Lost in It

I need to let you in on a little secret: I've been a little pouty this summer. Andrew, if you're reading this, I know, I know, a lot pouty. I've tried to be good, I have. I've tried to be the adult my driver's license promises me to be, but honestly, it's been a little touch and go around this apartment at times. My kind of pouty is a moody pouty - a "I feel like this, no I don't, yes I do, everything is poop" kind of pouty. I like a good stomp now and then, a couple of good foot/floor smacks and a little bit of furrowed brow thrown in for good measure. There have also been, it's painful to admit, a few teary quips about fairness. I know, I know, I'm still wrestling with fairness at the age and time? But the reality is that life isn't always rational and reasonable, and so, at times, it's almost comforting to join in the pure silliness of it all with a good old fashioned mood encrusted, irrationally bedazzled pout. Friends, I have mastered that art.

I try not to show it past the front door, although to be honest, it's mostly work & home these days, but I've been feeling it creep out a bit, the stomping lurching around in my legs when we're running errands, trying desperately to connect my foot to the floor in a child-like thump. Who am I to judge those cart wrangled children in the grocery store tossing boxes of Ritz to the floor? A part of me gets just what they're saying: "I thought I wanted this when I grabbed for it, but now I just want someone else to notice that I am not happy with the choice" and BAM! cracker confetti in aisle 3. Really, it's the symptom of a lack of time off, an intense schedule, basic life stresses, a constant flurry of vacation stories from friends, a little jealousy, and a healthy pinch of wanderlust. To put it simply, there's nothing too terribly dramatic about this summer except my behavior.

It's better I think, when times become tainted by moodiness and pouty, not to hide them away, but to fess up to the truth, to the reality that good behavior is sometimes relative, and that a good stomp now and then never hurt anyone, as long as you can keep it in check (or have a fantastic husband who can help out with that task).

So, there haven't been any vacations, and the breaks we were hoping for will have to wait, but I've been taking every chance I get to lose myself in books, to keep the one summer tradition I've had since childhood - stacks and stacks of summer reading. I've been reading new books and rereading favorites, indulging in one author's correspondence and remembering some of my own as I pick up classics I haven't visited since I was young enough to still dot my i's with little scribbled stars. I've got a list of amazing new Young Adult books to recommend if you'd like to spend a few hours remembering how much fun it was to read at that age, and another list of books more adult in their content, but no less inspiring to the little kid we keep tucked away inside us.

I'm hoping that by coming clean about my summertime pout, it will abate, at least slightly, as the season chugs along. I'm hoping that getting it out there will give me more time in my mind for these mental vacations allowed and inspired by the page. In the end, I'm hoping that I never grow up completely, but instead find the best possible way to balance all the pieces I've collected along the way.