The subject above means, in case you were wondering, absolutely nothing. It just happened to be the best of the subject lines in the spam I got in my inbox today. And I just happen to be mentally occupied with email.
I know I promised to get to the totally humiliating and juicy details of my high school diary, but I just don't have it in me tonight. I know, I know.... I totally deserve smack-down that is undoubtedly being mentally focused in my direction.
But it was a very long day. After I pick up the long rod (*snort*) at Home Depot tomorrow from which to hang my backdrop, I will officially be ready to adjust my lighting and take my first test shots in my new studio. That is, as soon as I figure out where to move this inordinately inconvenient queen size bed. Apparently? The bed is still under the impression this is a guest room. Which it is, decidedly, not. As evidenced by the ecclectic mix of jerry-rigged photography fixtures throughout the room.
But I digress.
You see, tonight brought two very different events to the forefront of my brain.
The first is that the former HOA board has decided to surrender, in a manner of speaking, and let the new board take over and begin to see if we can't do a job of uniting this divided and confused community. A bittersweet victory, since it will be far from easy to pull together our neighborhood and begin to foster some sense of community fellowship and pride... but I am still willing to try.
The second, and more poignant, event of the evening is that I received the first communication from my parents since their arrival in Ghana on Tuesday. More specifically, my Mom sent out an email to the family and extended relatives describing their trip, arrival, and first impressions.
It's funny that I see things so differently now than I did a few years ago, and even a few months ago. I went from anger to bitterness to peace... and back through the cycle again. Possibly more than once.
But to hear my mother who, though she has been to Western Europe and Australia, has still always come across as a small-town Utah girl... Well, to read as she attempts to express what she is seeing and feeling as she observes an African country for the first time? It made me think... "She will learn so much. She will see so much I have not seen. And maybe, when she comes back, she will understand better what it is like to be me."
Not that I have been to Africa, or will ever experience what she has experienced... maybe precisely BECAUSE of that.. .Because she will understand better what it has been like for me to be a stranger in a strange land, an alien in this world outside of mormonism, and to walk back into old territory unable to sufficiently explain what it is I have seen and learned. She is changing, already, in a way and to a degree that I never would have believed possible for a woman who has stayed so much the same for so long. And yet, she has changed in recent years. She has evolved. And now she is taking the next great evolutionary leap in her life.
And as much as I still feel the sting at the loss of her constant availability as a presence in my life... my throat is a little tight when I think that she may finally have found a way to fill the empty space she has always carried in her heart. I finally have a spark of hope.. that the sadness that has been ever with her may be drowned in the ocean of exploration and adventure that awaits her.
I'm sorry if I'm waxing just a bit melancholy this evening. I'm sure I'm just exhausted. I promise to be back to my regular self by morning (with the help of a hot toddy and a good night's sleep.)
Besides, you can always console yourself with the fact that there's still my self-humiliation to anticipate for tomorrow. AND it's Friday night, which means minty fresh new Battlestar Galactica. If that doesn't make your night, baby, you have absolutely no soul.
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