Summer Bloggin

A friend of mine was playing with a roll of duct tape on the couch tonight. After it had hit me for the third time I said, "You know some people have made whole purses and outfits and things out of that stuff."

To which he replied, "Yeah, I've even heard about people showing up to prom completely decked out in it."

I just kind of stared at him disbelievingly and grabbed his laptop. Knowing me well, he chortled, "What, are you going to google it?"

"Just hang on there, bucko," I retorted.

***

It's been good and hard to be in Kandern this summer. I almost put the word alone with the in Kandern part, but I haven't really been alone. It's just somehow felt more lonely without the students and most of the staff around. The pile of books by my bed has been a bit taller, and there's been some travelling, some hiking, some sewing, some picture-taking. I've met some cool new friends and hung out with some cool old friends, too.

But I haven't really felt like myself, and though I feel like I've been learning a lot , it seems to have gotten to a point of "naval-gazing," as my graduate music research professor liked to call opinions created entirely from one's own viewpoint. New staff is arriving, and I feel out of practice in simply saying hi and asking questions. I actually shook the hand of a new resident assistant at church this morning, said hi, and then just kind of stared at her. "Oh right, where are you from?" I finally stammered out.

***

"Look!" and I handed the computer back to him. "Right there!" And I showed him one of my posts from last summer: "You Did What? Part One." There it was--the proud couple with their duct-tape tux and fancy dress. He then proceeded to read aloud one of my most embarrassing moments, which was pretty much self-made and which I had completely forgotten about.

"You really did that?" my roommate Julia asked incredulously as we laughed and huddled together on the couch.

"Oh yeah, I did. I can't believe I forgot that."

It made me miss my family. It made me miss writing. It made me miss feeling like I have something to write about.

So please catch up on my most embarrassing moments of last summer, and I'll do my best to pay attention to the new ones. If you need more than Part One, then check out Part Two as well.

Missing Kansas

I stripped my brown sweater yesterday of its brown buttons and replaced them with French-flea-market ones with little pink flowers.

I think the rooster-crowing-at-the-sun thing is a bunch of bunk. The rooster that lives next door to us only crows in the middle of the afternoon. It's 7:00 a.m., I haven't heard a peep out of him yet, and the sun's been up for two hours.

My cat crawled into my lap four times in the past three days. She hasn't done that since we were in Kansas. It reminded me how much I miss Kansas.

I found a Ted Nugent record and was really excited to bring it home and listen to it because Kevin had high-jacked me into meeting the man in KC, and I have the picture to prove it, but I had never really listened to his music before, and now I realize my 2 EURO album is warped and makes shirtless-Ted-with-guitars-for-arms sound like he's been up all night with a bottle of whiskey, which, let's face it, he probably had been.

I dropped Amy off an hour ago to send her back to Kansas. I drove away from the airport with the window down and over the Swiss border to fill up with gas. The border patrol guard waved me through and even mouthed "Morgen," which is German for "good morning." I wasn't expecting a friendly border guard, and I couldn't react quick enough to mouth "morgen" back, so I ended up greeting my dashboard.

We got up at 4:30 this morning to get her to the airport, and I meant to go right back to bed when I got home, so I am going to join the kitty on my bed now.