My Random Fourth But It's Not My Fourth Yet

Thanks to Stacy Uncorked who lets all the random flow.

I know it’s technically the Fourth of July holiday right this very minute but we weirdos here at the lake don’t really acknowledge it until the Saturday closest to the 4^th. This year we, whoever “we” are, picked this coming Saturday, the 7^th . So today is just like any other day for me. And HOTTER than H-E-double toothpicks!!!

I guess I’m mentioning this because, as all of you are out picnicking and celebrating, I’m doubling up on my writing since it’s not the holiday yet for us. People arrive here tomorrow. So many that I’m making a hard pressed attempt to displace some of them (in-laws are going first!). My mom, dad and best friend get first dibs on guest beds. Everyone else, fair warning…fend for yourselves!

Tomorrow starts all the decorating and hoopla. The lake will get crowded, the grocery stores packed with lines down the aisles and all the other good stuff that goes along with a holiday weekend. We are applying the “fly by the seat of your pants” approach to the 4^th this year. Give me strength.

Thank God for my mother who will bring the holiday with her!

The Fourth of July makes me melancholy though. Always. It means that summer is already halfway finished and I don’t feel I’ve done close to half the things I wanted to do in the first half of the summer and I certainly won’t be able to fit everything into the second half. But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Live for the moment, right?

I’ve had the unique opportunity to do a lot of thinking in the last 9 days. I haven’t written at all, which has felt strange but freeing as well. It’s been just pure thinking time. (I feel some Dr. Seuss coming on here!) Time for tangent thinking and “what if” thinking, and possibilities and changes type of thinking. Peaceful thinking and scary thinking all rolled up into one long stretch of thinking. And what thoughts I’ve had! Damn, I should have written them all down!

Mostly I thought about people. My family, important friends, people that mean something to me for any reason at all, big or small. My life. What I’m like and why? What’s important to me in my friendships? The awesome friends I have and what makes us friends? Why you become closer to some and drift further from others. How certain friends handle hard situations and who sticks by your side even when things aren’t perfectly perfect.

I thought about the concept of “soulmates” and stumbled upon this:

‘Throughout life you will meet one person who is unlike any other. You could talk to this person for hours and never get bored, you could tell them things and they won’t judge you. This person is your soulmate, your best friend. Don’t ever let them go.”

I ran across quotes that made me smile and cry and laugh so hard. I saw a video from over a week ago when my friends visited that someone posted of me on Youtube (take it down, please). 

I saw this and it gave me more fodder for thought:

Life’s Natural Highs:

Falling in love

Hearing your favorite song on the radio

Lying in bed listening to the rain outside

Bubble baths

Giggling

Long conversations at night

The moment you wake in a sunlit room

Lazing on the beach

Running through sprinklers

Laughing at an inside joke

Laughing at yourself

Laughing so hard your stomach hurts

Laughing for absolutely no reason at all

Friends

Having someone tell you that you’re beautiful

And I loved this last one called “Weird Love”.

We are all a little

Weird and

            Life’s a little weird,

And when we find

Someone whose weirdness

Is compatible with ours,

We join up with them and fall in mutual

Weirdness and call it

            Love.

To say these last nine days of meditation were emotional would be an understatement.

Each day friends have stopped by, called or emailed just to talk. Why don’t we make more time for each other on a daily basis? I know life gets in the way but does it have to?