will the world's worst blogger please stand up?

oh, right...that would be me.

so here it is, almost a year and a half since my last post, attempting to resurrect the old writings. you see, i always have grand ambitions that i will have one of those nifty blogs you see online. you know the ones - they look like pages out of a scrapbook. tales of thrifting adventures, tag sale galavanting, musical expeditions, city park jaunts...well, you get the point. so i set out to write said blog of odysseys, only to remember that life, or my life in particular, does not bear such frenzied trips.

but, with my third spring semester about to begin at Belmont University, there are stories to be told, memories to be jotted down. life at the beloved Beech House will no doubt produce a few stories. Life in the 8x10 Orientation Office at the Beaman will continue to usher in favorite friends and new faces, and interning at Youth Villages fifteen hours a week will hopefully be an experience i will never forget, whether i remember to write about it or not.

so with this in mind, here is my silly attempt to chart the progress of my journeys of 2009....fingers crossed!

harold and gloria.

harold and gloria held out their hands for me as i reached the top of the nine stairs
leading into the yellowed-brownstone. i know there were nine
(seven with cracks, four missing paint) because i always count
things when i am nervous, and this icy morning was no
exception. i have no idea why harold was wearing a long,
heavy overcoat nor why gloria had a thick sweater on. i only
knew these articles were needed and i somehow didn't get the
memo until after i stepped off the train at 9:34 on May 19th.
Too late. I clenched my thinly covered arms and tried to pretend
this 40-something windy weather was nothing out of the ordinary
for a mississippi native. this charade must have been half-believable,
for in a moment, gloria had accepted my decline for a jacket out of
her station-wagon and was carrying on with harold about the latest
city news. a lot of the first week in this city was a blur, but i remember
these few moments clearly. Here they were before me. Harold and
Gloria were real, live city-dwellers - the people I always envied.
Harold's chattering was filtered through an accent which could only
be pulled off by a native of the city. Terribly legit. Gloria didn't have
quite the credentials Harold was packing - she had lived in a country
town until she was seven. But that didn't matter to me. There was
something about this semi-retired photographer and school teacher
that i liked. They were nothing out of the ordinary and yet everything
about them was extraordinary. As Harold was getting off the 55
Express yesterday and I was walking away from my evening train,
he smiled and tipped the same old brown hat he wore the day
I met them both.
"How you doin, kid?"

whenever i fly, i always make a note to look into the sky while driving to the airport to see if there are a few clouds looming
over. my hope is that there are always a few because i know it means i'll get to escape into a different land once a few
thousand feet above my normal habitat. it is hard to be in a place that seems different from your world. that doesn't
have some element to remind you that it is indeed the same place. but above the clouds is one of those few places. take
off bounding across the airy stepping stones toward the most beautiful thing your eyes can hold, but oh, there's life again.
water or coffee, miss?