today was a kind of strange day.  sally drove me home around nine-thirty and we talked about mexico and college.  it’s strange the good friends that you only see about once a year and don’t talk with much in between, there’s a funny moment that’s kind of like rediscovering where they fit.  it was pretty lovely, she’s one of those people that’s just kind of automatically one of your favorites.

after that i went to the library with a lot of my family so that my little sisters could enter the sidewalk chalk drawing competition.  i found myself The Perks Of Being A Wallflower and a quiet chair and spent three hours curled up with that.  i love that book, just saying.  it made me think a lot more this time than it did the first, maybe because I was taking a little bit more time to digest it, or maybe just becuase i’m more thinky than i was two years ago. 
we had to leave before i could quite finish it and there’s a fine on my card that’s just over the limit and i didn’t feel like digging through my change purse to find enough to bring it down so I left the last twenty pages or so for next time and completely forgot about the three dollars in my wallet, haha.

we went to the costumer appreciation day picnic at one of the local stores after that.  it was pretty much my reason for existing today, because i was positive from other years that they were going to have homemade icecream and i reallyreally wanted some, especially after the little bowl of it i had at the fiddlers picnic in PA that was kind of crunchy, which is not the right way for it to be. 
it wasn’t until i got there and had already wandered over to the food tent excitedly that i remembered that last year they switched to snow cones.  so i had a cup of iced tea, a little bag of mini donuts instead and a weird hotdog instead, it was kind of dud.

i was starting to get really tired by that time but mom wanted to wait around until the next batch of roasted sweet corn was ready so i was playing on the castle playground with Patrick. a little stranger boy with really blonde hair climbed out of one of the entrances to the bottom level and asked me what the food tent was so i told him that they were giving people free food and it was pretty cool.  he nodded.  i started to turn away.

“i’m going on vacation soon.”  
so we started talking about vacation and safari’s and wild animals and things and then he wanted me to play with him, and he was pretty cute-looking and little stranger kids don’t ask you that very often so i said okay and we climbed around for awhile inside of the “cave” where the snake was and spent a long time on the bridge having alligators and tigers and an elephant and all kinds of horrible things attacking us and he had to thrash everywhere and dangle half off of the ropes and things.  he got pretty attached to me and started tugging me around and really wanting me to keep playing with him.  i was a little surprised because i got pretty boring and mostly just wanted to “escape to safety” for a drink or take a nap.

and then… mom was ready to leave and i was getting to the jerky stage of tired so the little boy and i siad goodbye and i left.  i don’t even know what his name was.

i think there were about three minutes of conciousness between when i got home and when i was asleep on the couch.  i had a lot of vague dreams and my thoughts were being constantly narrarated by Charlie’s writing voice from TPOBAWF, haha.

the last dream is mostly the only one i remember.  i was at a house that looked an awful lot like my aunt and uncles where i spent the last week i was away at, and most of my youth group was there, i guess we were having a party.  i was upstairs in the loft inside of some kind of couch fort, just having fun not being seen, I guess, and they were having fun trying to see me because they kept stacking themselves on top of each other to see if they could glimpse over the railing and into my little fortress and they never could and i always giggled mockingly at them.  but right before the dream ended they put someone taller on top of the bottom person’s shoulders and he could see right into where i was no matter how much i cowered down lower into the corners and i was trying desperately to stack up a wall of books or pillows but they kept falling down and everybody laughed.  after that i decided that there’s not a lot worse then when you think you’re all safely hidden and then someone just shows up and finds you and you can’t get hidden again, no matter how small of a ball you’re curling up into.

i woke up then and the air felt so stale and hot and thick and i lay there for awhile feeling sticky and tired. and then i thought “it’s time for my world to be bigger than this couch” so i got up and found a glass of apple juice, the good kind that tastes like apple cider and things started to clear up a little bit.

i think my trip hangover is finally setting in, haha.

and i think i’ll go for a bike ride now, fresh air sounds like a really good idea.