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I've just now noticed that all of the pictures in my room are hanging crooked and I can't remember being happier. The other morning, as I sat eating my perfect french toast (check for details in a later post), it struck me that I've never been this free- and not 'free' in the'yay-i'm-18-and-graduated-from-high-school sense of the word. Literally, emotionally... I'm untangled. I was smiling the whole time I ate that french toast, until I cried a little. Just a stray tear or two actually. I'm looking forward to Charleston, but it's not a count down. Usually summer is as stressful as the school year because it's like watching one of those sand-filled hour glasses drain to empty, as I dread going back to the same high school routine with the same people and the same problems. But this year it's just a comforting change of unknown. The anxiety I can't remember living without, because of my parents, or school, or my attempts to keep people happy, has disappeared. Now I have chances to be with the people I care about, and without worrying about what someone else might think. I'm living for me. And it's wonderful. I'm not sure if this is growing up, or maybe I've just been in the teen-angst phase since I was 5. In any case, life is wonderful.
Yes. Life. Have you ever watched something cook through the window in the oven? Blake and Chase wanted a pizza for lunch, so I made one. Usually we make a bit of a mess in my attempts to slice it after cooking. Today my unclogged mind invented a marvelous solution to the messy cutting process. Cut the pizza before it's cooked. Oh my God Krista you are a genius. It worked. But anyway, I turned on the oven light while it was baking to see if my slice-marks were still visible. They were. Looking through that tiny window was like shooting me straight back into my childhood. I loved to sit in front of the oven and watch things bubble and shift as they baked. So, to give myself a momentary relapse into childhood, I plopped down in front of the Lancasters' oven and watched the cheese percolate (what a great word!). Thankfully, the boys stayed out of the kitchen while I was sitting there... I'm not sure what they would have thought if they'd walked in to find their babysitter sitting criss-cross in front of the oven, grinning at the pizza through the glass. In the words of a really cute but characteristically annoying country song, "I live for little moments like that."
Also, moments like... watching my 80-year old grandfather sitting criss-cross (wow, twice in one post) in his signature armchair with his new radio walkman blaring talk radio and the antennae shooting up from behind his ear while reading the instruction manual. And then my cousin Jonathan (who is now taller than me) tried to get his attention, with no luck, and then decided to simply take a picture of the scene. Oh I hope to never forget. And my grandmother's expressions like "oh that's been around for 40 'leven years." Bless her heart. And her food. Bless her food. Southern cooking couldn't be any better. I need to learn to make country fried steak and her biscuits and gravy and dressing with chicken gravy and chicken rice soup and irish stew and green beans and fried okra and the white icing she puts on her chocolate cakes. There are so many kinds of gravy. Wow. I didn't realize. Chicken gravy, biscuit gravy, red-eye gravy, rice gravy... I don't know what they are all really called though.
Totally unrelated- One day I will write my entry about Farenheit 9/11. It didn't change any of my views about the situation in Iraq but I know it's opening the eyes of so many other people to the horrible things that have and are happening. I'm going to pray from now until August that Geoff won't be deployed. I think he is certain that they will be sent sometime between August and October to Iraq or Afghanistan. Please God no.
This is enough thinking for tonight. Just be.