Blog from 1999

7/17/99

We went to Snowshoe first thing this morning. It was crazy getting out of the house. He kicked around the laundry at the frustration of not being able to find the shorts from yesterday that held his wallet. Once we were on the road, things started to get better. He forced some mood-altering, silly expressions into the van. At Snowshoe, the resort was offering lift ticket rides for $6 each. A side show of the Chili Cookoff. The four of us went all the way down the mountain and all the way up. It was beautiful. The breeze was perfect and made it great. Fresh hay from the slope we passed over really smelled great -- like being on a farm without the animal droppings scent. The ride down the mountain took about 15 minutes, and then of course it was about 15 minutes back up. You really didn't want it to be any shorter or longer. Once we got back into town, we were in a race for the countdown to the birthday party. First through three houses on the Daylily Days home and garden tour. Then to the grocery store, Kmart, and to the party. I had about 10 minutes to put the banners up and prepare. Just as things were falling into place, a few kids showed up. Then came the birthday girl. We had nine children, not too few and not too many. Then off to meet my dad and sister for dinner. Finally, we could breathe a sigh of relief when we got home. Then we had an icing catastrophe. Not only was the regular cake (orange) icing everywhere in the van, but the auxiliary cupcakes fell over also. Where was the plastic lid to the cake? Why wasn't it on the cake? We all had to change outfits and bring in the Spic and Span forces. A good day, but thoughts of impending doom crossed over a few times.

7/18/99

We went to Seneca Caverns Sunday. A great relief from the heat. It was 56 degrees inside, compared to the hazy and humid 90 degrees it felt like outside. Tickets were less than we thought they would be. The tour guide was very knowledgeable about what the cavern formations looked like. She gave us detailed stories about what each rock actually WAS: a chipmunk, an indian, a tombstone, a city, an alligator, bananas ... it seemed like it didn't end. We also stopped at Seneca Rocks and the newly constructed Seneca Rocks Discovery Center. It was a big, beautiful building. There were art displays, lots of brochures to pick up, a 3-D map that looked like it was made of plaster with paint, and a few stuffed animals native to the area. The seven to 10 stuffed animals were in the window of a room called the Discovery Room, which was locked. You could still discover, even though you couldn't enter. Many of the walls were made of what looked like indigenous rocks. Today is a vacation. From what, I'm not sure.

7/20/99

I can't help but be sleepy today. Just about every morning I awake to some sort of yelling or complaining from one of the other members of the house. Barely awake, struggling to remember those foggy dreams, noticing how good it feels to stretch my legs across that once-occupied space, and it almost could have been a good morning except for that predictable miserability. Yesterday some of us went to the movies for a pretty good time.

7/23/99

There is another birthday to celebrate today. Summer birthdays are great. You can do just about anything you want, I think, except play in the snow. I did some studying and drank lots of caffeine yesterday. I came home very late. I saw Jan Hopkins of CNN speak at Halliehurst yesterday. She was very articulate. How does she do that? I wonder how you get to be that way. A lot of people, like me, mumble aimlessly a lot of the time.

8/7/99

I've had this strange feeling these last few days. It's strange because it is this new thought, and it just creeps along slowly like a spill, getting bigger and bigger, spreading through my brain. The more I think about it, the bigger it becomes. If I would just stop thinking about it, it wouldn't be so bad. It's not all bad, but potentially unhealthy. This is just how thoughts and ideas work, I suppose, but when a foreign thought, unlike any other I knew before enters, I really take notice. I keep having this dream about a person I know. I want to talk to him and he avoids me in my dreams. I remember about seven years ago I kept having dreams that I would go over to his house to see him and he wasn't there. Last night I had this dream -- I looked all over for him at some kind of event and saw him several times but he was busy and talking to someone else every time. I told him a couple of times I wanted to talk to him, and he found a way not to. At the same time, I tried to talk to another person I know, and he did the same thing to me too. A few years ago I had a very faint memory of what I thought was a glimpse of my very early childhood, and I didn't know if it was an actual memory, a dream I had, or what. I was sitting with my sister, and she had this hood on her head, and a nightgown, and I could see the pattern of the wallpaper behind her. She was sick and things weren't good. And I remember thinking to myself, it doesn't matter whether it was a dream, memory, or something else -- it's something that exists in my head, as if it's a memory.

8/26/99

I've been having a hard time lately. In those ups and downs of life, this is really a down time. I know it will get better. It could be worse. It's a lot my fault, though. I guess that's the worst part of it. Maybe I will do something about it.

8/28

I've had about two hours to myself today for the first time in years, I think, and I feel so much better. I feel like I visited a part of life that I forgot about -- silence. It was very quiet. I wouldn't and couldn't have it this way all the time, but I am much, much, happier. All I did was take a nap. I don't think I dreamed about anything.

9/23

How do I explain that I've made this huge mistake and everybody knows it and it's too late now? How can I escape this miserability? What can I do to feel better?

9/23

OK, I calmed down a little bit. I'm not very much happier though. The day is the most beautiful sight outside. The sunshine makes the grass and the trees the brightest shade of yellow. The wind is blowing just a little bit and the sky couldn't be bluer.

I've been reading the advice given, and it has given me reassurance that I should make the changes necessary to make me happy. But that gets so cloudy. What if I make the changes, and I'm worse off than ever? What if I have it good now and just don't realize it? I should take that chance. I've done it before and when I did change my life, I wish I had done it long, long before. This morning I wished that I could go back about six years and erase everything. Then I wouldn't be miserable like I am now. Or would I? I have so many questions and so little answers.

9/27

I have been wondering if something different will happen today, if I can stumble onto something every day and learn something new and interesting. There is much to discover about the things that seem routine. I noticed that I drive by the same things every day, and see the same cars all the time. I pass the same cars on the road all the time, and can almost immediately spot cars that are driven by people who don't live here. I think everybody who lives here must pass all the same people all the time, with the exception of a few strangers every day. For some reason, I saw this one particular car passing by my house when I got the mail last week. A few days later, I was getting the mail again and saw the same car passing by. I don't know why it stood out. Every day, the same cars pass by. I wonder if the old neighbor who sat on his porch every day knew all of them. Some people who have lived here for a long, long time know just about everybody they pass. If you notice which cars are at all the businesses one day, you will see the same cars there the next day and the next day and the next. Those people have the same routines every day -- going to work, coming home, passing by. I was at Wal-Mart earlier this summer and saw a young girl who had shaved her head, and knew she wasn't from here. She was parked next to me in the parking lot and seemed to be passing through from Michigan. Of course, it must be true that the people driving the cars are the same people I pass all the time while walking and shopping and doing whatever else. It's all so obvious, but when you think about it, it's a little bit interesting. Maybe.

10/2

Early in the morning yesterday I drove through town. On the highway before I got to town, I passed a Mercedes which I had never seen before. The car was going exactly the speed limit. The car and the man driving it all the sudden seemed to be a symbol of something entirely good. He had a woman sitting next to him. Here he was, in a very luxurious, reputable and reliable car, plugging along steadily according to the speed limit. I went one way through town, which I thought would be fastest because I was short on time. When I got through town, he was in front of me -- still plugging away by going exactly the speed limit. When we got to the 65-mile-an-hour highway, I passed him again. Then I got to my turnoff and he passed me again, because, of course, I slowed way down. The point of my story is that this driver consistently behaved according to the law, under only the best of circumstances, and came out ahead. I wondered if that was a metaphor for his life, and I wondered what type of job he had. I imagined that he was some upstanding attorney.

Maybe I'll come back, but maybe I won't. To continue with this would be dangerous.

(First posted on wvhome.com.)