More Sun and Less Clouds
Monday’s weather: Well it was supposed to be a day of sunshine – big orange ball with the little triangular flames and no clouds in the newspapers – but it is overcast and drizzly. Heading up to around 60. I don’t mind so much; Saturday was humid and hot, and Sunday was dry, warm, sunny. Enough sun for me to plant my Impatiens and get a good red on my back, enough water now to give all my plants a taste.
Monday’s drink: Bleah. Sunburns make me shy away from booze. Note to self.
Monday’s links: #1: Help Find Berdina!
#2: I have two new girlfriends: Alexis and Jennifer.
I do have sun. Sun on my face, my arms, my shoulders and back. Less on my chest and legs – those seem like places that get sun only if you’re not doing anything other than getting sun. When you’re working – planting, watering, digging – seems like you generally have your face, shoulders and back to the sky. So I guess I’m sportin’ a workman’s tan.
Not like it’s a ‘tan’ in any sense. And not like I go sportin’ sun often. Mostly I keep my white white skin shielded; both to keep from burning (which I do faster than garlic in a hot pan) and because I’ve often never really felt like the world wants to see my body. Meaning: I often haven’t wanted to see my body.
That’s different this year, as I’ve alluded earlier. I can work in front or back, even with friends over, in just a pair of shorts and not feel…frankly, grotesque. I don’t feel Gyllenhaal yet, but at least I don’t feel grotesque anymore.
So maybe it was the sun on my back, or the accomplishment of tasks, or the lack of gin, or all of that and something else, too, that led to a sunny mood last night. A welcome one, given how overcast I’ve been this year. It can’t have been easy living with a black cloud like I’ve been for so long.
Maybe it was the swimming. At the “J” this Saturday, it finally all came together. I was paddling back and forth, “…not yet having maximum fun,” I said to my coach. “OK, let me know when it is.” And then, somehow, everything made sense. Push off, head down, arms out, stroke, stroke, roll, breath, stroke. I could feel myself moving through the water like I was supposed to; this is what swimming must feel like, I thought. "Hey, I'm swimming!" I lapped the pool, got to the end, and my coach high-fived me. “Now I’m having fun,” I said. It was awesome, and I think I understand why people like swimming. (Well I say that not having to run 20 laps every morning.)
So that could have been it. Or maybe it was the ‘prom’ parties in DC this weekend. Both going to them, and then feeling stronger than any previous year how profoundly silly and self-inflated these things are. In this case a “…high-profile…” afternoon pre-White House Correspondents Association party.
Urp. We arrived around 1p to find gobs of sweaty, lonely people crowding under the tents like ants in seersucker. The number of people every year has gone up, and as that’s happened the party has become much less fun. You certainly can’t just strike up conversations with people you don’t know as easily. There’s really only a few things you can do: push your way to the booze table, squeeze your way to the food table, try and find the magic spot where there’s a tiny breeze and you’re out of the sun, and swivel your head round and round, looking for faces you recognize. And not stomp all over the plants.
By recognize, I mean ‘as seen on TV’. We both ran into a few people who knew us, but this is a crowd that loves seeing other TV faces recognize seeing them on TV. Which is not a judgment on any individual there – I don’t know them, don’t know their hearts, don’t know if they tend to be better than worse people. But if yours isn’t a TV face, they don’t have time for you.
Greta van Susteran, for example. Sure, she didn’t know us. Sure, she was busy squiring Todd Palin around. And no, you’re not supposed to talk business at these events, although everyone does. We spoke to her for about thirty seconds – long enough for two intros, two handshakes, a quick pitch, a few comments from Greta as her eyes darted past, and goodbye. Her entire body was turning away before even saying goodbye – which was really more of a “…I have to go over here and talk to anybody but you now.”
Fine. You want Chace Crawford and Matthew Modine to meet Mr. Palin, fine. That’s why you’re there. Increasingly I wonder ‘why am I here?’ It certainly isn’t to have fun in the traditional sense. I guess it’s really just become more tradition, and traditions are hard to break. Especially when you share them with your boyfriend.
So while the party didn’t do it, leaving it behind me – both in real time and in the larger events-of-the-year sense – might have also helped improve my mood. Maybe putting up the shelf in the kitchen on Sunday. Maybe having mostly clean clothes for work and the gym week. Maybe the last slice of home-made smoked mozzarella lasagna for dinner last night. Maybe some unspoken barrier I’ve crossed regarding my entanglements of earlier this year.
And maybe I don’t really need to know. At the moment it seems enough to see that I was in a sunny mood last night, and I was able to share that with my boyfriend.
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