cozy in a soft gray blanket.

When I'm Bored on Saturday Afternoon...

I wear my husband's shoes

Take naps

Research overtly profound quotes on Pinterest

Pick the dirt out from under my fingernails with my bobby pins 

Think about everything else I could be doing

Have a staring contest with my cat (I won)

Drink cold glasses of grape juice

Check the glacial changes of my 401K 

Feel homesick

Morning in the Everlgades

Early morning drive through the Everglades

Morning Everglades

{by Yours Truly}

The car speeds west across the Glades

A blur of Cypress and Sawgrass blades

A million birds float through the air

And I sit and think and look and stare.

The sun is peeking behind my head

And the sky begins to glow and shed

Its darkened cape that hides the light

Of pink and lavender and orange and white.

The bright red rays dance across my face

As I watch the heron, full of grace

Flap his mighty wings and glide

Over the Sea of Grass so still and wide.

The tips of the grass shine like gold

As the morning light takes ahold

And breaks through the yellow, nebulous mist

Like the romantic compositions of Franz Liszt.

Out the window I catch a roseate spoonbill fly

Its pink feathers turning deep scarlet in the sky

So rare and lovely to see my friend

I'm giddy with joy as I watch her ascend.

I take long and lazy sips of coffee

The sun climbs higher, turning from red to toffee

I rest my head but keep my eyes wide

To count the gators that go floating by.

Oh Weekend.

This weekend has been lazy.  Not necessarily that I have been sitting on the couch doing nothing, but more that I couldn't seem to make myself do anything productive.  I must have looked at my Frida Kahlo eyebrows a least a dozen times but just couldn't bring myself to care enough to pluck that mess.  

 I awoke yesterday morning to heavy rains that battered against the windows- too much anger for a Saturday morning if you ask me.  The clouds hung low for most of the day until the evening when I was picked up by a friend for  our other friend's birthday party.

We hit the town to help my sweet friend celebrate her 30th birthday.  She admitted to having a panic attack the other day, thinking about turning the big 3-0.  I remember feeling only slightly melancholy about the idea, thinking that there were some areas of my life I  was hoping would be a little bit more "together".  But then I forced myself to be still, and to think about all that I had accomplished, like snagging my husband :)

After we left the restaurant, the ridiculously fancy hipster drinks in all of my friend's systems overtook their most logical senses and they were all convinced that we HAD to go dancing.  I smiled and said, "Sure" in my most positive way.  But inside my head I had dramatically dropped to my knees, throwing my head back, yelling to the universe, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Don't my friends know that I am a closet dancer?  I only dance alone, in the dark, to music I'm pretty sure everyone else hates.

Anyways, it was a fun night, laughing and watching everyone else dance :).  That is until the birthday girl got confused and thought it was her 21st birthday and got sick on the sidewalk in the middle of downtown Fort Lauderdale...

When I finally crawled into bed at 2am, I was exhausted with achy feet.  Bobby was still working and I dragged Aurelia closer to snuggle but she only tolerated my love for 2.5 seconds before leaping off the bed to go about her usual night time ritual.  I lay in bed for only a few minutes, planning my extra unproductive Sunday before sleep overtook my body.